miners are allowed on the premise because of the type of the alcohol license they are asking for. how are they going to restrict minors' from having access to alcohol? we are also concerned about the noise. we have residential hotels across the street. we are also concerned about safety, not only for the patrons, but also for the community. we are aware of police reports where people were mugged right outside the premise. here is a copy dated may 23, 2010, somebody was mugged right outside the premises, a robbery.

we do not know their safety plan. they did not come to any community meetings lately to tell us what changes they made to the premise. also, we were aware of this back in 2004. we were aware that they had a license and we put it on the agenda for district 6. when somebody takes seven years to finally come to a hearing, we do not know what they will do what they will not do. we do not know their safety plan. they have not come through the community. supervisor chu: thank you. we have two cards. michael nulty.

john nulty. if there are any members of the public that would like to speak as well, please line up in the center aisle. >> [no audio] as stated before, the state of california, the license was started in 2004. this is what they mailed out to neighbors, -- 2004, 2010. it is not in the language of the other neighborhood so people could not protested when it was sent out.

this is a type 24. these community groups oppose the application. seven years ago, the applicant -- since then, they have done no community of reach to the neighborhood groups. the american youth hostel has 19 hospitals in the state of california. why is the pacific center the only one seeking a license? i would like items a through g include that the police to not include restrictions on the license if it is to be accepted

at this committee. over the last seven years, we have not lost licenses. the former police chief and captain of the tender line had a policy of no new liquor license. i see that as counter to those directions. i would urge the committee to turn this down. supervisor chu: thank you. are there any other members of the public that would like to comment? this is the item with regard to a liquor license application at 685 ellis. hearing none, public comment is closed. just a question for the inspector. in terms of the operator responsibility, it sounds -- had there been incidences with this organization? they are not currently -- they do not currently hold a liquor

license and they do not have a history of having all, all on site. are there issues we should be concerned about, should consider with this application? >> not that i'm aware of. their calls for service are actually pretty brief. if i could make one other comment. some of the concerns i heard were beyond the scope of what we are doing here. this license type by statute does not require food. that is nothing that we can impose upon them. by statute, this would allow those under 21. so those were beyond the police department's review. supervisor avalos: in the letter that the company's this, there is a mention of a cafe. >> you are correct. they have food service, but that

is something they could discontinue. so i left it out of my report. i appreciate your bringing it up. they do provide a food component currently but it is not something that this license would ever require them to do. you are correct. it operates at a cafe and there is currently a food component at their choice. my understanding is that is part of their revenue source. supervisor avalos: it does not seem likely they would discontinue the cafe. >> i am remiss to not bring that up. they are providing meal service to these members. supervisor avalos: if they are keeping them there, they probably want to eat something too. supervisor chu: in regards to some of the neighborhood brought up, they did bring up the fact that there were no offsite

components to it. >> that is covered by statute. the condition we have been bringing you the past 12 months -- to have a conversation about it -- we are trying not to repeat law. in this case, this type of license but not allow for all sale privilege. therefore, i did not have to condition it. secondly, the community brought up the good neighbor policy. that would be in effect. from what they are stating, our city laws would be in effect in that jurisdiction. supervisor chu: it appears from your comments the nature of having this on the open to individuals who are members, living at the hostel, and their guests, helps to alleviate the concerns that the neighborhood has. >> i would also add that the station was not opposed to this. they will be the front line in

dealing with these issues. supervisor chu: thank you. any other questions from the committee? supervisor avalos: motion to approve with recommendations. supervisor chu: ok. without objection. thank you. item seven. >> hearing on the policy of short-turning or early turn- arounds of the municipal transportation agency's lrv's, the reasons for and frequency of this practice, and the communication plan to inform the affected riders. supervisor chu: thank you. this is an item that i did request a hearing before the city operations committee on the issue of muni switchbacks. i know we have a number of mta representatives who will be speaking and providing a presentation. just four ways of background, and a supervisor at avalos is

concerned with this issue. as for my district, we have a number of light rail vehicles that come through. we have seen recently a number of complaints coming from residents who may be taken either one of those lines back but instead of having it go fully to the last stop, it ends up turning around early before their final stop. the purpose of today's presentation is to hear from the mta about the causes of this issue. for many of our residences, it becomes a big problem, from a reliability point of view, is people do not know exactly where they will be able to get to, it is a problem. in addition to that, if you can imagine in the sunset, foggy, cold weather, it is a problem when you have people dropped off later in the evenings without a way to get to their

home easily. as you know, the sunset boulevard area is a good 15 blocks or more to the ocean, which is where the final stops are often located. we have a number of people here to talk about the light rail vehicles which backs. i would like to invite the mta's john haley. >> [no audio] supervisor chu: before you begin, do you have a copy of your presentation to provide? supervisor avalos: i did not see it in my packaget.

we were moving our offices as well. it was hard to keep track of documents coming in. >> not a problem. in the interest of time, supervisors, i will move quickly through this. feel free to stop and ask any questions. the first point of what is on here, two, in terms of the description, what i would like to emphasize on this one, each of our lines, because they operate both on the subway and on the servicsurface, if you haa delay in 19 will affect the other ones. the guys we operate in street traffic and a subject to stop signs and those sorts of things, we are vulnerable to having delayed it generated in the subway as well as on the streets. we have a heavily utilized, you

need, and complex system. in terms of what kinds of problems, you may remember a couple of months ago there was a series of lengthy delays. they resulted in a number of people being inconvenienced, sometimes for several hours. on this slide is a brief description of the major causes of those delays called switch problems, a problem with a mechanical attachment which is on the undercarriage of the car which cuts the signal cable in the subway, as well as one of the challenges when your operating in manual, when you get to one of the port is to receive automatic train control. our system is designed to run on automatic control and the reliability of the system is much higher when it is an

automatic control as opposed to a manual operation. in september wheat underwent a series of delays. there were a number of actions that we undertook to address these delays. first of all, we redesigned our switch maintenance program to focus on high usage switches, such as the church at dubose. with the help of the signal manufacturing company, we limited the number of trains. we also made repairs to the sanderhose where we changed our men's procedures and there has been no incidents since then. the point of all of this is we improved our reliability. as this chart indicates, as far as the total number of

switchbacks, in september they were higher than they have since come down. the point we want to make here is the number of switchbacks is a service management technique that we use in the event of a delay in the system. in our discussions, you had had asked, could we break up the time of the switchbacks? over the last couple of months we have a layout from september to december of the time of day. supervisor chu: you are going pretty quickly. it in terms of the lrv switch back, you say that it is sometimes required to make sure the system goes back in place. could you explain that more? >> are we talking about page six, lrv switch backs?

what would you like me to amplify on? supervisor chu: you sort of glossed over the issue by saying that switchbacks were necessary. that does not really capture the public perception, which is a huge inconvenience. waiting to be dropped off at sunset boulevard for 20 minutes perhaps. we got an e-mail from someone who said that they recently had their whole family waiting 20 minutes for the train to come but it did not come. i want you to explain why the mta makes choices to switch back vehicles at particular locations. >> ok, let me first address the second part of your comment. this morning's service was unacceptably bad, cosaused by to things. there was an inadequate number of cars and then a derailment

that affected putting the cars on the street. there were a lot of m trains, n trains, l trains that had should have had more cars. you had trains coming out late because of the derailment. this morning, i could do nothing other than to say service was unacceptable. we made a number of changes in the last few days to try to deal with that. in terms of the question of the chart here, the point we're trying to make -- switch back is a service management technique

and that is available to us under well-defined conditions. it is an attempt to recover or even the space services as a result of a delay. whether the delay is caused by something that is in direct control of muni, in the subway, or to some degree, out of our control, on the surface. you asked about the trend, what this shows us. back in september, when there were a number of vehicle infrastructure delays -- the number of switchbacks increased. as the service improved, it is natural, the relationship, and the service is high, the number of switchbacks should be lower. supervisor chu: can you tell me

from this trend -- we have four months of data here. clearly, taking a look, going from 175 to 105 to 97. is this cyclical? did we see problems one year ago? how do we understand these numbers in terms of whether or not muni is doing any better? >> clearly, the trend on page 6 is going in the right direction. the reason is going in the right direction is because service, over all, is more reliable. as the service becomes more reliable, you do not have the need to make adjustments to service. if everything runs like clockwork, you do not need to make adjustments.

to the extent there is a relationship between the number of switchbacks and service reliability, it vehicles are out, the runs are filled, there are no delays caused in the subway or in the surface -- on the surface, then the need to use switchbacks is less. if i am understanding the question, yes, the trend is going in the right direction because it indicates the service is more reliable. we have seen that as a result of the actions are described earlier, the throughput of the subway, the number of trains that make the trip, has been going up dramatically in the past three months. supervisor chu: i appreciate the comment about identifying the problem in september. on page four, you talk about steps to improve the reliability system.

what i would like, after this meeting, if you folks could work on that, is an understanding of where our lrv switchbacks have been. we cannot look at this at a four-month vacuum. we need to see if this is a trend that is going down or not. supervisor avalos? supervisor avalos: it is more a statement so that people know my point of view. i would like to think that you also agree with this. we live in the sunset, excelsior, and we are in a transit-first city. we promote that idea. but for neighborhoods that are more outside the central core, transit first city is an empty phrase.

the policy is we are going to serve the downtown core because of its density. people who live up further from the downtown core have to deal with switchbacks. it is not something easy for us to accept. i want to be able to promote transit first city but we have to make sure how we can get the sun set, excelsior, and omi have the resources necessary to make a transit first city. it has to be a transit first city in the core and elsewhere. if we cannot prevent people from asking people to get out of their cars and on the bus, we cannot expect them to do it if they do not have the service. i know we are dealing with real problems of the budget, but that is something i want to be able to make sure of. i want to work with members of the board of supervisors to ensure neighborhoods that are further away from the downtown

core can have better options, so we do not have to do with this all the time. supervisor chu: thank you. i appreciate your comments. it is clear, when we hear the fact at the mta needs to switch back and move the trains and other direction to make sure the rest of the system is working well, but for residents waiting to get home, that is not an acceptable answer. thank you for those comments. supervisor avalos: i think it is important that our neighborhoods have a say in how muni is run outside of the downtown core. >> thank you. supervisor chiu had asked for a break out of the switchbacks by time and day. in the upper right-hand side -- bare with me. i would draw your attention to

two numbers. 41% and 21%. what that shows is the majority of switchbacks are being made after the morning rush-hour and then second after the evening rush hour. they are done that way to rebalance the line. the next slide shows you the condition we require before making a switch back. the point here is, what the information shows, after rush hour is when we make the majority of switchback in order to get ready, 1st between 10:00 and 1:00 in the afternoon to get ready for the afternoon rush- hour, and then after 7:00 at night to get ready for the later night service, which is important. as the length of time between trains increases, it is important to have a reliable service at night. this was a layout of where we do

the switchbacks by time of day. we also want to talk about alternatives to doing switchbacks. while a commonnly used -- while a common technique used in transit, there are other techniques used across the country. briefly, on page 8, skipping stops, bart does that all the time. they bypass patients. it is impractical for us to do it. that is a technique that works and other places. it would not be effective here. express trains are common in other places that have a different infrastructure. probably not practical here.

same reason why we do not skip stops and why dwe do not have te infrastructure. reassigning trains. when you have a delay, let's change it this train. all that really does is shift your problem. again, limited effectiveness. not a dusting service. again, the problem there is if you allow the problems to continue, you want people to go in the opposite direction. you have this bunching and you create long wait times in both directions. it inconveniences' people. one technique that a lot of people use, the first one is on top, stand by trains. in my opinion, it could be affected here. it would be an expensive proposition but would require

putting a train and operator and supervisor in a street location to plug in if there was a particular problem. we have to manage the fact that most of the places where we could put trains are in residential areas. that is something that could be plugged in. it would make a difference in improving service, albeit an expensive one. as i said last week, one of the problems we see is the level of services, with demand for our services high, we would like to have more services on the lines that go out, the n, l lines that have heavy ridership.

we have considered a number of actions. this slide on page 9, if we do nothing, right now the best option is to adjust service and to use these which backed on occasion -- switch back on occasion. failure to do so causes an imbalance on the line. on the next page, it is important. we have a recommended procedure under which we would conduct a switch back and are conducting switchbacks. there are essentially three groups that participate in managing service, the control center, line management center, the condition of all three of those are all coordinated and work together on a decision. a first, they determine on how big a gap is, the direction, and

then the best location. the other points to be made, we should not and will not do switchbacks unless there is a train in near proximity. if we are asking somebody to get off, there needs to be a vehicle right behind it. supervisor avalos: what is near proximity, and is that time or space? >> as a guideline, we say five minutes. that depends on a couple of factors, like the location of the delay, severity of the delay. depending on what causes the delay, we could have more than one train delayed. >>supervisor avalos: so what is the space generally in between -- >> there are two things that

have to happen. five minutes is usual. actually, three things. there needs to be a train five minutes behind. no one should wait more than five minutes. more importantly -- supervisor avalos: that is a good rule, but my question is, what data do you have, what is the proximity you are using? what do you generally range from? the experience people have is it is beyond five minutes. if so, we should be able to 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. information to the committee. we will forward that as well.