>> good afternoon. i'm the operations planning manager and i'm excited to have the opportunity to share some recent milestone on the trends of effectiveness project and talk about at coming ou for thee reduction proposal. the presentation i'm going to give focuses on the purpose of our upcoming outreach process. the transit preferential street's cool to it -- tool kit will help to improve travel time and we will walk you through some of our next steps

in this process. the planning phase was completed in the fall of 2008. during that time, we had extensive dialogue and now reaching around the route proposal. we looked at where we needed more service because of crowding or different travel patterns that emerge in the city and where we had underutilize routes that we could redesign our shift resources to better allocate fixed amount of resources. we talked about the need to improve travel time and reliability on our heaviest routes. but we did not go into a lot of detail about what was going to look like intersection by intersection. we have focused on that design

work in the last six to 12 months. over the next three months, we are going to talk to residents, merchants, and individuals about those proposals to find out where we got it right and where we want to make modifications. other milestones -- the services were implemented in 2009 in response to the budget shortfall. we were fortunate that we were doing a lot of examination that we could make changes to the overall system. we had an opportunity to direct the program to be in line with the affect of this project. we reached the mail milestone us with a critical requirement for further implementation and

issued a notice of preparation this fall that included proposals we will be talking to the community about this spring and we will refine the proposals based on that and put and continue a community dialogue when we a anticipate the e i are being certified. the board would have the opportunity to approve or modify the proposals which will allow us to implement as early as the fall of 2013. the purpose of our outreach coming up is to present detailed proposals for travel time reduction and reliability and customer amenities and to ring gauge takeovers of a dialogue to find out where we have gotten things right and where we want

to make modifications. we want to help shape the proposals but we want to facilitate an inclusive process adds we're always looking for innovative ways to reach out to stakeholders' that benefit from these proposals but don't typically come to a workshop for board meeting. having dialogue with customers through their community groups or talking to merchants directly is going to be a key piece of this work. beginning march 31, we're going to is 10 treated the workshops. we will be reaching out to numerous neighborhood residents and merchants associations. we will provide updates to the advisory group and we for working very closely with the

muni accessible advisory committee. they form a subcommittee that's me almost weekly to goes every proposal and to do site visits so they can get their feedback on where they think the proposals would benefit and where they would recommend changes. we're working with transportation advocacy groups, which we think is an effective way to get the word out. doing a lot of internal presentations both to coordinate with other efforts and get input from our operators and inspectors out managing the service. they see issues and problems every day. i am pleased our new union leadership will be coasting this

as part of their regularly scheduled meeting and we will talk about those proposals together. the muni rapid program is a combination of a set of improvements -- the programs are in the works of their things we can deliver a believe in the next six months or 18 months and it would be applied to the entire network. there is a set of specific proposals i was evaluating. the first set of improvements are operational improvements. these are met some bolts changes, there are enforcement and supervision that improves the reliability of the travel time on our system. hist this includes boarding,

which i am really excited about and i appreciate all the strong leadership from this board. that is going to have a tremendous benefit of our system and using the line management center to better manage gaps in service and reduce crowding on our vehicles. we also have a series of capital improvements that are going to significantly improve the quality of the customer experience, including the procurement of new vehicles which we're very excited about. they will deliver the quality of service our customers expect. it includes things like the

radio project which will improve our ability to do dynamic supervision and create with our operators and service. network enhancement is the second piece of ongoing work. pauthere are a lot of places tht would already be so considered rapid transit. we have limited stops, downtown, dedicated lanes, but we have very little to indicate to our customers they are on a premium service. investing in the infrastructure we already have, better stops, the expansion of our next bus program, we think those are important prisms to capitalize on the priorities we've already made and then combine that with

transit signal party which we are excited to be rolling out. the entire rapid network, funding was built in to the street which was very exciting and would allow us to reduce the amount of time buses spend waiting at signals at our rapid network. this includes funding for gps wireless space priority at 600 intersections. we only have about 1200 intersections city-wide, so it's a substantial investment. the transit effectiveness project would partner with those other programs to create engineering improvements as well as the service changes we discussed to improve service.

the travel time proposals are focused on the rapid network and we did that s for seven reasons. we have the heaviest writer ship, there is the most benefit to the most customers. when we are looking at trade- offs between stop spacing wore a dedicated right of way that makes sense to focus on our busiest routes where we benefit the most people. it is based on a tool kit of traffic engineering and i'm going to walk you through some of the highlights. how they get applied to each street depends on the structure of the street. the kind of treatments we can do on san bruno are different than what we would consider in downtown mission where we have

twlanes in each direction. when implemented, the ongoing improvements we talked about has the party -- has the potential to reduce travel time by as much as 30%. sphere that could be about 15 minutes in each direction. this map here shows the muni rapid network. the routes in red are the routes we plan on focusing on in the near term and these will be the focus of our community dialogue that includes from the beach to martin street. the entire length of mission street, the southern portion of

the 8 x and san bruno would benefit the nine. the stockton corridor into market street. the second phase of routes are shown in blue. they represent important routes on the network and we chose not to star with them. in some cases because they had fewer benefits her cost, but we wanted to coordinate with other city-wide efforts. it is planned for major sewer

work and the 2018 timeframe so we thought it stall -- it was ok to coordinate with the larger projects. the trends of preferential street's tool kit is applied to each of these corridors, but all roll up to about five categories of engineering changes. hist first is lame modifications. aha this includes widening cognition, fulton and stockton where a 10.5 foot bus is traveling in a tight fit travel

lane. it is slow and creates a lot of friction and requires the best to operate in two lanes of traffic. we have corridors around j church for we have frequent stop signs along the rail corridor. we are recommending changing those two traffic signals or where it is not warranted, other improvements that would allow the cars and traffic's to proceed to the intersection at a slower speed. allot of the dialogue has been focused on places where we recommend eliminating stops. there are places where surgically recommending reducing with stop spacing. but there are also places where we recommend lengthening stops

said that of two buses come they do not create a delay. everybody can call to mind a place in the system where we stop at a stop sign and the bus stop across the street. that creates a delay. we need to move the bus through the light to do that design. the stop changes include several treatments as well as creating places for buses to not have to pull in and out of traffic. parking and turn restrictions is the fourth category. there are locations on mission street where we restrict turns to reduce the amount of left- burning cars.

we recommend expanding that to other locations to improve the throughput of the lanes we to have. the fifth category is pedestrian improvement. improving the quality of the pedestrian environment we believe is key and that can help with transit reliability. thus bulbs that shorten the crossing distance produce delay. 19th avenue, creative curve extensions this can also improve the amount of green time for the major corridor which can also help with transit travel time. with all of those ingredients, we are headed out to the community to find out where the proposal's work and were they

know. we are also continuing to move the the ir work forward and we anticipate having the initial study completed and the draft out this fall with the goal of finalizing in the summer of 2013 and getting it certified. the initial outreach will happen this spring. we will refine the proposals and continue to be active in the community to build consensus with the goal of bringing you the proposals for approval and the summer of 2013. the ongoing work will continue while the process is under way. i think a major milestone will be used boarding delivery this are. but the transit signal priority project is also under way and we

hope to have that up and running in about 24 months. the rapid network enhancements i spoke of -- we were already working through issues like this what kind of pavement cover would we use and what of other cities learned from their experiences? we have applied for grants to implement the enhancements on mission and judah and the southern portion of the 8 x and we think we will show a track record for delivering rapid network improvements while also carrying the engineering work for for the travel time proposals. thank you for your time, i'm happy to answer any questions. >> thank you. as a good presentation. questions or comments from the board members?

>> i want to make sure in your outreach that you are playing -- you are paying close attention to reach out to the communities are most transit dependent and making sure they understand what is at stake and what stands to be improved. if you are talking about adjusting transit stops, i would encourage you to reach out to senior citizens -- senior centers or where people of disability go to these types of folks for whom moving a transit stop might be a challenge. i am confident we can do it in a way that translates into a benefit and what some folks see

as a potential of deficiency in service and the future. if you could just make sure you cover this places all of these corridors, it would be a tremendous benefit to the overall product. >> thank you. the last time we went through this, i found the most effective way to do that as we talked by transit stop changes to do the notice and our reach where we that the people are to begin with. on the issue of transit stops, this is something the director and i hear a fair amount about. i think that's based on some unfounded fear and others based on concern. is there a general rule about

there'll be no transit stops so close to each other unless it is a steep hill or is this -- >> we have a general guideline we're using. the stop spacing standard is 800 feet to 1,000 feet on the bus. only about 70% -- 70% of our stops do not conform to that standard. i thought this would be terrific. bring everything up to standard and it will be straightforward. what we found is part of the reason so few are meeting the

standard is because the streets themselves don't lend themselves to the standards. the norris-south blocks in sunset and the richmond are 680 feet. you are either under or over the standards in all locations. we are evaluating a revised policy that would look at a larger range and allow us to tailor to neighborhoods better. we're looking at 900 feet to a quarter mile and making exceptions for major generators, senior centers, transfer points, other community issues and going down as close as 500 feet where we have steep grades. >> very good. i support the effort and as you do the outreach, i would not only -- i think the reality is

if someone in the community is coming back and saying i cannot walk the extra to under 50 feet to get to my bus stop, that is an issue we should dress through alternative means so we're not just saying i'm sorry, we're moving the bus stop, and those of the end of the options. my other question is even more off the wall but it just occurred to me as i look at the rapid transit network and to build the red lines, it will be much faster which sounds onto market street. there's a reason -- there are a

lot of destinations there. as you have several east, west and north-south lines that will be rapid corridors for the existing lines, are there any thoughts about channeling lines that do not currently run on those rapid streets on to those streets so they are running more quickly? the immediate action -- let's take for example the wild success with the index bus. it is not picking up passengers between the end of its express route and downtown. now we have this line close to where it's going. are their thoughts about channeling express lines to these rapid streets?

>> with the express routes, we are always looking for the quickest way to get from point a to point b. to the extent these improvements are better performing, we would certainly consider that. we also looked at some of the parallel routes and if there is an opportunity s to shift resources or consolidate -- in some cases we did recommend that. but where we had parallel routes that were very productive, we did not recommend that change. that is something that we could definitely evaluate. people vote with their feet. as strong as it is, people are choosing it and the more we provide people with quick

options, the more they will gravitate to this route. hist >> any comments? before we move to public comment, i would just say this is a good presentation. i am excited to see is progressing and the treads of lanes enhanced through color or something that helps drivers recognize what they are anything we can do to call the strands of planes to their attention is really good. i'm looking for two all-or boarding and another have been concerns about all door boarding causing mayhem with people trying to push in but when we moved to that it will settle down. people jump up there to make

sure it's an open and once they know it will stay open -- perhaps a recorded message -- a thick and brought this up before and it hit home when my parents were visiting. it would be nice to encourage seniors to use the front door and said of going into the back door. i told my mom and dad to sit by the driver because i don't want you falling off the steps. it might be nice to enforce that so seniors don't feel they are breaking the rules. >> that is where the priority seating is -- exactly. as we go with the public outrage, it is going to be important to remember that we just need to keep reminding the

community what they have to benefit because it's easy to focus on what you might be losing. we have to remind them they will benefit from overall trends service across the system. i think you can always find someone who is harmed by or feels they are harmed by at and we have to remember the changes are in accordance with the policy and strategy and a lot of work has gone into it and we appreciate very much. >> >> herbert weiner, a former member of muni and stakeholder. i look forward to meeting with you next month. basically, the transit effectiveness project is flawed. it was based on no addition. you had to make do with existing

resources. there were clearly more drivers and coaches needed. market economics were applied to public services in and neglect of human need. there were trade-offs, that is true. now, i would like to propose a freeze on this project until these assumptions are examined. until we can rectify the basic flaws. one thing that i would like to do is consult with the medical community. no doctors were consulted about along blocks that people have to walk on oxygen or with a walker. none whatsoever. there should be consultation with nurses and doctors to assess the impact. also, i would like to know who initially proposed this project to begin with? to me it represents the dead