>> good morning and welcome to a specia meeting of the city operations committee. we will soon be joined by memberof thecommiee survisorolague, and to is chu's and my far left, we have supervisor wiener, the sponsor of this >>item #one -- hearing with the san francisco public utilities commission, general services agency, 311 customer service center, department of public works, planngepartmt, san frciomunicipal transportation agency, and pacific gas and electric company to: participate and provide an update on the sfpuc's street light plan; and review the city's poci and practices relating to the lighting of the publ right-of-way, including stre lightaintence, and reliability, the system of

responding to d addressing street light outages, ways to improve the maintenance system, and best practices for lighting per the better streets plan and other city licies. >> thank you, madam clerk. supervisor wiener, this is your item. ou supervisor wiener: thank i called for this hearing several months ago. i called for it when someini d neveen before ppened ringillcl introducti 5 of my colleagues spontaneously that does n ppenen. is an issue with significance for thereof san frcisco.

concern, buy it, and i know colleagus well, hearm ou constituentsut the probmsitour strtlhts, about the slowness and lack of resnsiveness in fixing broken therwise problaticreet lits. and i hear about dark streetsans malfunctioning or the street ligh are sothey are noidg good liging. safety that this uses in terms wknt our reet lights are not for the mt part pedestrian-grade, instead come

up focusing on cars. on rsosing is a safety and quality of life issue. additionally, are street lights hetill appealing.rl whou walk into a neighborhood with nice pedestrian-grade street ighting, you se differ immediately. it relydomprove he esthetic, the look, and the feel of a neighborhood. e ar excited. weavepini -- pg&e to discuss what the current siation is, what the process rin lights that are not operational, and what are e

sponfor non-operational lights? and also talk about the future f ghts in san francisco, how we can move to more pedesn- aesthetic look for are street lights, timprove neighborho safety? wehe wi us oday francisco public utilities hich processemany the from 311, complaints about street ghts well as from the planning better streets plan a othe colleagues, if there are no introductory remarks, then we utilities commission, followed by the representatives from311

-- from 311. >> good morning, barbara he. wat would like to do is take a little time to present on the issue of streetlight ownership the levels of servihat we provide, the capital and planning priorities, t serati f responsibilies between sfpuc and pg&e, and make recommendations for improvemt. there is room for improvement. we are very interested in hearing from supervisors and members of the public today how we can provide better street lighting here in this city. trig ownership here in san francisco -- i have a slide up.

it is quite divided, as you can see. we have a number of street light owners -- if you could adjust the focus? so the slide shows, please? varied between ourselves, pg&e, other city departments, the u.s. navy out at treasure island. presidio trust, muni. quite an assortment of ownership. to show how that breaks out for you within the city'smap, le me sw you a slide thathas the district's listed. i will try to oriented so it shows better. there is more of the orientation their. so, you can see the ownership here. the darker blue colors show

where puc ownership is strongest. we have a strong presence in the north sector. pg&e has a strong ownership in the southeast sector, in the richmond and the sunset. our ownership is limited to streetlights and pedestrian lights that are located along the street along hoya. this sometimes means blights that provide less for pedestrian bridges. the department of rec and park maintains their lights. we do not have accurate numbers of the quantity of lights owned by other city departments. if so, that describes an ownership issues. now what happens if a resident

notices a streetlight is out? what we are encouraging residents to do is contact 311. supervisor wiener pointed out, we will be hearing from 311 later today at3. 11311 relates that complaint. during non-business hours, we do not wait for the system. we have worked it out with 311 so that they know the right people to call to address emergency situations immediately. we have a digital data base of our streetlight system to determine ownership, and then indicate that to 311. if it is not our ownership, they refuse the question to &e.

typically lets us know. what we have done is document how long it takes for the puc to address the streetlight outage. the 311 system chards the duration of when the item is opened as a problem and when it is closed through the 311 system. last year, there were over 30,000 street like complaints through the 311 system. about 60 percent of those were related pg&e -- were related to pg&e outages. the average time to close its 25. 4 pg&e -- for pg&e, it is 23.

that is for all outages. if it is a simple street like outage, the data looks bter. you can see, i would li to point out how our efforts have improved. if you look at more recent years, we have gotten much better. we are getting better at meeting the levels of obligations we have imposed on oursels. we are looking at those streetlight issues within 40 hours of having received the request. we are getting closer to that target on a regularasis. supervisor chu: just for some clarification, on the previous slide, you showed the days to close pg&e in the system?

i is no just that the complaint has been routed to pg&e, correct? >> correct. the item is closed by the forming entity. once puc has completed the work, the puc staff go in and modify the 311 dabase. just because we have seen situations before where 311 calls the agency. >> thank you. looking at some of the challenges --san francisco street safe -- which you can see here, have a broad varietof we maintain through the uc at least 75 discreteligg systems. there are 12 different styles. none of the parts are

interchangeable on the systems. in addition to what you see here, there are 60 streetlight variations. many of the pictures are no longer fabricated, and therefore maintaining these lighting systems is very challenging. some of these fixtures are historic fixtures. they are unique to their location. this is for example on market street where we have of those lights. these are streetlight design variations that personalize san francisco within our historic district. so, puc funds means for all street lights in san francisco, regardless of who owns them. the we have a wide variety of ownership, but between pg&e,

other entities, the puc is responsible entity for maintenance. that maintenance cost is paid for by us. our annual payments to pg&e are about $1.6 million for operational maintenance of the reet lights pg&e owns. for the lights we own, it is about $2.2 million each year. that is in cost to the city. that brings the total of operational maintenance to - supervisor wiener: ms. hale, can you plain -- it is an interesting system. not exactly half and half, but in the ballpark.

yes, puc is responsible for the maintenance on all of the. can you explain why that is? >> it basically goes back to pg&e the way's recovery -- it goes back to the way pg&e's recovery cost is regulated. the public utilities commission has set street lighting rates that recognize -- we pay for the pow. most pg&e power, but in our situation, we are paying pg&e for power, but we're providing the electricity through our hetch hetchy system. we have a unique syem >supervisor wiener: in terms of

what pg&e spends on maintenance, is that cover 100% by what the pucreimburses >> i do not know the answer to that. perhaps pg&e does. supervisor wier: since the puc is paying for the maintenance of streetlight pgðat -- streetlights that pg&e owns, has the puc attempted to set we have ot attempted to set me and standards. it is our understanding that is the california public utility commission's responsibility. we have absolutely communicated communicates with the pg&e streeights staff on a routine basis for the need for maintenance in the system and

standaroperational maintenanc supervisor wiener: there is a discrepancy in terms of the number of repaired and broken lights. significant difference in terms of the time it takes puc to repair its lights and pg&e. i wonder if you ha had any effort to impose those meannes'' standards? >> we do. very three years, we have a rate case by the california public utilities commission. we are participants. there is a street lighting consortium of all california street like consumers, if you will. we make the argument -- could we do more? absolutely. through this process and the awareness you raised in setting

this hearing, supervisor, i think this has hire barry need for us to engage on that topic in that setting -- a highe priority need for us to engage on that topic in that setting. supervisor wiener: we're not beating the pg&e up on -- we're not beating up on pg&e. we all have a common desire to deal with this. i would like to hear their perspective it. rate payers are paying for that maintenance. that the maintenance is happening in the best possible way. if in fact the puc is able to fix it lights in a shorter number of days, then pg&e should be able to match that, if not exceeded. that is something, i think, that really needs to be looked into

if the city needs to be involved, by all means, we should be involved. >> thank you. o of the areas where the maintenance is most challenging here and in the city -- here in the city, here, these are the old style street light circuits. they are similar to old holiday lights. 11 light goes out in a string come up all the lights go out. -- when one light goes out in a string, all the lights go out. the string would be useless. this shows the pg&e series loops indicated throughout the area. you can see that throughout district 7. 7, 8, 9, 2, 3, 6. pg&e is shown in yellow, which i think is showing up all right on

the slide here. in conversation with pg&e, we understand they will be converting those that are in red this year to more standard, current technology. they are the primary source of the streetlight outages because the fixtures themselves are 50 years old to 90 years old. that single fault within the system can take out the entire circuit. there are expensive to replace, because they require the installation not only above ground, but the circuits themselves from the power source to the last like. some of these are lawyers without conduits' to protect them. in -- wires without conduits to

protect them. we have really come to the end of the useful lives of these systems and the need to be replaced. it is encouraging to see a pg&e that -- it is encouraging to see that pg&e does have plans to convert these. you see on the city map, we do have programs in the replacement of those series loops. there are 14 total series loops owned by the puc and 12 series loops with about 575 street lights that are scheduled for replacement over that 10-year that includes the series of loops that are part of the van ness service. there have been a lot of

concerns and resident complaints about the van ness system street lights in particular, and that will be converted. about 110of the street lights and the series loops -- in the series loop are owned bypg&e. over the next five years, reacent will cost about $25 million. so, i would like to talk a little bit about how we work with the street lights, how figure out priorities. i mentioned earlier, the available capital funding in our 10-year capit plan to replace are the funding source for a new street lights and pedestrian

like projects. a number of streetlight projects are initiated by development, by third party, and by context, that third party sense that streetlight improvementnd hands that new system of street lights over to the city for our ongoing care and operational maintenance. more and more an importanting element of our street lights system. we recently hadoucommission adopt guidance that we are responsible for maintaining lights in the right of way, and wea wng t inrporate guidance for developers on pedestrian lighting as well as street lighting. the support of pedestrian writing has become an element of

the better stres 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 ishat -- let's say it's one of the tall streetlights. pedestrian-grade lighting? or with the inadequate former like? >> it would be the latter. at this point, what we are doing -- in that cenario, one light on ablock 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 domuch to thstet light rcuits to allow for that individual lighting load on the circuit. in some ircumstances, we hav to improve not just the pedestrian lights, but also improve the capacity f ese circuits. at that scenario causes us to that improvement. >supervisor wiener: i guess i can understand if you have a blockw 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 coidering 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, it 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 t table and see if we can incorporate that into our improvement guidelines. supervisor wiener: thank you. >> utilit services, the group that is responsible for providing the lighting, we use our capital dollars for the funding of streetwise. in some case at the street lighting capital fund is used to provide lighting for streets that are poorly lit. we have provided lights on these are examples of projects

that address residents' concerns. the c quite variable. there is an amount ofenchg and conduit's and the street the largest cost is typically trenching andrepaving, which is why the city tries to coordinate our streetlight projects with other capital improvement projts, like the van ness transit improvements that i spoke of earlier. he ad m code is reallyhat we look to -- admen code -- admin code is really what we look to as far as the street improvement in our capital budget for improvements is $8 million, $9

million. that givesou 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.