when you have two older existing cars with two doors and the new cars with three doors. i can't really picture how people can actually navigate to figure out which door and you know even with signage, announcements, it's very hard to picture that. so, i know we brought it up at the task force the bart accessibility task force. i'm still really confused at how we are going to manage that or bart will manage that. the second one, i attended the

loop, it was wonderful. you can hear everything through the head set it's just a good technology. those are my comments oovment briefly we are going to be indicating displaying on the platforms whether it's a new or old train and creating a symbol by it to be tied to the marking on the flat form. so there will be an audio, visual, a color coding tie in between the designated cars and the cars will have a symbol. it will be a green bike symbol or ada blue wheelchair area on the side of the car. you will get a clue on the side of the car. there will be passengers that

are confused. >> i have one more comment about the bicycles. it's going to be door 1 and 3. what was the compromise for the bikes? >> one of the doors will have bikes. andre ethier 1 or 3 depending on which direction the train is traveling. >> that's another confusing part. okay, thank you. i have a couple of questions. obviously quite a bit of effort and time went into issues that surfaced last year and i appreciate what bart has done. i have a couple questions. there is a bike rack that holds three bicycles, correct? are there bikes allowed on the cars then or is it a maximum of three for

each car? >> well, right now there is no restriction on it. some transit agencies restrict a number of bikes per area, so, you know, right now the wording is if bart train can reasonably accommodate a bike, i over see the department that runs the bike program and i watch this all the time. i have never seen a bicyclist say it's too crowded for me. they are always coming on. they never say, you know what, if you are late for a meeting, you are going to make room. they are really good to say, excuse me, everyone using that pole, i'm going there to that designated area which is where they should be. if bart allows it, they should be out of the way. there isn't concurrently a rule. we just did a survey on how passengers are

viewing this change of policy. people are accepting of it so far. if there is a little bit more conflict it's something we are watching. the policy can change. we didn't allow it, now we do. bicycles are exploding on bart. we've added 6,000 parking spaces in our district for bikes and they are full. we are trying to make it more attractive by putting bikes on the inside. we are adding bike stations at the civic center so people don't to have bring their bikes on board but what happens is more and more bikes are coming on to bart which is a good problem but a bad problem. it is an option. other transit agencies have deployed it to limit bike access. >> okay, my next question is about an

ada coordinator. is there a full time ada coordinator at bart who can help you get it better the first time in the future? maybe not completely perfect, but maybe avoid some of the difficulties that happened this last time. >> i am the ada coordinator for federal purposes. so i am the chief point of contact when dealing with the fta for a variety of reasons and i was appointed for this process. i think that we are never going to get it right the first time. we put in a detectable pathway and we made a right turn. every time it deviated and made a right turn. it's a zigzag that is really hard to follow. it seems like we are always going to

have to -- we have to try it in a small area. so with the new cars, our current fleet, if you look at our current fleet we have reconfigured it. even though there is controversy, it can be adjusted. it's a change order to bart. the solutions are we can remove a pole, we can take out a seat very easily with these new trains. we are going to have a lot more cars with this new fleet in service and hopefully that will ease crowding but when it gets crowding again, there are options. i am the coordinator. i intend to voice my opinion, not that they will listen to me all the time. [ laughter ] . >> well, i have to ask that question and one final question. it's always the elephant in the room in san francisco when we talk about bart and that's the

elevator situation in the downtown station. you have to go down one level to get off the ticketing level down to the exchange levels. i want to say it so you hear it and take it back that we still need to work on that. >> okay, i have heard it and we are looking at that physically and we are also, if you look on bart, on the station pages, it gives an accessible pathway. it's a poor description right now. it gives you directions to the elevator. in washington d.c. they have this new application that was for the blind, they did a click and go demonstration that gives more specific clues to all portals. so you will get the layout of the land before you go to

an area so we can physically describe it but we are also looking to make the improvement to not have people go to get into system and get into the platform you have to go a long ways, often. >> okay, i have a question from council member member harriet wong? >> thank you for your presentation, mr. franklin. so with the new cars, i was wondering are there going to be less space because i'm a bart rider also. >> there are going to be less seats. i believe there is 56 seats versus 60 on the current fleet. we are having, let me hold up the -- so because of the third door, it takes away seats but that does allow faster boarding

and makes it easier for people to get on and off the train. so right now there is getting we have unfortunately the bart system we have four lines feeding to san francisco. so any problem in san francisco backs up the whole system. so we really need to get people on and off the trains through two doors. people like to stay by the door so they can get off even though they might not be getting off immediately. this third door comes at a consequence of less seats. >> thank you. >> is there any questions from staff? >> yes. to the chair. >> sorry, you snuck in there. council member kostanian has a question. >> i wonder for the bicycles, what you have there to secure the bikes? >> it's this rubber two part

contraption where you wedge your tire in between so it doesn't fall over. so you rollin and it secures the bike. >> okay, joanna? >> thank you very much for your presentation and i know you have the dubious honor of being the ada coordinator and you have taken the task to heart with continuing education and such. i want to also talk about the elephant in the room as a frequent user of bart and the only thing i have to say is that it's really fortunate that i work for the mayor's office on disability issues that understand access for bart users because over the winter i have been late to work pretty much every single day most often

because the civic center elevator has been out of service constantly. often times during the big storm both the civic center elevator and the bart elevator went out of service and one would have to come to montgomery or embarcadero to get downtown. making a long story short, those that rely on elevators if you have an elevator inoperable please contact to range for repair service. being caught in the downpour i did such a thing and the bart agents knew nothing about it. the only option they had was to call para transit which is not a demand responsive system and my only option was to turn right back around and work from home. the reason i'm saying such a

thing is because this is explained from a lot of us who work downtown who use wheelchairs. when we talk about the ava and equal opportunity to being able to access the system, users will rely on elevators are exposed to very unequal ways of accessing the system. if i were a biker, i could lift my bike up the stairs and up the escalator, but i don't have an option. so what many of us thought it would be a much more appropriate response to actually when we have long-term outages and in stations and the closest place to travel is so far away is to have a shuttle on call or waiting rather than trying to deal with the 3-hour or 4-hour wait. it's just not an

equivalent way of access ing the system. i understand the people with disabilities get a discounted fair but the exposures we have on a daily basis, i know you said the added bart center in the station, but safety is an issue and there is no proper force : we are exposed to crack smoke and other issues. >> we do have a service advisory that we send out throughout our website, text, e-mail, to let people know the status of the elevators. that's one thing. if it doesn't help you, the para transit service is on a demand where walden house -- when there is an elevator. even though you are not a

transit user, we certify our agents every 2 years and this is in the training that we have the number to call and we have arranged for reciprocal relationship for para transit to get to service quickly. sometimes there is a wait. you are entitled to request of the service agent to request para transit to bring you to the next place. >> with a two 1/2 hour of estimated arrival. i will look into that. that is in my area. i will get back to you. we have a policy and i will clarify that and when we replace the elevator floors we are going to be taking an elevator out of service and we will be having full time para transit vehicles at that location during the outage. i think where there is sometimes even

though we can call para transit there is sometimes other transit agencies that in different parts of the district that maybe a better option in the interim. like if you can use muni practically. not if the elevator is there. >> just practically where it's just an option that, it's either a wait for a para transit if you have to go to an area or sometimes there is public agencies depending on where you are that sometimes is a better option. it doesn't let bart off the hook, but practically it's something to consider. >> to the chair, a comment too. one of the roles of the ada

coordinator program is really to have a centralized place where people can file complaints in realtime as they are happening to try to take some corrective action. are you now that single point of contact person? >> we have a contact page. i am, but we also, there is different ada complaints and we do have i can reconfigure our web page. we have direct points of contact if it's an employment issue, whatever the particular issue is. but that's a good point and i will put on the top, if you are not sure, contact me. >> i think it's a good suggestion because sounds like some of these reports might be surprising if you have some of these not followed for whatever reason. i think if you have

that, it will be helpful. i want to thank you for your presentation. it was really comprehensive and also responsive to so many issues that were raised in the community over the last year. i have one final question. it's actually, it might seem small but to me it's meaningful. to me it's the color configuration that you chose. the bart chose to use blue for the regular seats and green for the accessible seats. that's so counter intuitive for what we are trained to look for in a disability community because we always look for the federal international blue when we are trying to identify the disabled features. i would urge you to reconsider that color scheme so that it can be simpler and easier to read for people especially who might have cognitive disabilities and have

some different problems translating. >> i can respond if you would like. >> sure. >> i think council member wong had written a letter articulating that same point. this wasn't my decision. but the reasoning for this decision was the green was just too goddy for all the seats. and it should be brighter for to call attending to it. that's whether or not you disagree or agree with the reasoning, that's the rational for the board for aesthetic purposes. >> all right, thank you very much. >> thank you very much >> heather? >> i have a quick comment for

the color option. for people who have color blindness, those colors might not be the best to consider especially the green. perhaps that could be reviewed as well. >> okay. thank you. >> i have a comment card for mr. brown. is this the item you want to comment on? okay. so later today. later in the meeting. thank you. >> all right. thank you very much, we are going to move on. our next agenda item is an update on the development of the new affordable housing data portal. we have mr. chiu ms. yanga and ms. sallee. >> good afternoon, brian chew director of community development and

mayor's housing and community development. i think as many of you may recall we gave a presentation i want to say last fall was the time when we were preparing comments on our annual consolidated plans that we sent to hud and we solicited input from you, the council, as best we could toen corporate in our plan and what we spoke about was the creation of an online housing data portal in our attempt to make access to our unfortunately somewhat limited affordable housing more achievable by the broad range of san francisco residents. we are here to give you an update on the process. i will give you a little bit about where we are and who we worked with to get to this point and then mr. solomon will talk a little bit more specifically about the

technical aspects of creating the website and my primary point is that to give you some information but to actually solicit as much input as we can get from you before we go forward with factual design process so that we can make sure we address all of your needs. up to this point we have been working with sales force.com that has provided the initial platform for an online portal for our below market rate rental and ownership units. it hasn't launched yet. it's still in our beta testing processes. but we hope that it will be able to be launched i'm hoping within the next few months. along with that, that was phase one of our process and then we started with our below market rate units because they were a

portfolio that was within our control. we oversaw the application process and the lottery process. in phase two, our department and partnership with the mayor's office of civic innovation will be expanding the pool of possible affordable housing options to include the broader range of 100% affordable units traditionally operated by our affordable housing developer. so that is tenderloin neighborhood development core or community housing partnership. as many of you may know the current process of when there are lease ups it requires the individual to consult a paper list that you can pick up and many of our tenant counseling agencies that

gloria put together would then require and individual to call every property manager separately and you couldn't find the form on the web and you had to physically get there. sometimes people wouldn't answer the phone and you got there and you found out the wait list was already closed and you wasted a whole day trying to get there and each time you would have to start fresh giving your information over and over again. the concept here is that with this new system, you will be able to search online for all the availability housing when the full system is up and running, there might be something that we would like to call, for lack of a better term -- an eligibility wizard so all of your information stays in that account. put in information about yourself whether you are a

senior or veterans status and automatically you will be shown those units for which you are eligible for and you will get constant e-mail notifications when a building opens up you may have the opportunity to apply for that and when you apply all the information that you have already put in, you will probably get a prompt to update information but that will be sent to the processors. we are working now with a conventions of affordable housing workers themselves, as well as tenant counseling groups. so independent living resource center, self-help for the elderly, eviction defense collaborative. those groups kind of working together to determine how we can take the initial application process and simplify it. there

are many questions on initial applications which people need to fill out just to get into lottery which require extensive workforce history, rental history, uploading of documents, thousands of people filling out these forms and for most people unfortunately most people won't get into first part of the lottery. what we want to do is move to a very simple upfront list where people don't have to provide really much information. just provide your name and household information and income size and family composition. really that's it. that's all we need to know to at least get you into that lottery. if you are fortunate enough to be selected in that lottery process then you go and work with the

affordable housing developer and they will look into your history. it takes the burden off because what we are concerned with is that initial burden can be very overwhelming and many of our folks are lucky to find a tenant counsel to help them with it but we assume some people are not able to do that. we want to make that as accessible as possible. we are fortunate enough to get some pro bono assistance with those techie s at google. they assigned three of their techies to give us full time

assistance to their access of their own accessibility teams for access issues. mike can tell you more about the tech side. we hope we've done what we can to try to get enough input around what the existing barriers are. victoria has present at all of our meetings and obviously they are not there to speak for all people with disabilities. we can try to come up with a process that will be accessible by everyone. one issue that i know was a concern i think of this group before that while putting an online application does

create to some degree ease accessibility there is a disability that is a divide for those individuals which that might not work. what are we trying to do. right now we have been expanding the funding that we are offering to a number of different organizations so that we'll be able to offer neighborhood specify accessible hubs so within those neighborhoods, within those communities people will be able to go to hopefully a trusted location with someone that can assist them in accessing those computers that will allow them to go on. we are even looking at the possibility of some later point of connecting up with mobile phones and i'm sure people have access to smartphones that have access to laptops and desk tops now.

that's a little bit down the ways. with that, we are hoping to take what we've now built which is not yet up to all the standards that we'd like and apply through the funding that we've been able to receive bring it to the highest level of accessibility standards by the state regulations that we are aware of and we'll also be translating every single page of the website to spanish and tagalog to make sure those languages that we discussed and more languages russian and others that we support. that's where we are now. and although we want to incorporate the guidelines that we are able to, that we know about whether state and federal guidelines and advice from some of the disability

advocates, we'd love to hear from you about just additional ideas whether or not they are mandated. we are certainly not limited to that. we just really want to think of the best possible way. in our vision we feel as if for people that are looking to purchase market rate homes or people without disabilities we feel as if the products which they are offered are many steps above what we are able to offer now and we feel as if your income level or whether or not you have a disability, you should be able to get that same level of professional service and professional access. that's all from my part.