measure that to improve service. >> i do not have that with me, but i can certainly get it. i am happy to bring that information to the committee. we will forward that as well. supervisor chu: we have seen from many of the folks, it even if what the mta is verbally telling us that they will not make a switch back unless there is a serious delay, that there is also a train five minutes behind -- the experience of riders is the train is not five minutes behind. we had an incident in december were two trains were turned back. for that individual, they were certainly not winning just five minutes. the question that supervisor avalos asked is relevant. although the policy is five minutes, do you have a policy

that no consecutive trains are turned, a measure that that is the policy being followed? that is the experience being seen by residents. supervisor avalos: she asked you a question that you should be responding to. supervisor chu: the question is , we have a problem with the mta putting out statements that we are turning around trains with significant delays and that there is one with five minutes behind. there is no way to know that is true. from everything we see, we see trains are being turned around consecutively. we hear they could be coming 20 minutes later or even later. what is your experience of what writers are experiencing is what

you say? you have data that shows us that the next train should be coming by. >> so the question is, do i have statistics on when switchbacks, to show you when there was a train -- how long people waited and how long the train was? i do not have it with me but we can get it. supervisor chu: supervisor avalos? supervisor avalos: i represent people outside the city. i feel pretty angry about how unprepared you are and how you are going through these questions and how you are not really ready to respond to these questions. it is not like you are listening to us. i do not generally get agitated like this. i know there is a sense of agitation from riders. i wonder if we should even

continue this spirit we are not getting the answers we want. i would like to have a change in how you are giving your presentation so we can have a better sense. if we ask a question, you should be able to give an answer back. what i am hearing is unacceptable. supervisor chu: thank you, supervisor avalos. one of the things we could do, there are some slides that are at i am interested in getting to which includes the number of switchbacks on individual lines. perhaps we can go to those and have more directed questions for the mta. would that be ok? ok. >> on page 11, those are the characteristics that you know of the lines. on page 12 is the n line.

the point of this is to show, over the course of a year, the number of trips we run nurses the number of short term that we make. it is a small percentage of the total trips. the other point to make, when we talked about wanting to inconvenience the fewest number of people, switchbacks are in generally done at sunset. trains are turned to support, through the greater good of riders, and minimizing inconvenience to people. we recognize when someone is asked to get off, they are inconvenienced, even if there is one behind it.

we do everything we can to minimize the impact on the least number of riders. similarly, on the l line, a small percentage of turns. the same principle near the end of the line. you inconvenience to the least number and your balance the line for the greater number of people. m line, same percentage. we recognize anyone that is asked to get off a train, there is an inconvenience. the passenger complaints. over the course of two years, as you have noted, we have had over 150 complaints at 311 on switchbacks. a majority of the complaints have to do with our inconsistent communications. people need to know as early as

possible if there train is not going to the end of the line. then there has to be consistent announcements, both by the operator and within stations, to make sure people are not confused. we have taken a look at the data. this is a sampling by line. one of the things that we have done since we first spoke to you about this in september is we have made a change in the software so that the destination sign, the voice in the station, the station platform, all have the same destination. that had been an inconsistency in the system. that gives us the ability to let someone know early on if there train is going to be switched back. one of the things i am laying out on action items is to continue to make sure that our

sign-ins' it is proper, consistent on announcements, and that we follow the policy that there will only be a turn back if there is a train five minutes behind. finally, in terms of the overview from our perspective, our goal is to provide the most reliable service without the need to switch back. we are taking a number of actions to improve the reliability of the system. we are certainly willing, and are investigating other steps, particularly on the surface to find out how to get more reliable. supervisor chu had asked for the cause of delays in the meeting last week. earlier this morning, we provided some of that which shows about 50% of the delays from november to december were caused by muni, about 50% caused by other factors.

from our side, we have to make sure we work on our vehicles affectively. that was a pivotal source of the delay. we look forward to working on this. the other kind of thing we can work on, talk about, with your help and support, before, parking lanes, traffic enforcement. we want to run the most reliable service which should result in the fewest number of switchbacks. that is our overview. supervisor chu: can you explain to me why, looking at these different -- i know supervisor avalos talked a little bit and we talked about the problems we have with our buses. today we are just talking about light rail vehicles. i know there are further problems with the reliability of buses. on these rail lines, we see

different percentages of how turning is affecting people. on the m, we have roughly 1% turned. in terravale, it went from 1% to 3%. in judah, it went from 3% to 6% of trips being turned. why is it that the end judah has seen this number of switchbacks? you know that that is particularly problematic. there are so many writers on this line. -- riders on this line. >> there were two questions. one about the reliability of the bus fleet? supervisor chu: we are concentrating on the light rail vehicles. i fully appreciate problems to the other bus fleet. with these three lines, we have

different numbers of prevalence where these turns occur. you have them on slide 12 through 14. we see anywhere from 1% going up through 6% of trips that are short term. the biggest impact is on judah where we have 6% of trips being turned. why is it that this occurs so unevenly across these different lines? >> so the percentage of trips that are turned on all three lines is under 1%. in terms of the n judah, it is one of the most heavily traveled lines. that is basically the reason it

can be turned more frequently, if that is the question. again, i am not sure i understand the question. supervisor chu: we see much more prevalent on this line than others. why is that? the n judah had 370 turns in 2010 compared to the l terravale, 177. >> just for introduction purposes, i am jim kelly of rail services. it may be a misunderstanding on our part. if you look at the n judah, that is 0.32%, not 3% of the cars being turned. to speak regarding the n line, the n judah has the most service

of any of our lines and also has the most flexibility. the k is probably the best advantage. once the train leaves st. francis circle, there is no opportunity from there until balboa park to turn. there are no switchback locations on ocean avenue. so a lot of our adjustments on the kt line have to take place on the t line because that is where we have the greatest ability. if we do not take any action on the t line, there is no way to adjust the service physically coming back the subway from embarcadero to the remaining trips on ocean avenue. on the m line, the switches at 19th avenue were in a state of disrepair. they went back into service after the st. francis work.

the only location where we could switch back was at broad and the imf, roughly eight minutes from the terminal at geneva, which affected the seven or eight stops. in a lot of cases, what we had to do was make adjustments at the other end of the line at embarcadero by extending trains out to fourth and came, or do what john mentioned earlier, reordering trains. it was necessary to balance the lines. so to your larger question as to the n line compared to others, it has more service. so the opportunity to service is greater. there are 17 trains operating in rush-hour on the n judah, compared to the l or m. so the percentage is larger just by sheer numbers. supervisor chu: just so the

public is aware, the slide shows 0.03, but that is percentage. supervisor avalos? supervisor avalos: i am just someone unfamiliar about the n judah line. you have to walk a great distance through the sunset to get there. you are waiting longer and you already have to walk a long way to get to the n judah. the options in the far parts of san francisco are less rich than elsewhere, so the inconvenience is greater. i will keep emphasizing that for years. >> to speak to that, there is

one pilot program that we are looking at in the outer end of the sunset. we have had conversations with supervisor chu. that is the possibility of an express bus. that would operate from all playa, operate at local stops up until 19th ave. then it would operate as an expressed vehicle, work its way down to the financial district on an approximate 10-minute headway. we are looking at potential for buses that would have wi-fi to make it a little more convenient for people. it has a twofold advantage for us. it's the alderson said people a direct link to downtown very quickly -- it gives the our sunset people a direct link to a downtown very quickly.

also, those passengers who decided to take the express bus, it does great capacity for existing fleet because as much as we would like to put additional vehicles on the line, we do not have them available at this time. this would be a work around, and this would operate in the a.m. and p.m. peaks, so five days a week. supervisor chu: with regards to one last issue that i do not think was really address -- at the end of the day, in order for the system to be more reliable and for switchbacks to not be necessary, we have a number of reasons why the delays occurred to begin with, and we have not had a very in-depth conversation about why it is we see these delays occur. we talked about system failures, potential problems with the equipment, trains being blocked because there are cars on the rails -- what kind of information do you have to

explain what the root causes of the failures are? why are we seeing these delays in a system that you believe necessitate a turnaround? how can we change those root causes of the problem? >> i think john clearly explained the mechanical problems we are experiencing. we analyzed all the data to what the causes are, the root causes of vehicle breakdowns. they tend to be propulsion problems. we had a unique system with steps that go up and down depending on the high platform, the low platform. our door mechanism systems have over 220 moving partners -- moving parts, so it is a very complex door, and like a barn door, which is essentially a hinge and a door. when you have that many moving parts, there is chances of failure we're looking to each of

these components to see how we can improve the reliability. a five-minute delay on the subway seems relatively short, when you are operating of words of 50 trains per hour through a given station, the residual effect is that delay compounds itself 12 or 15 minutes in some cases, which, when it gets out into the japanese, necessitates some sort of action to but the line back in shape. that part, we can address. there are many instances in the street that are within our control. we can certainly aggressively have our pco's looked at trucks parking, delivering groceries and things like that to various stores out in the cabinet. they only briefly delayed the train, but if that train has been previously delayed somewhere else, it is compounded. what actions can we take?

a train that was essentially on time is now 12 or 15 minutes late. we operate on an eight-minute headway during rush hour, so what can we do to recover that schedule? with that delay, with 12 minutes, in theory, you could have upwards of three trains following each other. if we simply allowed those trains to continue our of the in terminal, those trains will come back inbound. it will decide that we are not going to turn trains, what are the options? you get into the stand by trains, the options mr. haley talked about. you could put buses at the end terminal to cover the gap and meet the train at 19th avenue or sunset that is turning. then you are creating a two-seat ride for the passengers. the options are very limited in

a real way we operate the next flow of traffic all over the world in very large, complex systems. short turning, unfortunately, is a way of life. it is not the best solution any time to offload passengers, but in some cases, it is necessary because the line is in such bad shape after a delay that it does require radical action to get the line back in place. because it is rail, they cannot pass each other, so there's not a lot of ways to get the line perfectly balanced. it requires radical action to fix it. supervisor avalos: i do think it takes radical action because we have neighborhoods that do not have the same level of service or consideration as other neighborhoods, not just about

the resources. about congestion pricing, the idea of it is to encourage or discourage -- tried to encourage transit use, but how can you encourage transit use when neighborhoods have your options -- have the option that is there and is less reliable than it can be. the mta is not going to deploy the resources to make it more reliable, to make people get out of their cars, which i really want to consider the concept is to be a failed one out there. in our neighborhood, said excelsior, we need to be relying on our cars more, so we need to see congestion pricing as something that is going to be more on us in the downtown corridor, the issue you are going to be looking at is going to beat us driving to that area.

it is a real inconvenience for our pocketbooks. it is why i think there is a lot of trepidation about it. until we get the kind of resources that are out in our neighborhoods, that is going to be very difficult for us to swallow, and the mta has a real responsibility to make sure that people have the service they need out there to promote transit. supervisor chu: thank you. why don't we open this item up for public comment, and i will save my comments for when we close up? i will read the cards that i have received for this item. [reading names] >> i write the l -- ride teh l.

i do not own a car. about two years ago, i had my right foot ground of to the concrete of a dramatic motorcycle accident. i've been in pain every day since then. though federal law dictates that the handicapped seats being vacated for any individual that needs it, it seems if the trains or buses are crowded, they are more of a suggestion. i cannot stand up without injuring myself. it causes pain to radiate from my feet to my ankles and hips. one evening, on a crowded train, a woman sitting in the designated seat had four large pieces of luggage. i asked to sit in a row with a duffel bag in my left here and when we got off at the next station, she turned around and screamed at me, "you really only need to go for one stock?"

this has not been an isolated incident. i've been called lazy and accused of faking it. the reality is no where near the ideal. i've been kicked off at 10:30 at night 11 blocks from my home just to see that the next was not for 15 minutes and i'd been abandoned for 45. while other people can simply walk home, i cannot. it is walk and get home before midnight and be in pain for the next three days or stand up on 19th avenue and be in pain the next three days. it is my understanding that muni is owned by the citizens of the great city and county of san francisco. it affects a large percentage of writers, and to say that it does not matter is insulting at least. i'm a citizen. i'm an owner of muni. i thank my driver when i get off

the bus. i even grin and bear it when the system grinds to a screeching halt. [inaudible] >> [inaudible] i feel your pain. i have arthritis in both my knees. i have the same problems. i just want to say that we have no alternative route. if we get left out of the system, there is nothing we can do but rate -- but wait. the nearest line with the four long blocks away. i also want to say that we do not have any shelters at 19th avenue or sunset boulevard where seniors can sit while they wait, whether it is five minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, or where we can get out of the brain if it

is raining because they will put you out in the rain -- get out of the rain if it is raining. if you take us out of the system, your system is still out of balance. i also want to say that informing us is -- not being informed is not the problem. when somebody informs you that they are about to rob you, they are still going to rob you. telling us in advance that you are going to rob us does not change the fact that we are being robbed. there is also a general perception in the outer sunset that y turnaround in sunset boulevard when you are only a couple of minutes from the end of the line? it takes about the same amount of time to switch back as it would to go down to the and then turn around. as i said before, there is inconveniencing people with no alternative. if you are going to shorten the line, shorten it at the downtown and where they have alternatives.

they can go eight blocks in any direction and get a bus in the direction they want to go. last but not least, i want to say that every one of those 17 trains are packed to the gills. >> hello, supervisors. i'm a resident of the inner sunset and the author of the chronicle of the pain and pleasure of using the muni system. i'm here to speak on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of owners who could not make it to this meeting, that they be represented. one of the most common complaint i get on twitter, on the blog, on e-mail has been that the turnaround problem -- which i think it's indicative of a bigger problem, which is the

misallocation of resources and lack of resources at the mta. others have reticulated the personal problems this causes. they have spoken more articulately than i can to the issue, but what i would like to speak to you today about is the fact that i think we have been disrespect for a long time. supervisor chu has been active on this issue for a number of years. we have these meetings and hear the promises, and the problems continue to get worse. i'm appreciative of the problems the mta has come a particular with money. it is no secret that the former governor and former mayor alluded the agency of hundreds of millions of dollars. let's try to fix the so we do not have the consuming problem of dwindling resources being poorly distributed around our city. we should not be punishing the west side, saying that it is just a small percentage.

it is a big deal because if you expect us to use it, we will use it. if you do not provide the service, we cannot. thank you very much for your hard work. supervisor chu: thank you. next speaker please. >> good morning. i live on 34th ave. i was just hearing the beginning of your meeting. to get a liquor license, you have to serve the convenience of the people of san francisco, and i would hope that same level of convenience is expected from muni. the last time i got shorts which was the train turned at church, so we all got off, like we were requested may be about five requested may be about five minutes before that, and we