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tv   [untitled]    November 9, 2010 10:00pm-10:30pm PST

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we have to take that deployment plan and match it to what we see as the revenue trends for this type of citation. for us to come back with what i would call a credible recovery plan, we have to show you where we think we could drive revenues. will it come from meters? what do we expect to have happen based on these factors? there has been a lot of work done in that regard, but i would commit publicly that we should be in front of you with an analysis of where we are going with this. after the first quarter, the where we are, we need to have a sense of urgency and move forward. >> one of the things i would like you to look at is the complaints i'm starting to hear, in some cases, officers are crisscrossing to where people are getting cited for the same thing 10 minutes apart when a
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different officer happens to be in the area. >> i would like to 0.1 more thing out also -- during the same timeframe, we had teh trans -- i would like to point out one more thing also, during these same timeframe, we had the transbay terminal. >> there may be a budget adjustment. >> exactly. we will get reimbursed, but those officers are not writing tickets. they are moving traffic in and around the terminal. >> you were mentioning that we were going to take a look at
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corridor. that might be a way to address that issue. when the ticket price escalates, and you get the rebates, that might help. there was recently an article about that that we sent around to some of the board members and uploaded to you. director heinicke: this is a budget question with a lot of policy overlay. we are focused in on parking citation revenue because it is the biggest variants in our quarterly report for revenue, at
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least. i have heard a set of explanations as to why this happened. we have the st. francis circle, the world playoffs, the transbay terminal, things like that. that is one set of suggestions to suggest that once everything is back to normal, we will hit our mark. we have also had other suggestions like people driving less. maybe the fines are too high, so people are being more careful. i certainly would put myself in that category. that is more of a permanent thing. my question is, given the sort of competing set of explanations, do you think, in the second quarter we will that our budget number in this category? >> i think we will probably still be short in terms of the second quarter because the world series -- the actual playoffs and world series occurred after the end of the first quarter. we still have the work being
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done about transbay, but we need to look at how much of an impact is there. every other weekend going forward, we have some work that will require pco's to do traffic management versus issuing tickets. the work that john is doing with his group -- i'm confident they will get to the bottom of this, but some of the things that are out of our control we need to recognize and look at them in a realistic projection in terms of what is in our control in terms of improving attendance and redeploying patrol. there is a lot of work that needs to be done. i think john may have completed a draft about a month or so ago, but we still have not gotten a chance where we have sat down and boiled it down and tried to
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really get to the bottom of it. we are giving your anecdotal things -- >> but i appreciate the candor about the second quarter as well. it is not as it the third and fourth quarter, even if they hit targets, will make up for these deficits. we will have a deficit in 2011 in this revenue category. >> i think we may have some challenges there. we have done more to pay for -- pay your meter with the introduction now of credit cards in addition to our parking card. >> the decline in parking citations is not a bad thing from many perspectives, especially because people are taking transit and following the law, but it is a budget issue when we are running this and we do not have the revenue hits coming in. the other question would be, just in the abstract -- and i think i know the answer to this
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-- if we are deploying pco's to traffic conditions like the world series, and, hopefully, we will have that problem again next year, is a trading reasons or collective bargaining reasons or -- is it training reasons or collective reasons? why can we not have people filling in the route -- if you have a pco whose salary is being covered by the budget, someone in the abstract would be why you're leaving it empty. >> under our mou, i do not believe we have the ability to hire part-timers. because there is so much work out there in terms of and in addition to the normal beats, the extra work such as st. francis circle or transbay
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terminal -- it depletes our ranks. we have these folks working on a lot of overtime, and that is one of the challenges we have to deal with. we could conceivably add more pco's but then you get to a point of diminishing returns. some of the work is temporary. >> i understand, and that is why i would suggest you fill it with temporary workers, but i can see if you are constrained on that. >> you do have two members of the public who have indicated their interest. >> i was not going to come up for this, but some really huge red flags came up for me. i'm going to ask some questions because some of you refused to ask them. i appreciate director heinicke asked a similar question that i was going to ask.
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i think we need to find out what happened to sonali bose. i am suspicious as to what happened to her. i think she had a battle -- better handle of what was going on, and i think we need to know, as the public who pays her a lot of money, what happened to her. the next is about taxi services. the taxi budget is paid a different way. we have the huge amount that comes in from taxi sales and auctions that go into the thatmuni fund, -- that go into the muni fund, and that has probably been covered because it is direct pay. it is really a false thing to say that we are under budget on the taxi issues when it is a whole different process about how that is budgeted.
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i hope you will learn about that because it is really a full report in the way that is handled. the next about pco's -- i remember when they came here and ask you not to fire them because you would need the money. when they have these special projects where they get reimbursed, you build them at the overtime rate. you bring in the overtime because you should not be taking officers from their regular beat to bring in this other revenue when you have these special projects that have nothing to do with the actual regular running of the mta. you should build them at the overtime rate because that is what they should be paid at. in closing, why did you take the enforcement division out of yee's office? it is related to engineering and parking issues. that is a very good question that should be asked.
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>> next speaker please. >> i would just encourage the board to, when we are looking for sources of revenue, remember the people who have money. there are over 3000 millionaires in san francisco. their numbers are growing while the rest of us are facing increased unemployment. there have been several fare enforcement officers -- i'm sorry, the ticketing agents that have expressed their concern that they get over dispatched to pour -- poor neighborhoods. it leads them to increasing conflict with people who are part of their community, and they hated. you might want to look at why there's so much turnover. the wealthier people are, the more access they have to free
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and paid parking so they can avoid tickets. in one of the people who have spent an enormous amount of effort not getting tickets, and i have managed in the past six months to have none. the people who are struggling to get by are part of that, so you are going to find less and less revenue from parking. you're going to find less and less revenue from their enforcement, and the only way is to make muni riders and car drivers miserable. they prove they have money to grow thousands of dollars in proposition g. i think we are going to see an increasing mass -- mess if you do not treat this like the
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emergency that it is. >> further public comment? seeing none. >> no action, just a briefing. >> okay, next item. >> item 13, authorizing the executive director/ceo to enter into a memorandum of understanding with various other city departments. director ford: i have no report on this particular item. >> you do have a member of the public that wish to discuss this particular item. >> started to come up, but terrie williams says there are mou's with other departments, and i beg to differ. there is one with police department and taxi services
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regarding how to do enforcement. i swear to god, on my bible -- on my torah, there is an mou. it is the truth. please counteract me if there is none. the problem is whether it is enforced. i feel that the mou has been ignored, or they claim that they enforce it their own way. my concern is how to enforce the mou's, how you agree on how they are to be adhered to and implemented, and what you do it that department decides they are going to do it their own way and hurt muni riders, taxi drivers, the people in your department that and that tearing their hair out or growing weird growths on
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their body or having internal organs affected. i'm sorry to be graphic about it, but when you have an internal department affected, how do you deal with it? there should be an agreement on how to withhold money when the department is not agreeing -- is not doing what they agreed to do. we need to do the job right and the conscientious about how to enforce the laws that are already on the books and how to cooperate better and in a congenial way with members of your department. thank you for hearing me out, and i hope you will take this to heart. it is not about you. it is about how we serve the public and properly spend the money. director ford: having been on this board now for five years, i view this as a major step forward. two or three years ago, we were spending over $80 billion a year, without this kind of template that was created for the first time. there are submissions we may
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have to deal with in terms of enforcement and accountability, but i cannot help but think of this as a big step forward. >> mr. chairman, members of the board, you are 100% correct. it was a lot of hard worked -- hard work. in some cases, we had to start from scratch with an mou or contract in terms of how we would utilize their services and reimburse them for those services. >> [inaudible] which is what everybody associates with this, and i would point out that this action is a follow-up on really the most concrete and realistic recommendations given to us by the controller's office. it is not a situation where we saw a problem, had a hearing,
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and nothing happened. this is actually the most concrete follow-up recommended on what we call the work order situation. i agree that this is a good start. it does not replace monitoring those orders and making sure people are not overcharging us, but at least we have some recourse. >> it represents a major corporation with the board of supervisors, the controller's office, and this body -- represents a major cooperation. is there discussion? ayes have it. >> item 14, presentation and discuss said regarding the status of the van ness and -- discussion regarding the status of the van ness and geary bus rapid transit projects. >> i want to talk about two bus
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rapid transit projects that we have been working closely with the transit authority in development of this project. >> after this presentation, before we will go into closed session, we will take a little break. does that sound good?
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>> [inaudible] >> if necessary, you can use the overhead. >> [inaudible] i'm a mac person, so that is all i know. [laughter]
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>> ok, good afternoon. >> good afternoon. i am the deputy director of planning. i'm going to give you an update on the bus rapid transit projects we have been working on. we have been working closely
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with the transportation authority. we would specifically like to call out the deputy director of planning and the project manager for the two projects, co-project manager with our staff as well. i'm going to give you a quick overview of the regional funding authority, how we got to these projects, and i will go into some detail of the projects we are working on right now. just a quick background, in the late 1980's, there was a study that identified third street, tehe chinatown extension of rail, and geary and van ness avenue is for corridor projects.
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in 2002, there was a muni division for rapid transit, which identified these specific corridors. just recently, the 2008 tep identified geary, geneva, honeyway adn p -- and potrero as the highest priorities. prop b identified the highest priorities. in 2003, prop k identified geary and van ness as candidates for funding. in 2006, there was a regional transportation expansion policy, which identified van ness as a
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high candidate. at the end of 2008 -- the end of 2007/early 2008, it was identified that the van ness corridor bus rapid transit project would be a candidate. just to give you a visual of what we are talking about in terms of a system, we have the current network identified through the tep, the current light rail transit lines, and the corridors that have been identified through the various studies we have been talking about. i'm going to go into some detail in terms of studies. on the van ness bot corridor, basically, that is an area that
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is circled. currently, there is approximately 38,000, and the highway between the two routes. the goal was to develop a bus rapid transit system in an urban setting. there's 2.2 miles of the segment. the key criteria identified with improved transit travel time or reliability, improved pedestrian safety, and the pedestrian experience for st. scaping and improve general circulation as well. while the van ness bot corridor
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is specifically about right of way and staging of vehicles, there is more for redesigning the streets. caltrans owns that segment, and we have had a lot of conversations on developing a complete street. quickly, the schedule. we are well and truly working on the draft environmental impact report. we should have that out to the public made-winter -- mid- winter. we are in the process of working with mta staff to develop a locally preferred alternative and go through that process. that will be complete by next spring. and then project final selection will be this summer. it will complete the environmental impact report, and our goal is to construct the project, complete construction
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in 2013 or 2014, and open the project in 2015. on the actual cost, just to clarify, there is a cost estimate of somewhere around $125 million. there is also an upper in scale based on which alternative you choose and which type of vehicle you choose. that means that right now we have a current fleet of 47 vehicles, and we would draw that to about 60 vehicles, but they would not specifically be the same the hackles out right now. they would be newer vehicles. -- they would not specifically be the same vehicles out there right now. they would be brand-new vehicles, completely redesigned. the range we have is somewhere above what the federal government budgets for a bus. the increment range is fairly
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broad. the $20 million range is from when we went with a standard approach of off-the-shelf vehicles. $50 million is for all the bells and whistles and had a very large, highly designed vehicle. we committed on the lower end. we think we can save some costs and try to get closer to the $25 million or $30 million mark. on infrastructure, again, there is a range there, depending on what alignment witches, and reconstructing the roadways -- depending on what alignment we choose, and reconstructing the roadways. there is a small funding gap, but we feel we would be able to close it fairly soon. the fta gave this project a high rating for cost effectiveness. it is one of only two in the country. we thought that would help to
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close that gap. just to go through the alternative, as with all projects, the first is the baseline for the do nothing. what this really consists of is buying newer vehicles, putting in new shelters, having the off- port fare payment. the project would improve current conditions out there by -- improved run times by about 3%. not a marked improvement, but it would create a different experience. where we have really seen a difference is where we go into alternatives. alternative two is a sideline bus rapid transit with curve boarding -- curb boarding. vehicles would be boarding in a protected lane.
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this would increase ridership and reduce run times, so it would be a marked improvement there. there are some specific issues with this, in that there are the right-turning vehicles, and that is a potential conflict to slow this down. alternative three is a center- lane bus rapid transit with right-side boarding. this would improve ridership a little bit more. probably generate about 52,000 riders. the estimate is that it would improve run times by about 22%, and it basically is a fully dedicated, center-running system.
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it would require a different type of bus, buses that have left doors on them for a left- door boarding, which we do not do. that is more on the high range of the alternative and the vehicle cost. the fourth alternative is the center-lane bot with left-side boarding. that would give similar ridership and performance. there are several key infrastructure designs. the previous alternatives did not require [inaudible] this one does. this requires five doors as opposed to the usual three because of the left-side boarding. there are some