>> approval of minutes from the last meeting. all in favor? so moved. >> communication, i know of none. item six, the business of board members. director brinkman: i went to the pedestrian safety task force meeting last week that was great. and people doing a lot of interesting work, delving into pedestrian safety. i get the sense that in order to help them with this work and increase safety, reduce costs for the mta and other city agencies, we need automated speed enforcement.

either california is of legislatively silent or we have no direction. it is such an important issue. until we can get reckless speeding and driving under control, we will not be able to meet the pedestrian safety goal. we have such a great example of that. the gentleman at a four-way stop, a car can come to an incomplete stock and get going fast enough to kill an individual. we have come a long ways, so we need to look into that. >> we will ask them to come back at some point soon. director ramos: i was going to say something about the free pass for muni. but we can talk about it during the executive director's report.

>> item 7, director's report. chairman nolan: good afternoon, director. >> good afternoon, members of the board. the last meeting, i started off in a way that was fitting, recognizing some of the great work that people do. someone made a public comment as part of that report about the fact that we never recognized taxi drivers. but they are as integral as part of the transportation system. i thought that was a good comment. it so happens that we have an opportunity to recognize some great work by a taxi driver. i will not recognize them by name.

i will welcome him and the director of taxi services. this taxi driver has served as a major in the soviet military years ago before changing careers into becoming a taxi driver. he has been with luxor for i think 15 years. no accidents, no complaints. but that is not what we are recognizing today. he received a heroism award for the national association of transportation regulators. he was awarded hot this at a conference in toronto a few weeks back. if he was given the chief's award for the same purpose. while he was on duty, he saw a woman being assaulted. she was being robbed. not only helped the woman that was a victim and brought her

into his vehicle to safety, but he followed -- he let her use his cell phone to call the police. he followed the suspect, notifying his dispatch of the situation so they could get police there. which resulted in the apprehension of the suspect. he not only stopped to help someone in need and assisted her, but he jeopardized his own safety to try to bring justice to this person. i would like to ask everyone to give a round of applause. [applause] >> i was very proud to accept this award in toronto on his

behalf. although i think that the events that led to this award are truly wonderful, i also want to recognize that this is just a very good taxi driver, one of the people that goes unrecognized on his daily routine. but the fact that he has had no accidents or complaints is a very good record and i would like to a knowledge him for that as well. if you would like to say a few words, you are welcome to. [applause] >> congratulations and thank you. >> after 20 years in the national army, i know what is heroism. now i am in the united states.

i am very happy. i have always tried to do something vest for the people of the united states. thank you very much, everybody. i appreciate it. thank you to my family. chairman nolan: congratulations. [applause] >> hi will just had that as it can be for our employees driving in san francisco can be dangerous, there had been a spate of robberies, very cowardly acts of an individual's that has been robbing taxi drivers. you can imagine the driver would be terrified and knowing that

someone like that is out there. the good news is that the san francisco police department has made an arrest. we don't have any more information about it. it is ongoing, but we are hopeful that they have captured the person responsible. i wanted to make you aware to the extent that they have the right person, kudos for getting the person of the street. >> this is an award for a taxi driver. i hope this to be the beginning of that kind of recognition on a regular basis. there are many people out there that do a great job on a daily basis. >> i think that was a sentiment that you or someone else made at the last meeting and we will figure out. we have this serendipitous opportunity, we'll figure out a

way to do so on an ongoing basis. i am sure there are many cabdriver's worthy of this kind of recognition. a few miscellaneous updates. the directorate made reference to the fact of free muni for youth movement that is happening in the city. i understood there was to be a rally on the steps of city hall today. [applause] sounds like there might be one or two people here that like this idea. [laughter] all i would really like to say, it is obviously something that is out in the public realm that very much impact ths the mta.

i wanted to bring you some ideas that i and my staff were working closely with supervisor campos, working with leaders of the community towards this goal. we have been working with a budget analyst that yesterday developed a report evaluating this proposal. the mayor's office, the school district, they have all been engaged at various levels. the original report estimates of $7 million of annual impact to the contribution, and that assumes no service edition. that is just the cost of lost fare revenues and other ancillary costs. it doesn't presume that we would need to add service. it is a questionable

assumption, but a $7 million annual impact. the mta has $1.4 million available in the current budget. this was originally programmed for youth fare reductions. we paused the program, so those funds could be available, potentially, how towards that $7 million or so that would enable the free fast pass to happen. all i have been able to say absent direction from the board is that we have been open to the discussion and willing to work with the mayor's office and anyone else that wants to advance the cause. we have been feeding information that the board and others will ultimately have to make. i believe there is some interest in having the board take of this item.

maybe i can yield some time to director ramos. director ramos: thank you, chairman nolan, director, and everyone here that was ready to, to the microphone and make this a much longer meeting. i would like to make sure that they really did want to get across, to have this as a discussion item to talk about where we go from here and really start the discussion on how to get $7 million and how to make muni available or free to youth, anybody under 80 ideally. but at least for people that are in school. there is also talk about 24-7 as opposed to just during school hours. we're not sure what the

limitations would be, what kind of direction we would have to go to make that happen. we're hoping that we can calendar the conversation for the october 18 meeting. there has been a call made for that item to come on the agenda right around 4:00 p.m. so that parents and their use can be there for that discussion, to understand a little bit more. [applause] about what the challenges are. we want to make sure everybody is up to speed for what the challenges and difficulties will be. we call a free youth pass, but we all know that nothing is free. it will take some work. just in the interest of time, the semester is already under way and it won't be long before the school year is gone, we should get moving on this.

director oka: there are several members of the board, supervisors, that are very interested in what happens to the individual that turns 18 and the next day has to shell out $62, that has to be left out, too. -- looked at, too. [applause] >> is that a reasonable time frame to come back? >> lee can come back and we would be prepared to frame the issue, identify the variants.

some youth versus all youth, the 18-year-old that is still in school. the only thing i can't commit because it is out of my control as if we would have a full financing plan for it. we know of $1.4 million the year of the board could decide to direct towards this. this would need to be an ongoing source of revenue, which expect to get information back in the next week or so. we will be ready to present as much as we have in the october meeting. >> supervisor campos talked about funding with the transportation authority as well. the more information, the better for the decision we can make. how does that work for members of we do it at 4:00 on the eighteenth?

i don't know what the agenda is for that day, but possibly in the event that we finish considerably earlier than that, maybe one of the items from the retreat or something so that we don't leave and come back. >> i bet i can find plenty for you to talk about. chairman nolan: on the 18th, we will come back here for a full discussion. will not start until 4:00. [applause] >> continuing on, a brief update on the central subway. we are ready to issue a notice to proceed. the tunnel began in fall of next year and will be 14 months. that is a good milestone to issue the first notice to proceed.

union square utilities relocation is nearly complete. we will wrap up before the moratorium and finished up after the new year. yesterday, we submitted our application for forward funding grant agreements. i mentioned last time, we went to a great effort by the whole team, the city staff, and the various consultants to get to that point. a very significant milestone for the project. we are convening a stakeholder meeting for tomorrow afternoon to update some of the folks that have been working on this project, updating them on where we are, that we have reached this milestone. things are generally moving forward well. i will mention, because it has

gotten a lot of public play, the charter requires a portion of funds for capital projects be set aside for public art. goes to the commission that manages the competitive process to determine what the public art should be, associated with different public works projects. one of the artists selected for the pieces of the subway, some news came out that he had some disturbing accesspects of his p. this is a process managed by all the different departments and all of their projects. we are watching that closely. how understanding is that the mayor has asked the arts commission to put the contract on hold. while they evaluate whether this revelation is relevant or not.

i just wanted to and let you know that the contract has been put on hold and does not impact our time line. we will continue to move forward. many of you were out there on sunday, even dancing in the streets literally. we have the ninth event of the year just the past sunday, chinatown and north beach, very well attended the events. it was dovetailed with a ping- pong tournament commemorating the ping-pong diplomacy of 40 years ago, the chinese consul general was there. it was a great the event, a lot of great work by the men and women of the department. a lot of folks worked really hard to make that event successful.

the next item, there is something happening as we speak called think-bike san francisco. it is a workshop hosted by the dutch consulate. the purpose of its is, they have brought people from the netherlands that are experts on various aspects of cycling. the dutch are doing the best of anyone in the world, 27% of trips in the netherlands are done by a bike. in the united states, we are about 1% in the san francisco about 6%. certainly consistent with the transit first policy, the idea to bring transit -- to bring experts here. they're focusing on three areas. he will be reporting tonight at a reception across the street at

the war memorial that i think is the green room at 6:00. the recommendations they have developed with our staff, the bike coalition has been involved. we are lucky to have the dutch government providing this expertise for us, working collaborative lee with us. it is a great partnership and we are excited to see what comes out of it. a couple other briefings, mobile traffic on the web site that means access in the mobile device has become a significant part of how people are connecting with us. it is in desperate need of improvement. we have data on what devices they use, it is different on

weekdays and on weekends. on holiday weekends. the most popular things they are looking at our schedules and routes and guides. more signals in terms of what information people are trying to get. if labor day weekend holiday parking enforcement accounted for 20% of the smart phone traffic. the marketing staff is preparing a test pilot of a new application for smart phones that would be able to provide general route information and it would be able to provide alerts so you would be able to sign a a and know when something is happening. before i walked out of tom, i might want to choose a different route. that kind of service, improving

communication with the public would be a greater benefit. a brief update, the draft environmental impact statement will be released on monday, october 17. this will be a very large collaboration between the transportation authority and the mta. the bus rapid transit line that would go from the commission to lombard, it'll be a dedicated public right of way, it will have many customer amenities and improvements. it will be signal priority, other pedestrian enhancements. maybe most notably, the transportation analysis shows that it would improve transit

travel speed by 32% and improve liability by 50%. i would say this is really the next biggest significant investment in our transit system that is on the horizon. i believe is proposed for funding under the small starts program of the u.s. department of transportation. understanding is that it is the top rated project in the country. it would cost somewhere from $90 million to $130 million. the tentative schedule to start work would be the summer of 2016. it is available from mid october to early december. we will be bringing a full presentation and we can use up some of that time before 4:00 next time. the next one, you probably all

have heard, but for benefit of the public, both houses of congress finally passed a fifth month extension, so we're good for six months, through the end of march. this is a transportation bill that was supposed to have ended a few years ago and congress has been extending it a number of times. this one came down pretty close to where the funding would have stopped. this gives authorization for some of the federal gas tax to go into the highway trust fund. it kind of kicked the can down the road six months in terms of for reauthorization. there are proposals on the table for those that will go to that meeting, you'll probably hear a lot more about that. the funds have been authorized

and it goes to the appropriations side. we will be in a continuing resolution noted, so things will generally stay flat. there is a threat of a 30% reduction in public transportation funding has come out of the appropriations subcommittee. that is something that could be devastating to the mta and the ability to keep muni running. we have been working with bart and transit, there is a campaign, they have been in cities around the country today to try to make sure that the voice of transit is heard in washington. a 30% cut in this funding would

be devastating for public transit across the country. we will be watching that very closely and advocating in any way we can. we have had a few recent service issues. director heinicke has urged us to report to the public when this happens. i have to ask my staff with getting something like that in place by the end of the month. there were a few days recently where people could not get where they were going in the way they wanted to. last wednesday, and evening rush hour, we lost west portal that directs trains out to the l, forward to the k and m. the bottleneck in the subway created a considerable delay. the ripple effect of that made

for a difficult rush-hour last wednesday. we had issues with the california cable car, the comptroller that regulates the speed was presenting some issues. none that we felt posed a real safety hazard, but as a precaution, we took the cable car line down over the weekend. we were able to get it back up and running, having made the adjustment to make sure that the ride was smooth. it basically put folks on buses instead of cable cars over the weekend. and yesterday, there were delays in the morning and the afternoon rush hours. no specific trend, just a variety of issues. but again, the bottle back doesn't take much to trigger problems throughout the system. all of these things are generally in areas where we

have plans for improvement, particularly in terms of the cars and we will continue to make those improvements and to minimize delays. on a good note, we did have a very big crowd for the game that was played at the baseball park on saturday. much more people than your typical giants game. the university gave their students the of tickets in transit. virtually all of them came in on bart. we had a very heavy traffic, but we had an of trains, staff, ambassadors, cited, and from what i understand, it went very well. a bright spot on our weekend,

great work via a lot of different services and by a lot of different parts of the family. finally, the heart of what happened this past week, a fund- raiser for the american heart association. we had a goal of 100 employees and $5,000 raise. he had 139 employees. folks were doing a good thing on their lunch hour, something that was healthy for them and good for the community. kudos for the family that participated into a time out of their day to do something good for somebody else. that concludes my report. chairman nolan: comments or questions? >> there are some members of the public that wanted to speak about the use pass. >> i was