of one way streets, ballards in the street. if we look at that, to try to get people out of transit and into biking and into walking, that would be much better he. i would encourage you to increase your bicycle safety and bicycle funding. thank you. >> yeah, thank you. and you make a great point. every person on a bike is one less person on the bus or worse, in a car taking up space on the street or parking space from someone who really needs it. so, we seed that the more people we can get on bikes is very complementary to the transit first policy. and part of how we're going to achieve the goals that we have in terms of people -- how people get around the city, particularly as we see growth come into the city. we can't have everybody come and driving their own cars. the more people that are on bikes, that are walking, that are on transit, the better the city this will be. thank you. my name is jerry [speaker not understood]. i guess i'm representing save muni today. you mentioned that with the same fleet you are going to be

able to improve service by several good ideas, such a improved maintenance and also by street changes that would enhance muni operations along those streets. now, there's going to be a lot of opinions and priorities as to how you make those street changes. a lot of us feel that the muni that carries 700,000 people a day and probably going to jump to who knows, 950 million riders a day in 20 years or so, that's a very, very high priority. so, make the street changes ought to make the muni better. it shouldn't impede. now, i was on the number 5 bus westbound a couple week ago going from van ness up to fillmore. slight [speaker not understood]. one lane west, right in the middle of that single lane is a bike lane painted in there. parked cars all along the side. we were behind about 6, maybe 7 bicyclists who were having a little trouble with that hill even though it's very -- almost

flat, running about 6 miles an hour. i was on a limited that normally should go 20 miles an hour. it's creeping along. i asked the bus driver, i said, does this happen -- is this odd or does this happen? he said, every day, every afternoon during the peak, limited is shut down to 6 miles an hour for those bicycles. now, the war should not be between muni and the bicycles. it ought to be between the muni plus the bicycles and too many cars in the way. now, that sort of brings me to a second point and that is that there are very few opportunities to actually decrease the number of cars short of sort of draconian things like parking fees and congestion pricing. you can't have congestion pricing unless there is a really good alternative to driving and that's -- the whole thing is kind of circular because the system needs to get fixed, then you might be reasonable to ask for some kind of fare to adjust the pricing. one of the projects would have the biggest potential for fixing that in the entire

region would be to extend caltrain to the new terminal and extend underground moving ramps from a mezzanine level of the new terminal right into the embarcadaro station and the market street. now you can look at those 200,000 cars a day that get dumped on san francisco streets by the pen insula and say, now, folk, you've got an alternative high class way of traveling. by the way, it goes out of the city as well as in. my son lives up near masonic on fulton. he drives to pond view every day because it takes him an hour to get by muni to caltrain. and, so, he he won't use caltrain. so, it's a great ride once you get there. he won't use it. ~ that's critical caltrain be given a much higher priority by this city than it has so far. thank you. >> yeah, thank you, i totally agree, supporting caltrain electrification, supporting the downtown extension. those are really the city's top

priorities for the region in terms of transportation access. and with regard to bike first as transit, we don't want wars with anybody. we're currently in the process of developing what we call mono hierarchy where we would try to identify which streets are better for transit versus for bikes, for other means. and some places we're able to do that. because of the topography of the city, some places the streets better for muni, also happen to be best for bikes. that's where we'll try to use it [speaker not understood] to deaconflict the two. [speaker not understood] it never will be amsterdam. you can't do the thing here that they do their. there's no space for it. >> we're a different city. we have to account for that. [speaker not understood]. >> thank you. hi, good afternoon. my name is henry penn from common tree today.

for one, i support [speaker not understood] for 18 year olds. i turned 18 while still in school, last couple of months of high school were perilous to me because i didn't have an adequate way to get around. couldn't really afford it. but that was before i got a bike, so. and another comment i wanted to make with respect to transit, muni needs foremore operation funding. there is a good amount of funding set aside for capital, but there is not really much point of having capital funding if you can -- well, there's really not much point of building it and having all these buses he if there's no money to maintain all the infrastructure. and i would support keeping sunday meters to fund operations and other aspects of muni operations. i'm not sure whether anybody else has brought this up, but i support the implementation of evening meters in commercial areas. not necessarily residential, but commercial areas. and i really would -- up to 10:00 p.m. at the very least.

i'd make a note of that. and what else is there? and i would also support an increase of bicycle funding because the city as well as muni at the moment can't handle all these extra influx of passengers. so, bikeling is the way to go. and i guess that's it. thank you. >> yeah, thank you. ~ i agree with most of what you said there. i will say with regard to more operating funding versus more capital funding, our operating funds have grown pretty significantly. this year we have an $850 million operating budget. so, next year it's looking like 930, 950 the next year. so, that's growing pretty fast in part because of the health of the economy and the general fund. on the capital side we've identified, even if the revenue measures, all 9.2 billion are approved by the voters, we still in the next 15 years have

another $3.3 billion gap to close. so, even if all this happens, we still haven't closed the gap. so, i respectfully disagree that there's plenty of money for capital, we should throw some at operating. i would also suggest we're not talking about capital really to build new stuff. it's to maintain what we have. and i see it more -- i think there is an analogy to your house. if you have a house that doesn't have a strong foundation and the wiring isn't in good shape and the plumbing is not in good shape, the first thing you shouldn't do -- the first thing you should do shouldn't be to build an addition to the house so that you have a bigger house that's not in good condition. the first thing you need to do is fix the foundation and repair the wiring and the plumbing. that to me is kind of the approach, we need to make the capital investment in the existing system to that it can support better service. just doing that, without adding a single bus or driver, we'll

be able to provide more service because again the buses and trains will be out on the street delivering service, not in the shop having broken down. and instead of paying emergency crews to go out in the truck and tow a bus because it broke down, we'd be able to that i can those dollars and hire more bus drivers. capital is a critical part to enable us to improve the service and to add more to it [speaker not understood]. [inaudible]. >> thank you. good afternoon. my name is justin big a low. i primarily came up to say thank you, number one, for your leadership. i think you've done a really excellent job in outlining a strategy to bring muni -- our streets overall into a better place. but with that i did want to imploring you to continue that leadership especially with respect to sunday meters. we really need to continue the policy because it's actually just good policy for businesses, for residents and for the majority of us who

aren't parking at a particular sunday meter. it's a good idea with respect to that and something perhaps more controversial would have to do with expanding meters. we're taking a look where i know it's controversial to talk about handshake agreements. the sfmta is not enforcing, for instance, parking in the public right-of-way on dolores, on guerrero, in this these areas on sunday and actually on saturdays as well for some of the jewish institutions in the area. it's important and it's something that we should talk about whether we want to do that as opposed to saying simply it's happened in the past. if that's going to be the trade-off the city makes, we should have a conscious decision and discussion about it. but overall thank you very much. >> you have great points. thank you. excuse me? [inaudible]. >> yeah, there is a desk at the back on your way out for those

who have surveys or this young man will come and take them for you. yes, sir. my name is burt paradise, i live here in the city. i have not owned a car since 172. >> wow. the year before the transit first policy was adopted. you are were ahead of your time. i notice a great deal of non-fair collection on the bus he he and streetcar i ride two or three times a day. this policy i think is costing us a great deal of money. i heard new rumors the muni ticket police are collecting $1 for every $4 we're spending. wondering if you would comment on that. he >> yes, with regard to fare collection and fare evasion, we did an analysis a number of years ago that estimated we were losing about $19 million a year. our fares are $200 million a year. so, a pretty good percent we estimated we were losing for people who were not paying

their fares. we did think about that very cautiously as we were thinking about [speaker not understood] aborting which you made reference to which we started last year. we did increase the number of fare inspectors by about 20%. we have been warning and citing a lot more people as a result. but i will say that our fare revenues have not -- did not decline when we went to all-door boarding. there were a lot more people who have passes and clipper cards. so, although we want people with a card to pass tap on the back door. many of them don't. from the contacts that our fare inspectors make, they find a much lower fare evasion rate than the 9% we found three years ago. they're finding somewhere between 3 and 5%. in part that's because some people leave when they see the fare inspectors coming. i understand that. we do have to balance, i'd say

4 or 5 million for our fare inspection program. and that's against the maybe 8 or 9 loss of revenue. there is a point when it comes effective. i don't think we'll increase that force any more. their presence on the vehicles aside to the extent they're hoping everybody pay their fair share. the [speaker not understood] helps with security issues we referenced earlier. the [speaker not understood]. it remains a challenge and we're trying to make it easier for people to get the fare instrument and make sure everybody who should be paying is paying and is fair for everybody. as you said, a good chunk of our revenues. a quarter of the city's budget comes from transit fairs. thank you for your presentation. my name is gail, and most of the things that i came here for have been covered very well by both the people here and yourself.

but i have some things that i'd like to talk about. r. ~ this probably sounds a little petty, but maintenance, there were a series of artv consolidates in san francisco that say weekly [speaker not understood] ~. that talked about how maintenance is really awful at muni. and one of the things that muni does is they turn on the buses and let them idle for like about 4 or 5 hours before they go out, which is a huge waste of fuel. and wear and tear on the bus itself, that's number one. and also when i'm on geary street, i'm always amazed at the empty out of service buses that are going in both directions and i don't understand why they cannot pick up passengers and have it said

at the sign at the beginning where they're going to end so people have a choice of at least riding those bus he because that's another huge waste of fuel. and what else? also, another thing that i find a little upsetting, but i understand muni has time constraints. but at cross areas, major cross areas, buses see or streetcars, they see the other vehicle coming in the opposite direction or, you know, in the crossing direction and they don't wait. there's always people that want to make that connection. now, as i say, i do understand the time constraints, but even so when they see people are getting off the bus and waiving, wait, wait, and they just take off i think that's very economical and very calous

actually. and that's just about all that i have. yes, that's about it. >> those are all very good points. i appreciate them. with regard to maintenance of the vehicles generally or maintenance generally, i agree. it's not an area that we've invested what we should have been investing. we made a big step towards that in the last budget. i hope to add more maintenance resources in this budget. as we looked at that baseline surplus, that's one of the things on the table to improve the maintenance of the buses he. now, with regard to the idling, part of what you're seeing there is the warm-up period of buses or buses that are being cleaned and maintained, but he was correct in his article, there were some subset of buses that were being started longer than they should have been that was counter to the agency's policy. and i appreciate the fact [speaker not understood]. in terms of buses that are

going out of service for the presidio yard out of geary, up to a point they should be taking passengers and some operators are -- [inaudible]. >> yeah, to some extent that's happening, to some extent it's not. it's something that shouldn't be happening we should be using those buses he as much as we can. and as you mentioned in terms of people who are waiting to get on the bus. operators operating in a difficult environment, schedules are pretty tight. they're making judgments all the time. some time they will wait. if they have a full bus and behind schedule, sometimes they know there is a bus coming close behind, they will sometimes make the choice to leave and it can be very frustrating when i'm running for a bus and i see it pull away. but that's a trade-off the operators do have to sometimes make. thank you. first of all, thank you for taking your saturday to be transparent about the budget process. and i appreciate the leadership

you exhibited the last couple years and mta's years to improve reliability. one of the things i wanted to comment on, i wanted to make a point about sunday meter. i noticed you're going to make a recommendation in a couple days. you echo today the sound policy arguments in favor of sunday meters still are valid and strengthened by the evidence we have in neighborhoods and hope to see your continued leadership stay strong and supporting sound policy over politics. it's just bad to regress back just because the mayor or his team thinks it's politically expedient. this is a perfect example where policy needs to win over politics. i'd like to see a recommendation from you and the board to maintain sunday parking meters. i also applaud efforts from your agency to implement the

principles of complete streets. and i know there's a lot to talk about the goals of vision zero. i applaud the attention you have been paying to pedestrian and bicycle safety in the city. the budget is the most important reflections of our priorities and principles and the more we can fund pedestrian and bicycle improvements. it could totally help muni. i'm on the executive team of a company called public. we design bikes for urban transportation and we employ a couple dozen people. i've seen on market street. the changes being made on market street. there are three bike shops that opened up in the last three years on 11th at the ferry building. if it whatant for the ~ wasn't for the changes we made on [speaker not understood].

one of the most biggest detriments a we know to munich re liability is just the congestion of car vehicles on our streets. so, anything we can do to continue to our transit priorities would be helpful. and just a few specific examples in my own personal life and my commute. i live right near the dmv and i live right on oak street, right where the new oak bikeway is. it's a tremendous safety improvement for a major corridor. so, i encourage you to continue to [speaker not understood] on oak. i know the bike lanes are there, but there are plans that have some type of barriers, physical barriers. i'd like to see it implemented sooner than later. i'd love to hear what the timeline on that would be. but a perfect example, i and along with thousands of people ride my bike, walk, take transit on market street. the improvement you made on folsom street, significant safety. now i actually have a choice between going on market or

folsom. because instead of folsom being a death trap for me and many thousands of bicyclists for years, just this simple separated bikeway in the last year or last six months or so made it tremendously safer for most of us. so, once again, continue to make the improvements you did and i appreciate the work you do. >> thank you. i think oak should be coming this summer, the balance of the project. we're also looking at howard for what we did on folsom. i agree, i support folk who want to see thing like that to come out and support publicly. i think i recognize the t-shirt, but i think i know what you guys interest talking about. we do have a few minutes left. try to be concise, but thank you for coming. hi, my name is shirley sen from the organization chinatown community development center. i would like to say that it is ~ important to expand the free muni for youth program to include 18 year olds because a

lot of 18 year olds are still high school seniors and they don't have a job and they're still -- they're low-income, a lot of them. it's somewhat a burden for their families to afford the transportation fee for them to ride public transportation in order to get to school or other places. so, i would like to say -- i would like mta to consider putting some of the budgets into this project. >> okay, thank you. my name is fanny and i'm from a low-income family. first i'm really glad google can donate money for the next two years. >> me, too. for muni for youth. [speaker not understood].

it's impactful for over 30,000 youth who you muni to go to school. [speaker not understood] and disability people. they use -- i mean, every day i go to school, i use muni and i saw a lot of seniors. they use muni every day, it's like their cane. some time maybe the cost is too high for them. [speaker not understood]. >> okay, thank you. okay, last two quick comments. we're just about out of time here. >> [speaker not understood]. on pedestrian child health. i want you guys to put more money on the pedestrian safety.

[speaker not understood] cars, dangerous experience i've had. there's no policy -- i'm not sure you have policy for like the cars to have [speaker not understood]. green light or red light and notice the car is turn and almost hit a pedestrian. i want you guys to pay more attention to pedestrian safety. i want to see the improvement [speaker not understood]. >> thank you. i mean, there actually are policies and rules about when cars can turn when there are people in a crosswalk. pedestrians always have the right-of-way. so, part of what we're doing is working with the police department to add more enforcement out there so when people aren't respecting that law, that they gheit cited. thank you. sorry, i didn't speak. okay, let me restate. my name is roger kemp ton and i

live by city college. [speaker not understood] community and the park and i think it's like the 43, masonic on north we [speaker not understood]. when it come to rebuild the buses, [speaker not understood]. the secondary transit, the final destination sign when it's destined to marina district, the thing says marina middle school buzz, sometimes i think that's the wrong message. [speaker not understood] it's not a 24/7 thing. to go inside the middle school have to have a legitimate business. outside that, the districts

surrounding it not necessarily. and to me and also middle school, the youth, it's not like or s.f. state university. >> i understand. we'll take a look at that. i'm not sure what [speaker not understood]. thank you. >> right. and also, one more thing. when it comes to celebrations and the -- on the east bound, 38 geary destined for transbay terminal, to me bothers meant [speaker not understood], it should say something like grant or market and stockton street until the [speaker not understood] on the street are over. >> i see. with regard to special events

there is work we need to do to change the destination signs based on any rerouting. thank you. final word. i've got a question about fares for the f line for 6 bucks. now, if you do 6 bucks -- >> i don't think we're going to advance that idea. i mentioned earlier, you may not have been here. i think we've heard a lot of feedback from people explaining why that would be problematic so i don't think i'm going to be recommending that to my board. okay, thank you very much. i think that's it. >> okay. well, thank you all very much for coming. (applause) >> i'll be here. we'll end the formal meeting. we're happy to answer any questions down on the floor. thank you all for coming. ...