thing going on for years and years to come. thank sfgtv staff.

>> thank you, and as an initial matter, could we have a motion to excuse president chiu >> and we can take that without objection. >> madam clerk, could you please call item one. >> item one is a hearing to receive a report on the state of the municipal transportation agency and the controller including the productist resulting from service disruptions. >> thank you. and i want to thank supervisor kim and also the mta, for attending today's special meeting of the land use and economic development committee.

this is an important subject for his own airing and condition for the fact that the committee has been quite busy with some other items recently. so i thought that it would be good to have a stand alone hearing for this particular item. i called for this hearing today to begin to get a very firm handle on the data, underlying muni's performance, and after today, we will be releasing with and working with the mta, a quarterly report updating these numbers and comparing them over time, to see how the system is trending. muni in many ways is the glue that holds san francisco transportation system together. it carries about 700,000 riders a day. people rely on this system to get to work, to school to shop, to socialize, to go out. and generally to live their lives. when muni struggles our entire city struggle and right now,

muni in several ways is struggling. muni and in a number of ways is a fantastic system. it is one of the few transit systems in the united states that reaches basically our entire city, and some form or another. but we have allowed the system to deteriorate over time, physically. and we have done this by systematically under investing for decades in the system's infrastructure. and we have not to the extent that we need to control the system's costs. and although, some recent strides have been made for a long time in the forms of the system languisted. >> the system's struggles have real-life consequences for the city. when service is unreliable, people are delayed and frustrated in getting where they are going. leading to negative economic impacts and reduced quality of

life. when service degrades, people choose other modes of transportation, particularly the private automobile. congestion and pollution, thus increase and traffic and pedestrian safety decrease. when muni struggles it is at risk at going in a downward spiral. ridership with suffer, resulting in lower fair collection and public confidence in the system goes down making it harder to convince our city to invest in the system. more people drive, which results in increased congestion and slower muni travel times. and anyone who rides muni regularly knows that the system has challenges. but having several systems and

struggles. a presentation from the municipal transportation agency about the various data underlying muni's challenge and some of the things that the riders see on the streets and the subway every day and maybe not fully understand exactly why y, x, or z happens. and this data will be presented quarterly. and we will try to do it in a

very clear manner so that the public can easily understand the data. we will also be hearing from our city economist, to talk about the economic impacts of service disruptions in the muni systems. and so with that, i will turn it over to i believe, and unless supervisor kim you have other programs? i will turn it over to the mta and i believe that we will start with mr. haily if i am not mistaker, john haily from the mta >> thank you mr. chairman and supervisor, and john haily the director of transit for the mta and i want to thank you for the opportunity to talk about the system and the issues. as you said, supervisor, this is really an irreplaceable public asset. it goes to every corner of the city and simply the cost to

recapolize a system like ours would not be possible in this day and age. >> at the same time we agree completely in your overview that this is a system that right now while being heavily utilized on a day-to-day basis continues to have growing pains from historic under investment, and in the system, and at the same time, we will walk you through a set of issues and programs, that we believe will help make a difference and improve the system, and put us in a possible to really begin the process to turn the corner. there are some of the things that with your help and support, and again, before we begin with this, i think that it is important to note that the leadership, your shining light on the situations is both greatly appreciated and goes a long way towards helping us to solve the issues that we have been talking about. one of the things that i would just touch on briefly is that

one of the things that gives us great or another weapon, if you will, to help solve our problems, is the organization, and this is unique in the country and in terms of the structure with all modes, housed in one place and we will begin, or we should be able to begin to show you the benefits of having traffic engineering in this, located in the same organization as a transit group and the benefits that accrue from that. this is the muni report card or measurements that we have been talking about. and we want to give you an opportunity to ask questions about each and every one of them. but i would just call your attention to a couple just for a moment. one is the on time performance, and clearly, this is one that needs improvement. and you know, in terms of what we are doing and what we need

to do to drive that, and improvement of the over all system, number one, reduce the vehicle break downs, that represents some 70 percent of our delays in the typical day, and we need to put the service out there, if you look at the highlighted in the in one of those things with in gaps you will see progress and gaps from last year to this year and at the same time right below you see in the month of april, the low service delivered, you get it on the street and you reduce the crowding in and of itself. in addition we are going through a process to change the way that we supervisor manage the system and finally we are going through an aggressive review of all schedules the way that we schedule to make sure that the schedules are real and so the on time performance and the things that we are doing to

move that and the other part of this is this between failure and what that means simply is a reliable measure is how far vehicles and whether they be trolly coaches and buses or rail and go between the service needs. and ours are trending up a little bit and most of the vehicles areas and but it is not even close to where we want to be and perhaps, no more so in the system do you see the age. age in itself does not make it unreliable but the fact that the vehicles have not been overhauled in many cases and under maintained for a lot of reasons not to the standards and this is very difficult in a very complicated and complex system where you have, or where you run the hours of service that we do. and so i just wanted to touch on those two and certainly give you the opportunity to talk about any of the other indicators.

>> yeah? >> supervisor kim? >> actually, because this is some what new to me it would be great if you could explain some of the different rows here. and so when you say, bus crowding over 100 percent capacity, the percentage is the percentage of bullses that reach 100 percent in the am or the pm in-bound out-bound? >> yes tha, is correct. >> do you mind just going over... >> i am sorry. >> could you mind going over what each of this means? >> and i also want to know what gap means. >> yeah. in terms of gap, this just means that you know, the fact that the gaps is or when the people look at the system, they have bunches and gaps where two vehicles come together and the gaping it, could be that you have a vehicle at 7 minutes and that is when it comes to 20 and so it is a measure, and the bunching and the gaping together are measures of evenly spacing, in the system. and what we see is that in

april of 2012, and the gaps for example, 20 percent of the service had gaps. and now, it is down to 15. >> okay. and that, part of that has to do with the high percentage of service that we put on the street. because when you have say if you have this percentage of service delivered at 95 percent. that means that you had longer time to be between vehicles and vehicles are more crowded and they take longer to board and to off-load. and so that the crowding, what the crowding measure show you both am and pm, is simply that in 7 percent of our trips, were over capacity, in other words, we have a crowded system. and that on the geary and the 38th and places like that, that

is a measure of crowding. so it goes to the fact that not only do we run heavy ridership, but that puts a additional pressure on the vehicles, and to run on time. >> the vehicle availability measure, is an interesting one, if you took the... our vehicle availability number is a problem for us on the rail side and on the trolly coach side and not as much on the motor coach side. and what this says is not that we only have 9 percent of the vehicles, but that in a small number of days, did we meet the requirement. in other words, we have a requirement on llvs to have 114th cars every day. well, ten percent of the time, or almost between nine and ten percent of the time we didn't hit it. so, you know, we have it, and we have an issue with the number of vehicles on or that are available and say, for

example, in the trolly coach side that does not mean that we would not put a run out it means that you might have a run on the 14 mission that requires a 60-foot coach and we put out a 40-foot coach. >> go ahead. >> i just wanted to clarify, so you are saying that 9 percent of the time, we had sufficient trains or sufficient vehicles to deliver service. >> 100 percent of the time for motor coach you have sufficient vehicles to deliver schedule peak service and only 9 percent of the time for the train we have enough vehicles. >> it just means that on... i have to check this particular measure and get back to you what exactly it means. this is not the way that this particular one is making sure that i am explaining it correctly. i don't in terms of how this,

we look at vehicle availability and present it a little bit differently and so in terms of this particular measure, i will get back and explain it. >> and send you a written explanation. >> actually this is incredibly important and my understanding based on conversations with other mta staff in preparing for this hearing is that for fiscal year to date on 43 percent of the days, there were not enough lrbs, you did not hit the 114 light rail vehicles, necessary to provide the service that you have schedule. >> that is correct >> and that in april, just that snapshot of april this year, only 9.1 percent of the days were there adequate or did you hit the 114th light rail

vehicles the trolly coaches are better, 50 percent of the time. did you hit the number of needed motor coaches were doing quite well. >> that is a fair assessment. >> in terms of a light rail assessment these numbers are rather extreme in april ninth, and in april of 2013, for, over 90 percent of the time, there were not enough light rain vehicles operating in the system. >> that is correct. >> so you mentioned the number... >> excuse me just... so we are clear on what we are saying, it is 90 percent of the time we didn't make the scheduled? so that means that you had less than 114. >> exactly. >> so the implications of that. it should have two car trains. >> this is important. it is approximately 25 percent

of the rides that are on part of the system. the people frequently wonder why isn't there more service and why are there one car trains during the height of rush hour instead of two car trains? and i think, so in order to fill all of the scheduling in terms of the runs and the number of vehicles that you need to accommodate the rider ship for lrbs you need 114 operating. >> that is what we have schedule right now. that is correct. >> now if 114 what you would ideally like to have in the system. >> no, what i do like to have is on the range of 125. >> so, to be clear. so ideally you want 125 light rail vehicles, operating in the system. you schedule 114, because that

is potentially more realistic, about 90 percent of the time in april, you were not even able to hit the 114 light rail vehicles. >> you had fewer than 114. >> that translates? >> you have one-car trains and two-car trains and missed runs? >> it is 1-car trains and 2-car trains and one of the things that we also try to do is we schedule gap trains, which would be used to fill in and say that the heavy crowding, during the pique periods to run the shuttles so if we are unable to have the shuttles and we have more crowding at stations like church or castro. >> okay. >> so the reason that i would always say that the reason that the castro mostly went away is for the lack of light rail vehicles. >> no, i think that one of the things that we have done is

look at the whole service profile and where the problems are. and the other thing that is influencing the number of light rail vehicles, which is why the numbers are a little bit different, we are going through albeit a little bit late and overhaul of some of the light rail vehicles. and what we wanted to do because of the mechanical unreliability of the existing ones and our need to get the useful life out of them. so part of what we have is on paper we have 151 light rail vehicles. >> and there are 11 of them that were go to repair and another 8 to the manufacturer and to do the overhaul work. >> we had looked at that and we have cut the float back to 6 and we make cut it further and

look at ways to reduce the repair time that the car was out of service. so we are billioning all of those, but at this point, and it is critical for june, that we consistently hold the 114 schedule cars, so we are making adjustment and we have now we have vaoefd two of the longer term cars that needed structural, which were out of service for several years, they are now back in service and the third one will be cominging in the next couple of months and we are working with the manufacturer to reduce the turn around time on the over all vehicles to get those back in service. >> this is not a criticism for you, i think that it will be surprising for most people when you look the a system as muni that half of the riders in the

region, and one of the largest transit agencies in the country that you as the director of operations have to have anxiety about whether one or two lrvs here or there is being overhauled at the time is available or unavailable. it would seem that, you would want to have quite a few vehicles just waiting and ready to fill in the gaps >> one or two or three light rail vehicles would make a difference that go out of service because you don't have a vehicle to replace them with. most of us would be surprised to know how sensitive the system is in that way. the shortest light rail vehicles have to do with the

physical condition of the vehicles, is that right? >> yes. i think that the vehicles number one, these vehicles are designed to last 20 or 50 years and in all cases if you check with most transit places what you find is that omid n... mid life, there is an overhaul of mechanical and cosmetic and that both sustains a level of reliability as well as insured that the vehicle performs for the life for a vehicle, and we didn't do a mid life overhaul of the vehicle saying, there were some other systems, they have systems sxh there are not like any others, because of... there are two reasons, there are two categories, excuse me

that make us some what different. we have to operate both, and this on the surface and in the subway and then also, we have a much on the shutter, 75 feet or so, car and the traditional subway system because of the curvatures and the places and the tight geometry. we have to have a car that is compatible with the signal and the technology and also can navigate the close qualities of many of our curves and in the system. and so, i think that that in and off itself presents a challenge in what we have seen over the years and the problems with the vehicles tend to kluser and so we have been

trying to keep up with that and for the way for that kind of an asset that it requires both dedication and maintenance completely and the vehicle is due for inspection to get it in and there are five levels of inspection for lrvs, we are, very attentative to those, to making sure. that they get inspected on the mileage intervals. we focus on that. over a period of time, that we had which we didn't do. but we need to continue to improve on the maintenance and your administration support we have been able to put in the additional mechanics in the system that will help with the turn around time and the inspections. and just to clarify a few things.

i would have to take the additional data from the mta and in terms of the percentage of these available, i think that the agency was looking at weekdays and so for april, when there were 9.1 percent of the days where there was sufficient lrvs that is actually, the april, 2013, and that was two days in april, when there were only two days in april where the system had enough lrvs. and i know that in december of 2012, there were zero days when muni had enough lrvs to hit that number. >> yes, actually between then and april, we had two wrecks come back. >> right. >> and the version, and so yeah that is how. >> so as not to be too lrv centric, for the trolly coachs in april and on half of the weekdays and, there were not enough trolly coaches and

between my understanding is that between the coaches the lrvs that is approximately half of the rider ship of the system. more or less. >> yes. >> and the problem that it could be also both availability and reliability. and they are the oldest of our fleet for the entire trolly coach network that is best and it is useful to only apply one subset is 20 plus years old and so we have moved to retire many of those and we hope to have a new replacement vehicles here. within hopefully within 12 to 18 months. >> great. >> could you keep explaining, i just want to understand average daily hold count, and the delays. okay the main distance? do you want me to speak to that

one? >> average hold count, where you want to be with this number, 189 looks like about 20 percent of our total number of vehicles, which is where you want to be, you want to have 20 percent in the reserve because part of that, and what we see here is this 189. includes vehicles that are being put in for their mileage and inspections we do on all of the fleets. so that... so the impact of this number again is most reflected and some what skewed toward the lrv and we had in the systematic program of the last say 6 months working with the fta and then retiring the oldest trolly coaches. so, this number of 189 in terms of the average daily hold

count, that is probably if you look across the system, it is on the order of 20 percent, and the number in and off itself would be okay. but the problem with this number is that it is disproportionately getting on the lrv and this is a bit of and it masks the real issue for us. just focusing on the 189. line delays are ten-minute delays, times the number and again, in the month of april, for example, 70 percent of our line delays on the rail side were caused by the vehicle, and another 14 percent were caused by the control system. and it is not that the train control system is failing, in fact it is at historic levels for its reliability. and the issue becomes, again,

the delays and they occured around portal entries, we had the opportunity that no one else that i am aware of in the country has. we have 1100 times a day, we have the opportunity not to get a train into the tunnel because of the need for a connection between the on board computer and the signal systems. and so we have a goal of just over 99 percent so what that means is about 30 times a day, you would have 30 trains that would not quite make that connection, which what that means is that the train will have to get a special command and then operate into the system, and cut out or manual which means that it goes much slower and increased to the safety margins. and so, a lot of the line delays and that occurred, and are related to the vehicles themselves which are the biggest source, the second one.

are the interaction between on the rail side the interaction between the vehicles. so, and the infrastructure. >> okay. >> i am sorry. >> so when you say 200, you mean 200 vehicles were delayed more than 10 minutes or 200 lines? or? >> no, this is the number of delays that are over ten minutes. so you have other delays that are less than ten minutes. >> i understand that. >> no. i am asking is it every time that one bus is delayed or is this every bus that was delayed completely is the whole schedule. i wish to... is it... >> i would, for we have system-wide and i know and i can provide the numbers, but in the month of april, 2013. we have between 6 and 700 to