element of our street lights system. we recently had our commission adopt guidance that we are responsible for maintaining lights in the right of way, and we are working to incorporate guidance for developers on pedestrian lighting as well as street lighting. the support of pedestrian writing has become an element of the better streets plan, and it is very much in sync with the better streets plan. supervisor wiener: excuse me. currently, when all light has to be replaced, what is that --

let's say it's one of the tall streetlights. do you replace that with pedestrian-grade lighting? or with the inadequate former like? >> it would be the latter. at this point, what we are doing -- in that scenario, one light on a block is impacted. so we replace it in time. when we perform work on an entire block, that is when we are integrating pedestrian lighting into that system. in some cases, we don't have to do much to the street light circuits to allow for that individual lighting load on the circuit. in some circumstances, we have to improve not just the pedestrian lights, but also improve the capacity of these circuits. at that scenario causes us to

that improvement. >supervisor wiener: i guess i can understand if you have a block with a number of lights on it and you do not want to have one that is completely different. if you are already out there doing what is probably expensive work, it might be worth considering that. i am not an expert. i do not pretend to have an expert understanding of the deep infrastructure implications of replacing an entire block. but it seems to me, if it is feasible, we should be taking every opportunity to convert the lighting to pedestrian-played -- pedestrian-grade lighting. >> i hear you. i will bring that sentiment back to the table and see if we can incorporate that into our improvement guidelines. supervisor wiener: thank you. >> utility services, the group

that is responsible for providing the lighting, we use our capital dollars for the funding of streetwise. in some cases, at the street lighting capital fund is used to provide lighting for streets that are poorly lit. we have provided lights on lafayette street, for example. these are examples of projects that address residents' concerns. the cost is quite variable. there is an amount of trenching and conduit's and the street lights. the largest cost is typically trenching and repaving, which is why the city tries to coordinate our streetlight projects with

other capital improvement projects, like the van ness transit improvements that i spoke of earlier. the ad man code is really what we look to -- admen code -- admin code is really what we look to as far as the street improvements. in our capital budget for improvements is $8 million, $9 million. that gives you a sense of what that is. so what is important? how do we figure out what we are going to fund and what we are not going to fund? this describes the priorities. for us, party won -- priority one, in a street light environment, it is a contributor to crime.

the high crime rate areas were poor lighting has been identified by the police department as a contributing factor. sharp turn curvatures, a deep grade, these are also considerations. there's also the cost and maintenance of the street light systems that are really high due to age and condition. was also a factor. -- that is also a factor. evaluating the 311 process -- we're performing field visits, performing footer metric analysis -- photometric analysis, looking at the cost elements, and looking at the 311 request against the second

set of priorities to determine what is the limited amount of capital funding we have for improvements. that is a quick rundown on our approach. let me talk a little bit more about the roles and responsibilities between the puc and pg&e. pg&e owns about 43% of the street lights in san francisco. puc pays for the operations and maintenance of the lights on a pg&e by -- owned by pg&e as well as by the city. many are decorative, such as the historic lights in the neighborhood. there is not our really transparent way for someone walking down the streets to know whether the light they see

that is out is a puc light or a pg&e like. that is where our interaction with 311 allows us to see whether it is a puc-owned light. and mention the california public utilities commission controls the rates. these rates are low -- allow pg&e to recover their maintenance expenses and their costs for capital investment. so, we pay them over the life of the asset for the operational maintenance fees. that includes enough for them to set aside to perform the improvements we talked about

earlier on their series of loops. -- series loops. and that comes to about -- for the distribution of the power we provide for those lights -- i mentioned that it is our power, but pg&e is delivering it to the lights. we pay pg&e in distribution charges to use their power distribution system. here's a quick snapshot then of the annual payments pg&e, where we have the maintenance fees, the distribution fees, totaling almost $1 million a year. and then, finally, i just want to talk a little bit about where we see improvement recommendations here.

we have been asked over the years whether it makes sense for us to become owners of pg&e so we will have more control. i think what makes a difference for residents is the level of service. is not -- it is not really an ownership issue. is the light on when they are walking their dog or back from the symphony? i mentioned earlier, we have electronically-owned asset management of our street lights. we are able to look up whether it is our light or a pg&e light. we do not have access to the assets that pg&e has, so it is a "if it is not ours, and must be

therirs" scenario. if pg&e says it is not theirs, then that is probably a light that has not been accepted by the city. there is not a lot out there. it would be better to be able to definitively say looking at the map, this is pg&e, as the"post tohmm, i don't see it -- as opposed to "hmm, i don't see it on the map. it must be pg&e." it could be a great learning process for both departments to figure out how to improve. we would like to keep that effort going. and it is an option for the city

to consider establishing lighting assessment districts. we have a lot of capital maintenance out there in the street lights and limited funds. one of the ways to address president concerns would be to allow them -- resident concerns would be allowed them to establish alighting assessment district with a fund that will just be spent on lighting improvements in their neighborhood. those are our four recommendations. i am happy to take any additional questions. supervisor wiener: thank you. just a couple of questions. maintenance on the puc-owned lights -- to the cost estimate? >> i don't. i can get back to you with that. it would be sizable. supervisor wiener: what if we were to go in and convert the

entire system in san francisco to pedestrian-lighting for puc lighting and pg&e? it would be a larger number. is there any idea what that would be? >> i agree with you, it would be a large number. hundreds of millions is what i would guess. supervisor wiener: thank you. the adequacy of the lights that are cast from the lights. there are different kinds of light. the yellow lights and the white lights. >> yes. puc observes the lighting standards established by national street lighting standards. when we do our photometric analysis, our target for the amount of light hitting the

street is an industry standard. i would agree with you there is quite a bit of variation in the quality of the light. some is whiter. some is yellower. as we go through our elie the conversion project, we will be converting -- our led conversion project, we will be converting the cobra head-style to be dark sky contras, if you will. it is compliance with concerns. we will see more uniformity in the quality of light with the neighborhoods that have that overhead style over the next two, two and a half years as we complete that conversion of 18,500 lamps.

is the national standard that we observed for the amount of light that should be hitting the streets. pedestrian lighting that comes from streetlights on most of our streets today is a secondary benefit. the street light system when it was designed was not designed for pedestrian lighting. it is the street lighting onto the sidewalk. that is a secondary benefit. that is part of what we're trying to improve upon. supervisor wiener: thank you, ms. hale. colleagues, any questions? supervisor elsbernd: one question -- do we have any active street lights? >> we may have in the past. supervisor elsbernd: i think i

may have a neighborhood in my district that is intrigued at the idea. who should i sit down and talk to about that? >> we would be happy to sit down and discuss. supervisor elsbernd: truthfully, i think the motivation is they would like to have some decorative, historic lights, and that is something that could be funded through this? >> yes. supervisor elsbernd: great. supervisor wiener: thank you. colleagues, any further questions? supervisor chu: one final one. is the puc coming forward with standards that you're going to be using it moving forward? >> yes, we are. we're putting together a catalog. thank you for prompting me to talk about something i forgot about. we have had public outreach for

the last year or so to develop a catalog to sort of corral the options out there so we could have a more reasonably maintain a bowl inventory and look on the streets. we will be coming to the commission with recommendations on the catalog. thank you. supervisor wiener: thank you. next, i would like to invite up the representative from 311 to talk about the process from the 311 perspective. first of all, i want to compliment you on having dramatically simplified our city services. i remember when my predecessor supervisor dufty had 15 different numbers to call for different things.

it has been a real success from my perspective. >> thank you. i am nancy o'hara, director of the 311 center. i will talk a little bit about the process of the caller reporting of streetlight problems, and talk a little bit about the background of were we were to where we are today. there has been vast improvement since then. as ms. hale has described, it is difficult for the public to know whether a streetlight is a pg&e or a puc lights. we would ask when we started, and if they knew, we would provide them with pg&e's number for them to call. and if it was the puc like or if they did not know, then we would automatically send it to puc

through our software system. to our customer relationship management system. there were a lot of problems with that, because a lot of times, pg&e lights were being sent to puc and there would be delays with puc getting it to pg&e, or vice versa. our focus is on customer service. we wanted to make sure we helped the customer when they called us. if it was pg&e, we would take the call and have our staff pg&e into's on my system -- into pg&e's online system. however, it was difficult to know whether that request was serviced by pg&e. it would be a duplicate from our part, because we would have to

enter it into the system and free internet for pg&e -- and re-enter it for pg&e. so, it was very cumbersome. it would take longer, especially if it had been routed incorrectly to pg&e were puc. we decided to work with pg&e said they could access our customer relationship management system, so we could then customize an intake form working with pg&e and puc, so we could then route streetlight requests directly to a puc queue or a pg&e queue. there are still issues with that.

though we do have a gis layer for puc, if we do not see it on the puc said, we assume a it isa pg&e request. what is nice about thecrm system, -- about the crm system, puc can route it pg&e. we do based our determinations a lot of times on whether it is a certain street light pole. some wooden poles are at treasure island, which is really puc.

some of the improvements we see that could take place are just a better identification of the polls. you could have it have a reflective color sign on the pole itself or a person could easily identify whether it is a pg&e or p you seeole -- or puc pole. having that number very easily visible for the public to see would be helpful for them to identify the right poles. overall, because we do have good reporting, we see the improvements on both sides in terms of the response. we do meet with them regularly on any open cases.

we have seen huge improvements in the number days they are taking to repair street lights, as well. although there is no standard for service at this level with the agreement that they have puc. but we have seen improvements in that area and we are able to provide them that report on that information. if there are any questions that you have, i am happy to answer. supervisor wiener: just in terms of the number of the discrepancy of the number days between pg&e and puc, is that something that everyone experiences? >> in terms of -- supervisor wiener: puc takes a shorter number days on average to fix it reported broken street lights been pg&e -- than pg&e?

>> we have seen that, but we have seen vast improvements. they have shortened the number of days quite significantly in our reports, especially in the last quarter. we do talk about it a lot. a lot of times, i think people 311 call -- i think people call 311 and they think that 311 is not being effective. supervisor wiener: i think pg&e deserves a lot of credit because they do not have to connect to 311. the communication is good. so, you know when a ticket can be closed out because it has been prepared -- >> that is why it was important for us to eliminate entering into their online system, because it was not allowing us

to see from beginning to end. i would like to credit them for being cooperative to work with the customer relations system that we have. they close it out through our electronic system. if it is not theirs, they transfer it to puc. we then know it was puc-owned. that has been very helpful. supervisor wiener: is there anything that would improve the process in terms of getting these lights -- >> for us, it is more on the gis side. especially where there are both puc and pg&e areas. that would make it easier for us to identify. there might be some delay time

if we do send it out and appropriately. there might be some days gained by routing it to the appropriate agency to begin with. i know pg&e has said if we could get a them beingpole #-- if we could get them the pole number, that would be helpful to them. supervisor wiener: thank you very much. colleagues, any questions? thank you very much. i also want to talk about planning and the better streets plan. >> good morning, supervisors. i am from the planning department, project manager for the city's better street plant, which would apply the efforts of

the planning department, the puc, and others and create a comprehensive guide for how we can design for our pedestrian environment. this plan was initiated, actually, by the city in 2006. and it was adopted by the city in 2010. now we are working with our partner agencies. what it really is is a holistic guide to how we design our streets. how the different elements of the streets are managed and administered throughout the city, and what we really try to provide would be better streets plan about how the different elements should interact. a particular element in the

streetscape would be cognizant of the other elements, and they work together to a greater whole. the plan includes detailed guidelines including street lighting. we have worked very closely with the puc to develop the street like guidelines. street lights are of fundamental organizing element in the streetscape, both creating identity, as you mentioned, for the daytime and the nighttime visual environment, as well as serving the more utilitarianism functions of providing safety and security. we have kept the street lights guidelines at a very high level , touching on concerns such as light level, claire, like color -- glare, light color, with the

understanding the puc was going to be developing a catalog of street lights for the city, and these guidelines and performance criteria could help inform that catalog. i think ms. hale mentioned that, and we have been working in partnership with them to develop a set of guidelines for street lights to provide a streetscape environment that will fit the other st. elements out there. we continue to work with the puc on at informing and developing the street like catalog and implementing the overall recommendations. thank you. i am happy to answer any questions. >> how optimistic are you that we will move in the direction of pedestrian-grade lighting? obviously, it is a huge project

and very expensive. working with pg&e, working with the puc, what do you see for that path forward? >> what i would say is, we have been working with them, and the first step is on development of the street like catalog, ensuring that it includes pedestrian lighting types so they do not have to go outside of the catalog in order to approve of a street light in the city. i think, as ms. hale mentioned, there needs to be funding for that. supervisor wiener: there are situations like i mentioned before -- if a light pole is down