progress on the funding front. bombardey transportation was the company selected to provide the cars. they have been doing a good job so far in the design and engineering process. the final assembly of the new cars will occur in new york state. the contract reaches a two-thirds by america requirement in terms of all of the subsuppliers and parts. can an -- we have gone through a comprehensive design process that is described on slide 3, conceptual design phase preliminary mock ups and prototypes and final train car model. i'm going to talk about each of those phases.

back in 2012, we began the process by asking can an can you customers about what they liked and didn't like about the cars and asked them to include what they have seen in their travels elsewhere that we can consider emulating. we used that information in our process in 2012. we began working with the bart advisory committee. the bart accessibility task force. we worked with them to think in particular about the accessible features of the new train cars and you will see in the slides that follow that there are quite a few features that have been added to the new train cars that are

testament to their hard work and good advice in helping us better meet the needs of people with disabilities. in 2013, we had a variety of preliminary mock ups and prototypes. in july of 2013, we had what is called a soft mock up, a first level mock up of the new train car at the mcarthur station and we had 25,000 people come through and participate and walk through including a special session we did at that time with the bart accessibility task force. subsequent to that, we did 9 events around the bay area testing out prototype seats and getting feedback from the public about different levels of cushioning and different densities of foam and that helped us select the seats for the new train cars. finally

just over the last 6 weeks, we've had the final train car model at 10 different locations around the bart district and including one location in santa clara which is part of the future bart service. and we had a total of 17, 500 can ustomers come through the final train car model and give us feedback. we conducted is surveys as we did with all the previous phases and we are still processing those results and we'll have a report out in the next few weeks. the first pilot cars i referenced earlier, those will be the first 10 cars that assembly will begin in just a few months. they will be at first tested on the bart test tracks. not on what we call revenue service that can ustomers are using them. they

have to be proven safe and reliable before we get them certified for passenger service. once that is done and those cars are proven we'll authorize the beginning of the procession of the 475 cars and perhaps by that time greater number depending on funding. those first production cars are scheduled to go into service in 3 years, in the year 2017. we expect in the first year of production because the production once it starts, it happens pretty quickly. we expect in the first year to have over 100 new cars in service that be substantially relive congestion on the bart system. our plan is to keep the old cars operating as long as we can so that the new cars become additive for a while

until we have enough new cars, then we can begin to retire the old fleet. there is hope that in the near term, 3 or 4 years from now there should be substantial relief on the bart system. the next slide is entitled public outreach. it has a table that shows the attendance at the various events we held as well as the previous participation in the design process. i mentioned earlier we've had almost 35,000 can ustomers participate so far in the process. that would include sending us e-mails, is surveys, community meetings, going to one of the prototype side or mock ups and giving us input. it's been very helpful to the design process. beyond

the general public input, we've been repeating out -- reaching out to disability and senior organizations as well as community based organizations to attend the various events and have specific meetings with different groups that provide disability services or provide disability policy assessment. we've met at least 8 times with our bart accessibility task force and we've met with other organizations as well. next as i mentioned earlier i will be talking about different accessibility features on the new train cars. many of which came from public input or from our work with the bart accessibility task force. so first of all, this slide no. 5 talks about accessibility features for individuals who are deaf or

have a hearing impairment. well have dramatic improvements for people who are deaf or have a hearing impairment on the new train service. in the old cars we relied on a public address system that made it very difficult for people with hearing impairments to get the information they needed. the new cars will have modern communication systems including both interior and exterior digital displays. first of all on the interior, we will have six 27 627-inch lcd screens that will provide a range that i will explain in a minute. in addition we'll have 2 led screens at the

bulk head of the car above the end doors. we will have lcd screens that will focus on providing the next stop information. to describe in a little bit more detail the 6 d lcd screens they will be located adjacent to doors fairly high up on the wall to maximize sight lines and visibility. the screen is a very flexible programmable screen. in the current version of it which is really generation 1, we have planned three different zones on the screen. on the left side and a majority of the screen will be a dynamic system map. meaning it will be a live realtime map of the bart system that will

have a "you are here" bubble that shows the current location and that bubble will move as the train moves. we also have a luna -- line that the train is serving highlighted in a brighter color. the system map, the dynamic system map is designed to be what we call sort of a close up product. it's because it's a whole map and just part of a screen. it not something you will be able to see from 30 feet away. but we do have six of them on board and from a distance of 10-15 feet for someone with normal eyesight, it will be visible and for others, they may need to move a little bit closer. in addition to the dynamic map in the upper right hand corner

in much larger letters designed to be scene -- seen from a distance. this is the most featured requested information piece by our can ustomers and that will be very prominent on the screens. because it's the next stop, not the final stop and we need to be as clear as we can with the public what stop we are talking about, the word next will rotate in multiple languages in the standard languages that bart utilizes which are english, chinese, spanish, vietnamese and korean. in the bottom right hand segment of the screen we will rotate a variety of information. they will be courtesy message. the one shown on the slide here thanks can ustomers for vacating

seats for people and seniors with disabilities and that will be shown in that segment there. in addition to all of those interior screens which are new to the new trains, we will have exterior signs that will face to the outside of the train that show the line, the route that the train is on and it will have a block of color for those people that can see color to show them it's the blue line or the red line or some other line. another feature for those who have a hearing impairment that we are very proud of on the new train cars is we've committed to test an induction move system on the trains. we will try to make that system work on the middle segments of the cars, the cars will have

three doors and we plan to deploy this system at the middle of the three doors because that is the area that has the least signal interference and offers us the best chance of a good workable system. we will also display the international symbol for the induction system in that area. flipping to slide six. features for individuals who have a mobility impairment. we have a range of features for people who have a mobility impairment. one of them i don't have listed on the slide first of all is we will have 50 percent more seats that are priority seats for people with disabilities or senior citizens. so i think that is going to be a big

improvement. in addition, those priority seats will be a different color. one of the things that we heard early in the project when we put out that solicitation, i referenced earlier what you like or dislike about the old train cars? we often heard people say that can ustomers don't frequently enough yield to senior and disabled seats to those who need them the most. one of the improvements we are making is to make those seats a different color and to improve the signage of those seats to help encourage people to stand up and yield those seats. in addition to those seats we will have two wheelchair zones as the old cars do that comply with the

dimensions required by code of federal registry 1192 which is the ada code for rapid transit. one of the comments that we had from the public early on was that people often stand in the wheelchair zone and our signage is on the wall and the people standing there block the signage. so as other people board, they don't realize it's a priority zone and don't yield it without being asked to. for that reason, we made the decision to install, em bed actually a wheelchair symbol in the floor in the area and we think that will encourage people to be more courteous. we were also in the design process able to remove for lack of a better term, a bulge in the wall in

the wheelchair area which really pushed wheelchair users further out into aisle. by removing that bulge, it moves it out of the flow of traffic. we also talked about the lcd screens. we couldn't put them on all walls and had to make the choice of what seats would have the best visibility for those screens and we ended up choosing to put them directly across from the wheelchair zone. the seats themselves by popular demand including from a lot of people with disabilities are a little bit higher off the floor. the old seats were much lower than other transit systems. i don't know why. that was a decision made probably 50 years ago,

but when we went out early in the project and compared the seat height of our cars with other transit systems, we found ours was by far the lowest and really didn't know why. so we've now raised them up. we tested different heights, with the general public and also people with different denlts -- disabilities and people with different height stature and found 18 -inch height was suggested. we tested higher than that but they fell off especially with shorter individuals. we set the chairs at an 18 -inch height. the higher seats will have secondary effects. they will provide a little higher room for those who have guide dogs as well as more room for leading uggage. now -- leading eading now that bart

serves the international airport. leading uggage is an important component especially with carry on sized bags provide a place they can be tucked out of the way in part to be out of the way for people with disabilities. another improvement that we made on the new train carcinogen credit to the bart task force is to situate the inter comes at the door. before they were away from the cars. it was not at a great location. another complaint we heard early on in the process is we heard bicycles can get in the way of people in wheelchairs. really no blame to any particular group and quite often people were very

courteous to each other and that doesn't happen. but it happened enough that we heard about it. we deliberately did in the new train car because we decided to add a third door to the car, we were able to provide a separate door to encourage bicycles to use that would help prevent as many tangles between bicycles and people with disabilities. finally the new train cars will have wider aisles in the streets. it was great to see that a lot of wheelchair users will have more space to move around and more flexibility to move from one part of the car to another. slide 7 talks

about features for individuals who are blind or have a vision impairment. one feature that will continue from the old cars are the external inter car barriers that are meant to help protect people with vision impairments from inadvertently stepping off the flat form and being in danger. those were retro fitted into old bart cars after ada was passed. but these will be built in from the ground floor to the new cars. i mentioned earlier that we often have people on bart that don't know what the next stop is or other important information like transfer information, the destination of the train, major delay advisories, etc. we have a 42-year-old pa system on most of the cars that doesn't function very

well. we also have employees that occasionally do not make announcements for various reasons, some legitimate and some due to employee performance. with the new train cars, we plan to remedy all of those issues. first of all we'll have a brand new pa system, a modern pa system that will perform much more reliably and with better sound quality. secondly, from the public comments we got decided to go ahead and put in and automated pa system with prerecorded message. it doesn't mean the train operator won't occasionally make messages for certain kind of delays, but at least the next stop, transfer information and route of the train kinds of message will

be automated. thirdly, we'll talk more about the poll in a minute. for people with sight impairment, we did add a contrast the color strip to the pole to provide greater visibility for lower vision individuals. slide 8 talks about a few other major improvements on the new train cars. first of all, i talked already about having more doors. that's going to make getting on and off the train faster and easier and take away for some people that feeling of panic that the doors may close before you have an opportunity to exit. it's going to have a secondary effect of reducing the volume of people going through each door by about a

third. i think that's going to be very helpful for people with disabilities as well as bicyclist and others who might need a little more time to be able to use the doors successfully. secondly, the new cars will have much better cooling systems. the old cars that were designed in the 1960s really were designed for all seated people because at that time bart could accommodate all the demands and seat everyone. and for that reason, the cooling systems were designed to deliver air to the seats, but as bart became more and more successful over the years and as a result more and more crowded and had more standees, we knew it was important to also deliver air to standees standing in the aisle and others. so, the new

cars will have much better modern cooling systems and much broader distribution of air on the car. that's going to be particularly valued by people standing on a hot car on a hot summer day. finally by popular demand because bart cars are quite loud especially the old cars, we have worked on a variety of strategies that will make the new fleet quieter for those on board. we'll be putting in comprehensive -- installation. in addition to those who came to view the car model got to see a demonstration of the new door technology these cars will have. the door

technology is called micro plug. for lack of a better description, i would say they are a little bit like a mini van door. in that it opens to the outside of the vehicle and when it closes it seals away the noise. for those of you that got a chance to see it and hear it, you probably had a feel for how much of an impact that can have. slide no. 9 talks about a tripod pole. one is each to the vestibule of the three doors. the term tripod is the fact that the third pole has three branches to increase the number of people that can hold on to

the pole. it provides a stable hand hold when the train is accelerating or decelerating or lurching. that was requested by people. however, like a lot of other things in life, when you solve one problem you may create new problems. we have had concerns particularly by wheelchair users and people with sight impairments or blind can ustomers. as a result of that feedback which came at first from the bart accessibility task force, we set upon three mitigations. first and most importantly we shifted the pole further away from the designated wheelchair zone. first 3 inches then to 4 inches. what that did is it

was just enough of a shift that it opened the accessible path wider to provide a good accessible path for wheelchair users. just to provide you context on that path, the car doors will be equal in width on the new trains to the old cars. that width is 54 inches which is 4 feet. by moving the pole is in excess of 48 inches wide. it's almost as wide as the door itself. now, the concern that we heard even after we moved, we took that first mitigation was that even though the path was fairly

wide, it was people holding onto the pole that would get in the way of others. so that is currently in front of us. the second mitigation we did was to enlarge the path. i talked about that previously. thirdly we have made a commitment to a public education campaign which we are calling for now cloet the clear -- "the clear of the path campaign". it's on the middle screen and some of you may have seen an example of that on the digital display on some of the train car model events. for those that didn't happen to see that, it's also available on our website at the url i gave earlier.

in addition to the visual for those who hear message, we plan to do audio "clear the path" message that we feel will be effective. we plan to provide prerecorded messages that a train operator can press as they are entering a station. we can run them at regular intervals as well. in particular if a train operator see's as they are entering a station see's a person with a disability, they can add to the frequency of that message by pressing the button. finally in addition to the three mitigations i identified, i call to the attention that a could i part -- key part of enhancing the

area for people using wheelchairs and of mobility will be the reduction of congestion on the new trains. what we hear from a lot of members on our task force is that even with our old train cars without a pole, without any of the other concerns, it is very difficult to board when bart is crowded in the peak period. so i mention that because i think it's probably belongs as a fourth mitigation because really it's as important or even more so than the other mitigations i mentioned. we have to reduce the crowding level on bart. so finally the last slide is called tripod pole options. what i have been doing the last week and will be continuing for the next week is to engage disability

organizations and individuals in a discussion of options to the tripod pole. the current design or at least the schematic of the design is shown on page 10. you can see many of the things that i described in the design. the green seats are the priority seats for people with disabilities and again, there is 50 percent more than we had on the old cars. you can see in the design the three doors, the two wheelchair zones, the designated area for bikes at the middle door to make it separate from the wheelchair areas and other features including the proposed pole locations and i'm sure it's too hard to see from a distance, but