and j line that had the most switchbacks in january. i am pleased to say, having met the conditions in the policy, we were able to pull that pretty thoroughly, in terms of having a vehicle right behind it, certainly within five minutes. i will again frame that in the letter. in response to a question on the mission, the number of switchbacks, this is the mission line only. commissioner campos: commissioner wiener? commisioner wiener: first of all, i wanted to thank commissioner avalos and commissioner chu for requesting this information. it really does impact people's commute in a significant way. my question is, typically, how

soon before a switch back occurs does muni decide to switch back? is there a typical time parameter? is it, we decide and two minutes later, do we know ahead of time? >> i can only give you a firm it depends. the conditions are such, where if we have a significant delay -- 15 minutes approximately on the rail side. it is a combination of the line management center, which has a view of the entire system. the control center speaks to the

operators and st. inspectors who actually supports the switch back on the straight -- street. we tried to give people notice as soon as possible when there is a gap. from our perspective, it should be soon and frequent, in terms of letting people know, both in terms of making announcements and resetting the destination sign. that is our practice, our policy. commisioner wiener: i asked only because people may not understand why switchbacks are necessary. for a lot of people -- and this is an issue that we see in a lot of areas with muni. what frustrates people the most, lack of information, a delay in

information. people understand and operational issues, stuff happens, but there is a general feeling that information is not provided in a timely way. i asked the question of how long in invents it is known. if there is information where muni knows well in advance that there will be a need for a switch back, alerting people before they get on, perhaps having proper sign it on the train or buses so that people know that this is going to stop at this place. it is a lot less frustrating for people to know that they need to wait for the next one as opposed to getting on and having the operator say, you have to get off, and not knowing what is happening. >> i agree. that is one area where you have helped us a great deal, you as a

group, bringing this to our attention. i am much more confident on the light rail side right now. in addition to restating our policy, we have new technology, and now we are able to monitor better. we were able to get all of our cited in sync so that the cited on board matches that signed at the platform. if you decide to switch to an outbound train that is leaving, let's say, embarcadero, we should be able to tell people consistently throughout the trip that we are short-turning a train at 8 particular destination. commisioner wiener: i am frequently on the k, l, or m.

i do not recall seeing any notification or silage. it does not affect me personally, but i would like to hear that it is turning around above ground. if that is something that is feasible -- i do not know that it is -- i do not believe it is happening, from my perspective. >> i will be happy to check. commissioner campos: commissioner avalos? commissioner avalos: anticipation about switchbacks occurring -- i wonder if a driver has that anticipation as well. generally, does a driver get an order to do a switch back at a

moment's notice? how does that occur when you are out there on the 14th line? i hear passengers getting frustrated when a driver has suddenly said that they need to get off. it seems the driver is equally frustrated. perhaps not always the best bedside manner, but there is certainly frustration as well about how quickly they have had to turn around. >> i want to make sure i answer your question. if you are asking me if it is possible for an operator to make a switch back on their own -- commissioner avalos: maybe that is a second part of the question, but how much anticipation does an operator had to make a switch back? are they going along one minute and the next moment they are

trying to initiate a switch back? how much anticipation do they have that it is going to occur? >> an operator can have very short notice that we are switching to a switch back. that is why communications, internally and externally are so important. once a decision is made, as a result of looking at our own policies and cleaning it up, we are making sure that inspectors effectively communicate the information, speak directly to the operator. in many cases, they go to the actual location and support the operator, make sure the conditions we have identified are met. similarly, on the mission, you

can still have little notice. depends on the situation. whether there is a delay caused by an accident, the blockage of a vehicle that fails. we have to adjust quickly. that is why -- having the technology that we introduced six months ago -- it gives us the opportunity to see the whole system. for example, on the 14 mission, if there was a vehicle that was not where it was supposed to be an attempted to switch back at a time when the line management center was staffed, principally, during rush hour, that would show up on the screen so that the inspector would be able to see that color change immediately and see what is going on.

operators are required to adapt a fairly quickly at times. they do not always have a lot of notice. commissioner avalos: i know you have other parts of your presentation to go through. commissioner campos: before you do that, and perhaps this is a dumb question. what is the definition of a switch back? for people that are watching and do not have a sense of what we are talking about. maybe you could also get to this in your presentation. what is the switch back rate at this line relative to others in the system? >> let me try to address both of those points. i guess i assumed incorrectly that everybody understood. a switch back is a service

management technique that we deploy -- for example, on the light rail, it is easier to describe to someone. when a line is substantially behind schedule, for whatever reason, one of the things that is available to us so that we balance the line's directions -- it is important for us to balance the system because everything goes through the subway. if something happened on one line, it can affect all the others. on a number of occasions, what we do to balance the trains -- if you had five trains in a row outbound on the n line, we would

use a switch back to turn one of those trains in bound, so if people were waiting, they could have a train coming as close to schedule as we can. it is a common technique in the industry. the reason why use it is it is one of the service management techniques we can use with our physical plant. we have talked about the potential of using gap trains, buses, but a switchback is essentially a service management technique to address a delay in the system. the second part of your question? commissioner campos: maybe you are already addressing this, but the switch back rate for the

14 line relative to the others? maybe you do not keep that record. >> what i wanted to show you today on the 14th line is we do a number of things in addition to switchbacks, swapping of coaches. we have got a little bit more flexibility because it is operated by track less, which is less flexible, and diesel coaches. i would be happy to go back and look and compare, certainly for the month of january, looking at 14 and comparing that to how often others were switched back. i am happy to do that for you but i do not have that in my presentation. commissioner avalos: you did mention 137 switch packs on the 49 in january? >> 137 in january.

34 to date in february. commissioner avalos: compare that to switch back on light rail vehicles, which i think was 207 across the entire city. so january, relative to the light rail system on the year, has a large number of switchbacks. >> i would want to compare it to another trackless line. 14 has a lot of service, more trips. again, we use some other adjustments to keep the lines spaced evenly. i'm sorry, did you want me to compare -- i would offer that a comparable

thing would be to look of other lines in california to give you an apples to apples comparison. commissioner avalos: i think what would be a better comparison is the geary line compared to the 14. >> i have one more slide to offer in terms of what we are doing to continue to improve the performance of the 14 line. one of the things that we talked about, deploying parking control officers in certain areas of congestion. double parking in bus zones. we have been looking at delays at certain times. we have the advantage of looking at some video and we see at all different times double parking

in bus zones and that sort of thing. i really believe this second one is important. we could do a better job of outreach, helping people to understand the system. 14 is a good example because of the different kinds of services. sometimes, if you watch the operation of the line, there are interesting and things where somebody could be standing at the end of a bus shelter and the operator will pull up with a trackless coach and the person will have to run 5 feet. sometimes with trackless, that is where the breaker is. we need to help our operators

better with that and also help the public understand. there are a number of things like that that we could do. the other thing is -- we have talked about this in various committees -- the mission is an ideal candidate for us to begin a process of rear boarding, using fare inspectors. i think the management introduction in january was the first time we had been able to staff the line management center during the rush hour. first we start with light rail in september. now we have got it in january. that is the new technology that allows us to manage the system more aggressively. finally, as we are reviewing our own policies, staying

accountable to the question that you have asked, everything we are doing is committed to reducing time and improve performance. commissioner campos: measuring the line, is that your locator service? i think you would have something that would record, electronically, the day you have about into girls, where the spacing is between vehicles, how often you have switchbacks. why would you have to record that by hand, as you mentioned earlier in this hearing? >> what we had was, past

practices, i cannot address them specifically. u.s. a question about going back several years -- you asked a question about going back several years to see how many switchbacks there were for a vehicle -- i provided a sample of how it was done on paper. it was simply not reported. for whatever reason, i do not know. i keep using the term real-time, but we are able to see and identify vehicles in the system. now when we make a switch back, we can see where all the vehicles are on the line, whether they are track less or rail. i will try to go back and do research -- commissioner avalos: i am not

really interested in what happened years ago, unless there is a trend. what is important is what is happening now. demand is much greater than the service and they want to see more frequent buses. and we can only add just depending on how the resources. maybe you can print out a month of your data from your automated vehicle locator and you can come and share that with me in my office, and how that relates to the 14th line and the operations. that would be helpful. commissioner campos: thank you. i am certainly interested in that. maybe we can share that with all members of the committee. thank you. anything else? commissioner avalos: the

question around where the work is, in terms of looking at daly city bart. >> we have another power point set up for you. i will defer to my planning partner for that.

>> good morning, mr. terra, commissioners, mr. milosevic. thank you for having me today. i want to give you a brief overview of this proposal. this morning, i'm going to give you some background to the proposal and discuss service options available, sfmta service preferred routes, and the actions part is currently undertaking, and the next apps as well. as you know, sfmta has always been supportive of this proposal. it has been reflected in various documents in the past, but especially now in the transit

effect of this project -- effectiveness project. at this time, unfortunately, we are not able to come up with a near-term proposal because of the current budget situation, adjustments that we are proposing to add back to the service. and the extension would improve service to this sector of the city, based on everything commissioner avalos mentioned earlier. we have considered a couple of options to meet this goal. option a is to extend to the daly city bart station using motor coaches, neither the 14

limited or 14 local. both would provide service seven days a week with hybrid coaches which are cleaner and quieter. option b is to confront a neutral in overhead system along the route and extend service to the daly city bart from there. commissioner avalos: if i could cost you. we met in my office one year ago with daly city, the city administrator, bart was there -- i believe you were there as well. we put option b on the table because of infrastructure needs, it was something that daly city was not really interested in, and the cost was sort of prohibitive. we do not need to discuss option b.

>> ok. that was a long-term solution. commissioner avalos: it is great, but once you have the overhead wires there, is permanently there. >> so these are the options. again, we would look at a as a five-year solution before we consider permanent construction. a is also more practical at this point. in b, trolly coaches. we have scarce capital right now. there are other names for service, including the extension

of the 22 line into mission bay. commissioner campos: a question about your comparison. a lot of times when you increase service, you bring in added revenue. would that happen with option a, is that already taken into account? >> part of the ridership will be existing. instead of transferring, they could just continue. it will probably induce new ridership, but we believe most of them will be people who are currently writing -- riding. this is the preferred route. it continues on mission to its current terminus and then uses

john daly boulevard, to the bart station. these were two alternatives that we discussed previously that were less desirable, harder to be exacted by the community. it goes through some residential areas and its length in the travel time, so it adds to the operating cost, and it is more difficult to accommodate the 60-foot vehicles. these are the advantages of the preferred route. i discussed these previously. the daly city bart station access study that is currently ongoing will be useful. it will provide that piece of information that is required to

finish the costing of this project. that is at the station itself. right now, the station is pretty confined. the plan is to accommodate the 20, 8, 14, and perhaps a few other lines. the area needs to be big enough to accommodate the loading and unloading activities, as well as layover activities. that is one thing that we do not have costing information on this time. the next step -- again, we do not need to fund this extension at the moment.

but we need to identify sufficient bus layover and passenger boarding spaces, how we can obtain the funding to operate, develop the longer term trolly extensions as a longer-term strategy. working with daly city to see if they can accommodate the potential overhead wires in their jurisdiction. commissioner campos: thank you. i know last year we have talked about something, that service cuts were looming. there was discussion that this could be possible in 2013. i understand the needs of the capacity at the daly city bart station. i am a little bit disconcerted about the time line you are proposing here, but i want to be

helpful as we move forward, where i can assist -- relationships with dailies city, bart, any way that my office can be assistance, i am available. my question was, there are a lot of people in my district and sean elsbernd's district who want to the daly city bart. we walk -- walk to the daly city bart. questions about whether or not we can even use our clipper card. there were discussions about how we can share that usage with san francisco at the daly city bart. >> i do not have that answer. that is something that i can come back to you on. we look forward to your guidance, going forward. comio