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 it does show the dimensions of the accessible path and i even need to hold it close to my eyes to read them to you, but the engineering measurement for the path from the doorway to the wheelchair zone is 48.83 inches and the path to the aisle is 42.78 inches. the car that's pictured there is a cab car which is a car that has a train operator space, the cab where it operates. the non-cab cars will look very similar except

instead of the cab there, you will have more seating. 40 percent of the bart cars are cab cars and the other 60 percent have more seating than the cab cars. so, we have put the poles in for a reason. you heard it today. we've also got some issues that we want to work through. i can tell you anecdotally that when we were out talking to 17,000 people the last few weeks, we did hear a lot of people who found the pole valuable. a lot of people with disabilities as well as senior citizens and shorter individuals, people with balance issues, for example. but we also heard loud and clear a lot of people who had issues with the pole. so that's why we are out talking to people. i was at the similar council on the oakland mayor's side earlier this week and i have invited

a number of disability organizations to meet with me and talk about how do we find a balance that meets the needs, the diverse needs of different groups. so that concludes my presentation. i want to again thank all of you for having me here today. and i would be pleased to answer questions or hear your comments. >> thank you very much mr. wine stein for coming here. now we'll take questions from the council. councilmembers, cochairs? cochair supanich? >> hi. thank you very much for your presentation. unfortunately i was unable to get to a real new bart car, but this presentation really made it clear to me what the challenges have been and continue to be. and i just

had a few questions about the design. are the cars the same size as the old bart cars, the dimensions inside and outside? >> the outside dimensions are almost exactly the same. on the inside, we did lose some space. if you look at the figure on page 10, you will see some shaded areas at the very ends of the car. not the cab so much as the other, the non-cab and all the cars. in that shaded space is a safety buffer zone that is in response to emerging safety standards. that's for crash safety. the ends at that shaded space is meant to be a collapsible section of the car that protects the passenger compartment. as a result you can see we lost almost a whole row of seats on each end. we

did design the seats to be more space efficient to cover the row we lost. that is one different in terms of the interior dimensions of the new cars. >> then in total do they hold the same number of people seated and standing? >> the seated part first of all, the new cars will seaton average 53 can ustomers. that averages the carb and non-cars. in the old cars seaton average 58.6. there is a 4.6 seat reduction. it is a common comment that we get from the general public that there are fewer seats and concern about that especially for those riding long distances or those who have a disability that really does require that they not be on their feet for that kind of length of time. fortunately, although we will have fewer

seats per car, we will have more seats over all. and what that means is instead of the 669 cars we have today, our fleet size will be much larger and if we can get to our thousand car goal, we'll net a 38 percent increase in seats in the fleet. that means that 6-7-car trains can be 8 or 9 cars and trains that are already 10 cars, for those situation we are working on an upgrade to our train control system that will allow us to reduce our head way and put in more trains to add more seats. then on the standing room, i'm sorry, the new cars will have approximately 10 percent more standing room. >> okay. i notice there is bike racks. is that on every

single car? >> the current proposal is a bike rack at the middle door of all the cars. >> it holds six? >> it holds three bikes per rack. >> is that going to ease, is that enough? there is a lot of people that use the bikes on bart. really that's where i see a lot of hurt feelings and frustration around bikes and wheelchairs and people who are disabled being in that area. are you confident that this will improve with these cars. i realize if we had more cars, less people per cars that will alleviate the situation. we are still figures from that. is there anything you can do now with bart cars to make it easier for people with disability especially

mobility disabilities, but also, well, all, really to get on and off the cars in a manageable manner as the sign is placed. >> so, in terms of the number of cars we deploy each day we are at our limit. in other words we just, you know, if we had more cars we would put them out there to relieve congestion, but we just don't have them. we have in the last year taken out seats to make more room for bicycles. i know that's helpful for people in a wheelchair when they are not present, they use that space. for new cars for better or worse because we are in that space krungch and the loss for the cars for safety reasons,

the new cars will have less floor space, the wheelchair zones will have the same size but bike space are losing about 50 percent of the space. with the organized rack approach, we can accommodate nearly as many bikes as half the space. >> is that the only place where bikes are allowed? >> there is no rule for bikes to a rack. i think your original question is will there be enough? i think sometimes yes and sometimes no. for perspective bart trains at 700 feet long, with one rack per car will provide enough capacity for 30 bicycles and probably additional one if a bicyclist want to keep their bike with them. it's a fairly significant capacity. >> thank you.

>> councilmember wong? >> hi, thank you again for coming out to get this presentation and also for participating in the outreach and everything. i have one still a little concerned about the color of the priority seating. the lime green or lime yellow. i find that it's really too bright and i know that i understand that it would help people to actually find a seat once you get into car. i try to find it through the transportation regulations, i don't know what they call it to see if there is a color scheme for

compliance with the ada. i was suggesting to probably use the international color, well, i don't know if it's international color, but ada symbol that usually is blue and to basically reconsider the priority seating as ada blue and the other seating would be another color. i was just thinking maybe gray to kind of compliment the train. so, i don't know what is the requirement as far as the color, but if we can at least make it consistent with the american disability's act. i would really like to see that as a suggestion.

second part is about the pole. i'm very mixed with that. you know, personally i can't get around it pretty well with my chair but i'm concerned with those who can't move when it gets very very crowded. i have more concern about that. i know we talked about it in our outreach. i thought i would bring it to this meeting and see what if we can talk about it too. thank you. >> councilmember kostanian? >> thank you. a question, how much more of an increase do you see in size for public accommodation? >> i want to make sure i

understand your question. is it in regards to the wheelchair zone? >> possibly yes. >> so, the wheelchair zone is comprised with the federal registry dimensions. i believe they are 32 x 48. it has some extra room beyond that. does that answer your question? >> i'm thinking about other times of the day also especially in the rush hours? >> we will have about 10 percent more standing room per car. so i think in general, we'll be better off having more cars and that will make a big difference. >> thank you. >> now, i just have a few

quick questions. then we'll go to a break and then we'll come back. we will hear from the staff and go directly to public comment. thank you for being patient with the crowd. this is a very important issue today and we appreciate your patience. just right off the bat, thank you for coming today and talking to us about these issues. they are great bart cars. one of the questions i had was, could you give me your impression or your opinion on how, on the process for how the bart accessible task force has been working with bart representative and if you can shed some light for how that process works. >> sure, we also have in the audience the chair and vice-chair of the atf. they

may also in the public session be able to describe more fully how that works. but they produce agendas based on their assessment of what kinds of issues in the bart system need attention that could be in the stations in the parking lots, a lot of accessible path issues, it could be new stations that we are building. i know they are working hard on that. because that's a real chance to come up to code with upgrades. there is also a lot of reinvestment in bart stations and that is something they weigh in on. and then also there is, you know, a project managers that partly for compliance reasons they approach the bart accessibility task force to agenda ized and item to get the feedback to get the right design from the beginning. in my case, that was what we

did. it was something that i felt was really important. i think i mentioned earlier i was able to meet with them at least 8 times so far especially one session, we did one session at the ed roberts campus to do a two dimensional look at the floor space of the new cars. that was just one of those first steps. their input has been invaluable. in many cases we've been able to make changes . i talked about them today. in many cases they weren't for practical reasons. but i would say that over all their input was one of the most important parts of the process over the last 3 years. >> thank you. and with that, i will stop and we will go to a break for 10 minutes. and when

we come back we will resume with comments, questions from staff and then we'll go directly to public comment. b would like to go ahead and just let you know that i had been a little negligent before we went to break. we will go to staff comment and then to agenda item 7. which we'll be having feedback from disability and senior organizations on the bart new car design. we have three speakers there. then we'll go to public comment on agenda item 6. i apologize. it was a little off kilter the way it

was presented. for now let's continue on to comments and questions from staff. >> yes, thank you, cochair. is it okay if i ask the speaker a couple of questions or is it just comments that you seek. >> questions. >> questions are acceptable? great. i had a question. it sounds like congestion is going to be so much better by having more cars and a different design that allows for more people to stand, but how does it factor in increased rider ship based upon the growth of our system over time. will we see those benefits disappear as more people start using the system? >> i think that that would depend on whether we can continue to increase