special meeting of the city operations committee. we will soon be joined by members of the committee, supervisor olague, and to supervisor chu's and my far left, we have supervisor wiener, the sponsor of this agenda. >> item #one -- hearing with the san francisco public utilities commission, general services agency, 311 customer service center, department of public works, planning department, san francisco municipal 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 policies and practices relating to the lighting of the public right-of-way, including street light maintenance, and reliability, the system of responding to and addressing street light outages, ways to improve the maintenance system, and best practices for lighting per the better streets plan and other city policies.

>> thank you, madam clerk. supervisor wiener, this is your item. >> supervisor wiener: thank you mr. chairman -- thank you, mr. chairman. i called for this hearing several months ago. i called for it when something i had never seen before happened during will call introductions. 5 of my colleagues spontaneously co-sponsored it. that does not happen often. the reason it happened is this is an issue with significance for the residents of san francisco. perhaps more than any other concern, buy it, and i know my colleagues as well, hear from

our constituents about the problems with our streetlights, about the slowness and lack of responsiveness in fixing broken, otherwise problematics street lights. and i hear about dark streets and sidewalks, whether it is related to a enough street lights or the street lights are malfunctioning or the street lights are so high up they are not providing good lighting. and i hear about the lack of safety that this causes in terms of our streets. we know that our street lights are not for the most part pedestrian-grade, instead come up focusing on cars. -- instead focusing on cars.

is a safety and quality of life issue. additionally, are street lights are not particularly esthetically appealing. when you walk into a neighborhood with nice pedestrian-grade street lighting, you see a difference immediately. it really does improve the esthetic, the look, and the feel of a neighborhood. so, we are excited. we have piccinni -- pg&e to discuss what the current situation is, what the process is for responding to and repairing lights that are not operational, and what are the plans for improving our response for non-operational lights? and also talk about the future

of lights in san francisco, how we can move to more pedestrian- grade lighting, for a better aesthetic look for are street lights, to improve neighborhood safety? we have with us today representative from san francisco public utilities commission, from pg&e, from 311, which processes many of the complaints about street lights, as well as from the planning department to talk about the better streets plan and other issues. colleagues, if there are no introductory remarks, then we will start with barbara from the centers is the public utilities commission, followed by the representatives from311 -- from 311. >> good morning, barbara hale.

what i would like to do is take a little time to present on the issue of streetlight ownership, the levels of service that we provide, the capital and planning priorities, the separation of responsibilities between sfpuc and pg&e, and make recommendations for improvement. there is room for improvement. we are very interested in hearing from supervisors and members of the public today on how we can provide better street lighting here in this city. streetlight 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's map, let me show you a slide that has 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 pg&e. that is how president 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 better.

you can see, i would like to point out how our efforts have improved. on average, it is 8.6. 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 ourselves. we are looking at those streetlight issues within 40 hours of having received the request. we are getting closer to that target on a regular basis. supervisor chu: just for some clarification, on the previous slide, you showed the days to close pg&e in the system? it is not just that the complaint has been routed to pg&e, correct? >> correct. the item is closed by the

performing entity. once puc has completed the work, the puc staff go in and modify the 311 database. supervisor chu: ok. 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 variety of lighting. we maintain through the puc at least 75 discrete lighting 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 street 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 explain -- 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 power. is unique. 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 system. >supervisor wiener: in terms of what pg&e spends on maintenance, is that cover 100% by what the puc reimburses?

>> i do not know the answer to that. perhaps pg&e does. supervisor wiener: since the puc is paying for the maintenance of streetlight pg&e that -- streetlights that pg&e owns, has the puc attempted to set maintenance standards? >> we have not attempted to set me and standards. it is our understanding that is the california public utility commission's responsibility. we have absolutely communicated and my streetlight staff communicates with the pg&e streetlights staff on a routine basis for the need for maintenance in the system and standard operational maintenance. supervisor wiener: there is a discrepancy in terms of the number of repaired and broken

lights. it is not necessarily a significant difference in terms of the time it takes puc to repair its lights and pg&e. i wonder if you have had any effort to impose those meannes'' standards? >> we do. every 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 higher

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 on it. rate payers are paying for that maintenance. i certainly want to make sure 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.

one 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 cip. 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 1100 of the street lights and the series loops -- in the series loop are owned by pg&e. over the next five years, replacement will cost about $25 million. so, i would like to talk a little bit about how we work with the street lights, how we figure out priorities. i mentioned earlier, the available capital funding in our 10-year capital plan to replace hours -- our series of loops, we are the funding source for a new street lights and pedestrian like projects. that we initiate. a number of streetlight projects

are initiated by development, by third party, and by context, that third party sense that streetlight improvement and hands that new system of street lights over to the city for our ongoing care and operational maintenance. pedestrian lighting is becoming more and more an important 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