i would have loved to have long been one of the 16 people to get on the train during rush hour and car after cargoes by and we don't have enough l r vs and they're basically designed to minimize standing room. our light rail system is an absolutely essentially part of the muni i see fleet and essential to having high quality services. our daily ridership doopsdz light rail vehicles. they're also one of the key reasons why muni struggles with reliability. we don't have enough light rail vehicles. until recently on 50 percent of

a daze we had 50 percent less than to provide our basic service. vehicles breakdown because of the design system with the propulsion steps and they're not being rehabilitated when they should have been. and $0.31 it's a major challenge it's not just the subway its all over the city on the south and southeast that rely on those l r v. and a along market street and a southern waste front and the south eastern part of the city we're going to see sixth growth on those easier that rely on the light rail system so we have to get that right. muni to its consider is starting to do rehabilitations.

and also fortunately muni is recently had the procurement process to purchase over 2 hundred light rail vehicles which will give us what we need to have good service. yesterday we held a hearing on the land use economic committee to talk about the challenges and to make sure that minnesota doesn't commit the mistakes of the past. we've got muni transportation that are not lemons. but the light rail vehicle stoking stock we're going to need them for awhile because the next generation is going to take time to be designed and delivered so we need to make the use of the thought light rail

vehicle. as i mentioned the standing room on the light rail vehicles is minimized because of the configurations of the seats. it's hard for people to crowd on and off and we should fully explore whether we could reconfigure the seats we need to have enough sooets so people who want to sit down can do that but we can make some tweaks to the way their configured. that will increase capacity and increase reliability and decreases passenger frustration >> thank you, very much. thank you and chairman. before i ask director hale i didn't to come up and provided a response from mta i thought it

might be useful to provide some depiction. this is the existing configuration harassing as described with the side facing seats sort of in the front and back of the vehicle and the forward facing seats. this is a rail vegetable that was used on another property you can see that perpetrate a significant amount of spates it appears to be unimpeded in the rail area. so those are actually being discussions r discussed here. the change has already been mentioned could increase the capacity of the vehicle and provided additional cheer space something that's critical on the

light rail vehicles and essentially could provide for some easy for passengers to a move in and out for the center of the vehicle and if this happens it could be short global times. there are other matters to be addressed to consider implementing changes in seeking and structural changes with seating that director hale i didn't will talk about and the necessary under carnival reconfiguration. and the grab bars will have to be reconfigured and they're attached to the forward facing seats and they'll have to be reconfigured to attach to the floor. there's a certain mulch of time and forever to do the

reconfiguration. we've made a preliminary back of the envelope you estimate of the cost and we think it's on the order of 20 to $30 per vehicle but that's relatively a modest amount. so director hale i didn't come forward and provide the agencies prospective >> thank you, mr. hale and all for being here. >> good morning. thank you, mr. chairman. two points of pardon me principle if i may. first, as supervisor wiener indicated now a r vs are on the way. we hope that process will be on

the way beginning at 1 o'clock this afternoon i ask your indulge yans we've made a recommendation to the mta board. and secondly, i want to acknowledge to you mr. chairman a publicly our prediction for your leadership n and interest in working with us on two recent safety incidents we had on the 38 line and user and your staff were very helpful and we were able to act quickly and identify the source of the problems and work with our engineers and our manufacturers as well as get a second opinion, if you will, from the fire marshall's office. thank you and we express our prediction for your to her

follow-up on that. thank you for that. i know there's a great deal of interest in this and appreciate the interests if help and working with us to improve the service. i will just want to follow up to what lee said in a couple of areas just to highlight this and i won't read it i don't think anyone in this room needs to hear about the condition of the subway and we're doing a number of things to make it better. reilly the crowding and comfortably the reliability is the cars their the variable right now. you know, we're working on both to all kinds of things to try to do it. as supervisor wiener said this is a snapshot and i do this for reference you see the very thin margin we're working on. we have on paper a one hundred

and vicars and have 1 hundred and fourteen scheduled are the long-term rehabilitation is a combination of two things a partial overhaul program where we have 6 cars commented and we are in the process of having 3 in service already of overhauling cars that were damaged so long as a decade ago which are now putting together and getting them back into service. so that's with the 15 is. the cars run a lot of miles and carry a lot of people it's critical we do maintenance we have 4 scheduled maintenance so 14 cars everyday. if you look at the demands we have for a variety of things we typically would is send 8 cars

to support service for the giants game for example, that's one special event to see what a thin margin is. as supervisor wiener said up until about 2 months again, we worked with our contractors on a number of cars and focused on problematic system and campaigns were weren't on a consistent basis making a line requirement. my point is we're working with a thin ratio and we're talking about how we can better use some of the historic cars to possibly supplement some of the serviced. this is a quick snapshot i'll highlight two things this again gets to the car count and some of the issues that are take

place. for the last two friday's we've tested a shuttle leaving by uc sf as a way to help relief crowding and a we think we've found the right time window. we want to slot that in permanently that we think it will make a difference and then first until friday modern we'll run we hope the last at the time for 3 car trains to make sure that the main issue has been the train item or so the coupling of the system lights and a communicates are carried through the coupler heads. we hope this will be the end of the testing and you'll probably

see those introduced in service as shuts off in the next two weeks where we're also working on short-term improvements. but again, the purpose of this hearing and we appreciate the interest we have a concept paper we're willing to take into account the seating or anything that will help and so reviewing the concept that was provided we looked at the arrangement of highlighted there the reduction if we took those seats out what the reduction is and what we get for standing room. and take into account this there are a couple of things we want to work through. one would be the sandboxes which while not a safety factual are critical city appraising

operation of the system and the cars are set up so if there's any kind of moisture condensation and the wheels start to slip or churn while on the rail sand is used to help with tracts. we're not able to move those. and the other point we touched on were the grab rails i'll highlight those. those are some of the things i'll use i'm not trying to confuse anyone i'll go back and forth. i have trouble using the term converse so the forward facing seats we've circled the grab rails. i'll also is the question was

asked there's a section of seats that were proposed not to be moved. could we move some other ones and the short answer is probably not because the car and design of the car and one of the issues is that most of the mechanical features are on the under side of the car. it's the most light vehicles are in the region of '90 meeting feet this is 65 to 76 feet so everything from the communication to the video system to what's called the vehicle on board are located under some of the seats. so there's a number of issues but there's the other structural assessment that we - >> can i ask what's in the sandbox below the seat and in the sandbox increase

sand. >> (laughter). >> i'm not trying to be smart but it's essentially it's under the seat and it's right above the traction and the wheels. that's where the wheels of the train are on the truck so if it's starts to slide the system dumps sand. if you went along the embarcadero i will say authenticity not technically just sand but it's preliminary sand. the other structural point was mentioned we want to take a look at is the vertical structure on the length of the car. the point of all this is i know we believe that the concept deserves and has merit and we

should 250k9 it and it would require, you know, take a look at the items we talked about and we mentioned. you know, in along with, you know, our effort we're focused on right now is improving the reliability, you know, so, you know, we're working with our workforce to mechanics and maintains staff to do that. after looking at the proposal in and this is something we thought we could do. if you go back to the chart we highlighted earlier. when those 15 cars are in motion there's 2 due back sometime first or second week in november. and those currently do not have seats configured in them.

those railroad vehicles that were damaged sometime g ago structural damage to the cars. it had to be our ability to maintain things here in san francisco and in house doesn't extend to more structural damage so those cars were essentially guted and being rebuilt so that would provide an opportunity to reconfigure the seats so that's a timing. and so i think if you look at the issues that have long been raised to study the impact the weight and stress on the cars we would want to take a look at that could be done over a couple of months and take a prototype and set up a criteria whether

it's ridership and a make a long-range term discussion, you know, on the concept and how we'd apply it. so with that i'm certainly happy to take any questions that you may have on this. but we would be from the sfmta stand we'll move forward on that and let's up this up inform the public more commitment. anyone wib to speak come forward >> ms. sax. >> yes. i want to know about those now a cars that are good friend of mine in is there going to be anything for people who are virtually impaired that have

to pay they're fair to put they're fair in the fair box anything for them to grob grab onto so they can get a seat without any problem dpoous because on the buses you're having the same problem with that. that's an ad a requirement. i have that problem >> anyone else in the public that would like to speak. seeing none, public comment is closed. mr. haley do you have any response to that and i want to open up to commissioners breed and weaning formulas comments and a commissioner yee as well. i wanted to see if you know

respond to ms. saxs question will there be any xhoogz. i think that's certainly a consideration. in the concept we when talk about what we're calling in a general sense the engineering impact it's not just the weight and the load but when you're asking people to stand they have to hold onto something as opposed to each other which you're asking people to do in the morning and evening. that's part of what i think has to be looked in the next if i months to say okay. if we were to take the seats out and provide standing room you know how do we maintain the

structural intricate of the vehicle, you know, safely by also how do we make it comfortable for somebody as comfortable as possible for someone to stand how high should it be and then i see when those cars are 15, 16 years old kind of teenagers, if you will. and i think one of the things we want to look at it we can take a look at other features not get too far away but the previous speaker asked we can do is few things to make it easier certainly will and a commissioner yee >> i want to thank you for your presentation. i think i'll really supportive

of reconfiguring the seats. more recently i've done some traveling and the systems i was had the opportunity to sit on all of them were basically seats facing each other. in other words, the new configuration and the vacuum of people who get in and out of those cars that i of the taking in other countries was probably more than doubled and more so than san francisco. i'll see two thousand people get off on one stop. i think having those face to face seats helps. but the quicker we can do it the

better. one point of classification maybe it was stateed but for the new vehicles that we're purchasing is the intention to have face to face seats or are we getting cars that look like our old ones and we're going to have to reconfigure them >> i'm very pleas to answer the question by telling you i have no idea. i'm pleased to say that because one thing in the procurement process we're learning lessons from fourteen years ago. what we did in that regard was in october of 2012 we began a dialog with the experts people and a companies from all over the world that build railcars. i tried to give them as much

flexibility to design the car. we talked to the experts about, you know, not just the design but the drivers and those kinds of things. so i think during the process of we're going now the requests we're making of the sfmta board this afternoon is to release on rp request for parole pre-qualified biders. those are firms that are internationally well known and the idea of getting pre-qualified a proven track record of delivering cabs cars on schedule. when i say i don't know. i know what the interior will look

like. i envision kind of an open process for example, it's a much different situation what we the with the new buses but we went around to a variety of the stakeholders and said what do you know think. if the case part of the seating what it looks like depends upon what else you know where they're going to put certain components in the car maybe not under the seats and frankly in one sentence if you were to excuse me. what would be the one improvement we'd among on the design of the exciting cars you want the components out from under the bottom of the car to the side are top because that's

problematic for a variety of reasons. i'm not trying to not answer your question >> maybe i don't understand the process. my local thinking is if i feel the interior design is important and it's a positive change i certainly wouldn't want to buy cars and spend more money to change the format. it's easier to say those are my requirement and put it out to bid and a let them design s it and give a bid. maybe again, i'm not understanding that maybe our purchase is so small they don't care what we think >> that's certainly a possibility. we could express our preferences

for seating design >> so i wanted to say we have to finish this meeting as quickly as we can were let me ask if commissioners breed and yee have any concluding remarks. in terms in terms of commissioner yee do i have a cost estimate for the current cars and potentially can be the cost estimate of designing the seats in the somewhat with potentially the same cars we anticipate. do you have a comparison for example, it will take x amount of dollars and imply cars would be this cost to do it the old

way and this cost for the new way the new way is the reconfiguration >> it that clear? >> certainly i don't have one handy but there's one that certainly could create under like a conversion there's two sets of numbers but it's not a difficult exercise to go through. >> i want to respond. you could do is cost thing but i'm factoring in if we get those cars and then it takes forever to convert i mean, we're converting two >> exactly so we've taken that into consideration and i guess

i'd like for if we move this afford i'm holy we, talk about more than one car and determine if this is the best way to move forward and in our new vehicles as well because of the ability to move more passengers. i'm hoping we can come back in the next couple of months well, after we've implemented the pilot and come back and talk about what the results are. and if the relatives are positive i'm sure it will be in a timely manner to make this part of the rfps for the design of the new cars >> commissioner weaning. >> thank you a few things. first of all, in terms of the next generation i cannot imagine there's no new costs vs. it will

be up to muni and the manufacturer b will do whatever the sprefgss are. i hope as this is successful i think it will be we'll consider that and we'll have r v where we'll run 3 car trains in the subway speaker i want to mention there's a reference for disability access. i think because there are 0 seats for disabilities and citizens are challenging if i don't get a seat it's such a narrow way to get through if you have any kind of equipment with you are you're not particle mobile it's challenging and the more you open up the r vs you have alters more space