>> this is the june 21 meeting of the m.t.a. good afternoon and welcome. call the roll, please. [roll call] item three, please be advised that the use of cell phones and other electronic devices are prohibited. any person responsible for one going off may be removed from the meeting. cell phones put on the vibrate do cause microphone interference.

item four, approval of the minutes. >> is there a second? >> second. >> all in favor say aye. >> aye. >> item five, communications. i know of none. >> i just wanted to give a congratulations and shoutout to the new express which has been running for a week and two days, one day. i just wanted to say i've been getting tons of rave reviews from my co-workers. one fellow came up to me and said it was the first time he'd been on a bus in the city in about four years. it looks like the numbers of riders are going do continue to grow. so well-done on that. and other co-workers asking, when are you going to start one for the l? so looks like we have hopefully a success on our hands. i just wanted to say congratulations. >> director ramos? >> i just wanted to follow up on the request that i made last

meeting, which was a request for a report with regards to all-door boarding. my own personal experience and the necessity to have clipper running efficiently to be able to implement all-door boarding. i'm hoping we can actually have a presentation or a public hearing about clipper itself. i as a writer don't know what the protocol is. i'm concerned that we're losing revenues. i don't know what the role of operators are with respect to clipper. i'd love to know what the passenger, what the fare revenue has been. there's a lot of confusion, i think, and i'd love to be able to follow up with what's going on with clipper and where we've come until now. if i could ask that.

>> we'll calendar that for future meetings so we'll give you a briefing on clipper and that will lead us into a discussion about boarding and are we ready for it. i'll get that date. >> all-door boarding has been scheduled for the august 2 meeting. >> great. thank you very much. >> item sevb, executive director's report. >> good afternoon directors and members of the public. as this is the first day of summer, i would like to wish each of you a safe and enjoyable season. i'm pleased to report that last month, the san francisco m.t.a. was recognized as a gold level recipient of the american heart association's friendly company recognition family program. it's a catalyst for positive change in american business. companies throughout the nation can be part of the start

initiative by demonstrating progressive leadership and making the health and wellness of their employees a priority. the m.t.a. was recognized as a gold level stark fit friendly company by the american heart association's start initiative for fulfilling the following parameters. offering employees physical activity support, providing an increasing healthy options at the work site, third, promoting a wellness culture. and four, implementing at least nine criteria as outlined by the american heart association in the areas of physical activity, nutrition, and fostering a healthy culture. so we are extremely honored to be recognized by the american heart association's start initiative as a start fit friendly company. as it relates to the m.t.a. just more specifically, what we have been proproviding our employees is on-site brown bag health lectures, yoga and zumba classes. we are exercise and wellness room located on van ness as well

as some of our outlying facilities. we've been supporting walking clubs at a number of our divisions. we have weekly staff visits to the divisions on healthy -- on our healthy strong bus with nutritional and exercise programs and guidance to all m.t.a. employee. we are fortunate today to have nicole lavara, business development director of the greater bay area division of the american heart association with us today. i hope i'm not butchering your name too much here. please step up to the podium. thank you. >> thank you so much. [inaudible] i want to thank them

for all they've done to implement change within the agency. i personally have seen some of the effects that have gone on such as folks being able to walk on the staircases and stretching rooms, on the great programs that have been implemented, like zumba and really focused on heart health. i want to thank you and present this class to the sfmta. thank you. [applause] >> thank you so much for being here to present this lovely award. >> absolutely. >> thank you. the next item i need to brief you on is related to the board of supervisors who last year requested that management audits of each m.t.a. division be conducted. the first of these audits was related to our sustainable

streets division, and i'd like to ask the director of the sustainable streets division to give you a quick briefing on the audit. vaughn? >> good afternoon. good afternoon, mr. chair, members of the board. as mr. ford has mentioned, a management audit of each of the sfmta divisions was requested by the board of supervisors in 2010. mr. ford and his office and also the city services auditor from the controllers selected sustainable streets as the first of the divisions to be audited. to be followed each year by another division within the agency. the audit set out to assess five areas. one, how well the division maintains the city and county of san francisco's traffic markings, signals, and signs. compliance with major contracts

with basic city contracts. whether the division prevents scheduling conflicts. and whether the division's off street model is advantageous to the city. finally, the adequacy of the division's performance measures. the auditors' staff has been working very closely with my divisions. i want to thank them for their diligence and also their spirit of collaboration. and i think a lot of the results that come out of this audit would be very useful in helping us to do great measure of self-improvement. we are a relatively new division that was formed i think toward the latter part of 2009. so we brought together a group of divisions and put together the division. i think we're overall doing

pretty well. obviously there's a lot of room for improvement and we welcome the opportunity. i want to share with you roughly five findings. the last two are of more note that i want to highlight toward the end. the first one, the auditing found that we need to more closely monitor the contracts and we intend to do so. working more closely with the conpagency, making better use o their contracts data base. the second finding, our performance measures were found in some cases to be relatively unreliable and unrepresentative of the work we're doing. the background for these measures were the outcome of the quality review that is mandated by prop e, and it was suggested at that time since all the

measures were reflective of muni's performance that it would be great to include some measures of the other divisions so that we could have a broader view of the entire agency's performance. and we were, of course, very glad to be included in the review, and because of resource issues, we took as an expeed i can't the -- expedient the measures previously used by the s.f. staff program. so we transferred those over knowing that the data is easy to collect and also very easy to explain. already we have a process set up to do that. we do agree that some of them could be refined and we look for the opportunity to do so as we update our strategic plan in the coming year. that would be a great opportunity to update that.

also, the audit team noted our ability to coordinate a vast array of often complex inner agency multi-year projects, but they did find that we lack the one complete mechanism for managing all of them uniformly 68 this is a result of us coming from different places with legacy systems that we use to monitor and track our progress of our various projects. we do agree with this recommendation and we are working with the capital programs and construction division who is investigating the propriety of the overarching software system that the entire agency can utilize to manage its various programs and projects. it's going to be somewhat of a challenge, because as you know, the projects that we deal with come in a variety of sizes and shapes. not only capital type with construction.

grant-funded construction. planning projects. and also small scale traffic projects of that nature in the various neighborhoods. so it will be a challenge to see this overarching software package that can help us manage all of them uniformly. the next two items are more noteworthy significance. the audit team found that we are apparently are not complying with what we call our best practices and doing scheduleed proactive type of preventative maintenance. now, i want to assure you we do do preventative maint nance, but in different forms. i also want to assure you that we rely on traffic signals and marksings and also the signs were not in a state of disrepair. there's no iminnocent sign of collapse. so we are doing it in different forms based on the resources we have and the mechanisms and

tools available to us. the most significant item that was pointed out to us was the sign system, the sign inventory. there isn't currently a national standard for reflectivity, how well the signs will reflect in the evening when the headlight shines on them. but we understand that the federal government who prom el gaits the license, which mandates standards and types of usage signs are installed throughout the country, is thinking about establishing some standards for reflectivity in the near future. it's an unfunded mandate, they usually allow several years for us to comply and we would normally do that over time as we do maintenance.

one of the impediments is we do not have an up-to-date signed inventory system. the system that we have is carried over from public works and part of it used to be in public works. it's very good at tracking work orders and repairs, but it's not very adept at extracting information on inventory type of information, like how old is the sign, how many times it's been repaired. so we are aware of that. we have been investigating, working with the vendor to come up with a software package that will help us transform our existing data, migrate over to this new system, and then being able to use it to help us do exactly that purpose. once we have that online, we expect to have that in place by september, october of this year. then we can start tracking the signs by age, which is the primary way to make sure that we

keep up with the standards of reflectivity. once we do that, i think our next goal is to tackle the traffic markings. it's a similar type of situation. we have a manual software to keep track of that information, but not to the extent that we like. again, we are fortunate because we see from years ago that we have a synergy with public works. a lot of the pavements are in such poor conditions, the surface is so rough that the markings would not adhere to them. so in some ways, we're tied in with t.p.w.'s work program. so we take advantage when they repave the streets and we go in and remark the markings on fresh, new pavement. and that's last anywhere from eight to 12 years, although we decided several years ago to ask

that we turn over the striping every eight years. so on the average, we are doing that. of course it's not perfect because there's certain small areas that we might miss, but we rely on staff and also the public to give us input to fill in those little gaps. that would be the second area that we would tackle once we have the inventory system for the signs in place. we need some additional staffing to deal with the preventative maintenance issue more closely, because looking at our roster of positions out of the 38 that are not currently funded, 26 of them were originally planned for preventative maintenance type of work. so we're going to have to work during the budget process to see if we can restore some of them or reprioritize some of our other work to make that happen.

and then the last item of note is the off street parking /non-profit corporation model that we use currently. the auditing found that the current mode of administering the six garages through long-term leases to five non-profit corporations, they were originally set up to help us fund the bonding for the building of the garages. the auditing found out it was unnecessarily costing the city an estimated $550,000 annually due to inefficiencies and duplications of some of the draft duties. we have reviewed this portion of the department with the rec and park department who also have jurisdiction over union square and portsmouth square and they agree with the findings of the audit. in the coming months, we will be

addressing with them the i did concerns and to eliminate some redundancies in the operations model that currently is in place and help to standardize the row of the garage managers. we don't currently have a standard for specifying their job descriptions and the pay scales and so forth. that's in a nutshell the audit and i'll be glad to answer any questions you may have. >> thank you. members of the board, questions or comments? thank you very much. appreciate the comprehensive report. >> next item under ongoing activities that i need to cover with you is related to our central subway contracting. as part of our continued momentum on the central subway project, i'm pleased to report that the first contract will be finished this week. this contract was specifically the utility relocation contract for the subway tunnel portal which will be completed by friday. equally as significant, we have

achieved the following levels of small business and work force participation on this contract. the contract was 20%, and as of today, small and local businesses have received 84% of the total payments made under this contract. as it relates to work force hours, we had 128 workers who totaled 64,000 hours. we had minority participation at the 75% level with 96 workers putting in 52,000 hours or nearly 82% of the total. we had participation by nine women, which entailed approximately 3,000 hours. nearly 4%. and san francisco resident participation exceeded 23% with 30 workers accounting for nearly 10,000 hours. non-san francisco resident participation included 97 workers who worked approximately 55,000 hours. we were able to make sure we lifted all boats, small

businesses, minorities, women, and san francisco residents. first source hiring, the program where we bring in new employees, made five placements during this contract. we also scored another project first last friday with the relocation and reopening of a business. the san sun restaurant was impacted by the construction project. we were able to relocate this business and it's only a short distance from its original location, and the project relocation plan provided the owners of the restaurant to expand to a larger space and to upgraded services to include wi-fi internet service. so we helped them improve their business as well as relocated them as a result of the construction project. we were joined last week by mayor lee and -- excuse me, mayor lee was not there. acting mayor scott weiner was

there, and we were joined by board of supervisors president david chiu last friday morning to mark this milestone. the next item is related to the pride parade. the city will attract up to a million people to its 41st annual san francisco lgbt pride celebration, which will culminate in a festival saturday and sunday in the civic center and a parade up market street on sunday beginning 10:30 a.m. at biel street. our marketing teams have partnered with the event organizers to prevent riding muni throughout the week. this will entail expansive rerouting of our muni services as well as a great deal of support from our parking control officers to deal with congestion and traffic issues. next on my report is the return this summer, 2011. we are pleased to announce the reconstruction of the california cable caroline and the propulsion system projects are

both substantially completed. this project team is a team that has included transit, corporate communications. we also worked with the department of public works since last fall on these vital projects. and most notably, the california cable caroline returned to service this morning. media event to reintroduce the california line will be held next monday at 10:00 a.m. at the cable car turnaround on market and california streets. we will be joined by mayor lee, board of supervisors president david chiu, as well as public utility commission general manager ed harrington. they will all join us for this event. we are also by this announcement inviting you to join us on the 27th for the reopening. earlier, supervisor brinkman

mentioned the an exexpress is up and running. we launched on june 13 to relieve overcrowding on the light rail line. this has been in operation a little over a week and we are pleased to report the ridership is growing daily and feedback from our customers is positive and constructive. this service has been a model for what we are considering a proactive line management program and we have achieved record-setting on time performance with the service. also notable with this pilot that the vehicles have special paint schemes and new signage to make the route very simple and recognizable for customers. that seems to have contributed to the growth in rydership. the success has directly translated into reduced crowding and more comfortable conditions on our rail line, and it's helped us with those heavy stops such as carlin cove, and we used m.t.a. ambassadors to support

this launch. again, customary information being key here, to make sure it was a success. we have received positive feedback, and we will come back to you in about another month or two to give you an update on how we are progressing with this project. mr. chairman, members of the board and public, that completes my executive director's report. >> thank you, mr. ford. members of the board, questions or comments? >> mr. chairman, you do have members of the public that wish to address you. roland wong >> good afternoon. >> i'm having a technical difficulty.

there you go. >> you want to try now? >> ok. >> there you go. >> i'm here to speak -- >> could you state your name for the report? >> oh, roland wong. i represent municipal services. today i'm here to speak about the judah express. i heard that it was very successful. when i first heard the announcement of the pilot express line, i liked the concept whereby passengers can get to downtown very quickly. sfmta has done a good job of providing this service to judah street corridor to relieve the crowdedness on the trains.

passengers including seniors and people with disabilities riding between 9:00 a.m. and 4:00 would also like speedy service. sfmta can seriously consider expanding this model along m oceanview and j church where accessible sideway ramps are extremely limited for wheelchair users. we always heard the saying we're still researching it, it costs too much. too many decades have passed to find solutions for equal access to bus stops. it's time to find a vieable solution. i think this may be amongst the

-- thank you for listening and your support. >> thank you. next speaker? >> good afternoon, members of the board, executor ford. one of the non-profit parking corporations referred to in the audit. the board of directors has received a copy of the city services auditor audit. we appreciate the need to perform the audits on city programs. the board does not have -- excuse me, the board does have questions and concerns on a number of the issues and its findings. therefore, for the record, the japan center garage board would like to send our comments and response to the audit.

at the same time, they appreciate the authority and his staff. we look forward to working with him to address our concerns as well as recommendations to the audit. since the audits do affect public parking corporation, we hope you will accept input from non-profit parking corporations in discussing any action that the board being considered to take in response of the audit. thank you very much. >> next speaker. >> barry toronto. he is the last person to speak to you. >> good afternoon. >> i wanted to address the request to work closely to the unit inside the m.t.a., but also how about working with the