we're increasing service and part because of the increased demand and more people moving here and more people using transit and you will see increased demand. this is a map of the schools and the city shown in black as well as the transit system so you can see the dense network of service that we have and every school within a five minute walk. this colorful map shows all of the student boarding activity we have been reporting through free muni for youth and as they tag on with the clipper card we know if they're using the system and the routes that jump out are the 38 and richmond and visitacion valley and chinatown,let 29 sunset and serves schools across some of the outer neighborhoods including the sunset, all the way over to the bay view, 14

mission, 49 up van ness and down the line so we do have a set of routes that we watch very closely for school activity and we increase the service during school times so in the morning as well as from about the two to four period in the afternoon. as i mentioned we do have about 27 routes that are shown on the map below and match some of the routes we talked about so the green line for example is the 28 which is a heavily used school route. the purple is the 38. these are buses that start empty at school at the end of the day, and what that allows is for students just to leave the building and get on the bus and they do the regular school route. we are not -- because we receive federal transit administration funds we're not able to just have school only routes or routes that just have

students on them but by adding the extra routes into the schedule they full up with students and they continue to do the regular routes. we're always evaluating and responding to requests where we theed this and i think within the last six weeks add one on folsom and 20 20th at john o'connell and two schools came together so there was increased demand for service so we added a bus there, and the folks in the muni transit assistance program they help facilitate getting students on the vehicles. they meet with principals and they often ride the buses when students are most vulnerable, so that's been a really successful program as well. we tried for that program as much as possible that hire people that come from the low

income neighborhoods that students are riding from so there is a relationship and it's a known face and known commodity, so that's something that has worked very well and is a resource to principals throughout the city. this map here shows the free muni for youth activity by zip code. you can see over 26,000 students have enrolled in the program since its inception of march 2013. we extended the eligibility to include 18 year olds as well as 19-22 year olds that are enrolled in sfusd education services. the program costs over two years in the order of $8 million. our next challenge will be to find a stable long-term funding source for this program, but it is heavily used throughout the city in particular in the southeast

quadrant as well as the north of market. we are also always trying to learn more about how students use the system. we did the transit effectiveness project which is a systems study in 2007 and 2008. i had the opportunity to do focus groups with students and really talk to them. we partnered with the youth commission so we had student facilitators so we trained the students and they had a dialogue and that was really interesting and we learned a lot about some of the challenges and opportunities of riding muni. we also were able to secure quite a bit of real estate on the 2013 youth vote survey to try to get a better noting what perceptions were on the system and how they were traveling. in know jt students in the school -- in general

students gave muni high marks in terms of the on time performance, in terms of safety. some of the things that caught our attention when we ask them -- well, how many are planning ride as adults? and less than 50% answer yes and i think that is short term and being enamored with the automobile. we learn when kids develop habits young and ride transit young they carry it throughout their life. i am also excited to report on what i think is a really positive upward trajectory for the overall muni system but particularly affects students that have to make more than one transfer or traveling a long distance to get to a school. about six months ago we hit a pretty low point in terms of service delivery. we didn't have enough operators and we

were missing about 5% of the service everyday. that doesn't sound very much but it's 500 trips so 500 buses that were supposed to show up that didn't. if you're somebody that takes the 12 folsom to school that means if one trip is missing you might had to wait 30 minutes for the next vehicle. we had an intenseir operator hiring program under way and graduating about 40 to 45 each month and exceeding our goal of 99% of the scheduled service and improving our on time performance also. we're also reducing the amount of vehicle break downs that we have and that can be tough. if you're trying to get to school and the bus breaks down it's almost like the dog ate my homework and so we are seeing by focusing on key components that were breaking down and

actually replacing them through capital investments we're seeing a really positive trends in the vehicle break downs and introducing new buses to the system and we had 112 purchased and more to come and with the goal in the next years to completely replace the bus fleet. the reason i was flagging this service because one of the results of this mixed service you end up with more vehicles crowded than otherwise so during the a.m. peak when kids are trying to get to school and we had 9% of trips full and it's hard to get on the bus. you may or may not be passed up but it's an unpleasant experience and as the green bars increase you see the numbers drop so far fewer full

buses and we expect that trajectory to continue to improve because we are adding service to many of our school routes. we have a 10% service increase planned and a lot of the heavy school routes are the first to receive more service. in january we increase service on the 44. that was where we went out and talk to students at hillcrest elementary on silver and between seven and 750 they were having two buses pass them because they couldn't get on, so we increased service on that route. on april 25 we're going to be increasing service on some of our heaviest ridership routes and touch about 30% of the bus customers or 165,000 a day and outer mission

and visitacion valley and the chinatown area and along mission, the 28 line which serves schools through both the marina and richmond and the sunset, the 29 sunset and the 38 geary, so that's something we're really exciting about. we're also as i said ordering new buses which will give more 60-foot articulated buses to put on the 30 stockton route and have a bus every two and a half minutes but it's a small bus and if we can get the 60-foot buses out there that will help tremendously with crowding. in addition to the service increases we are working on things to make the service safer and more reliable and give transit more priority in our streets. we are really blessed that the voters just passed prop a and prop b which will invest 500 million into the

infrastructure for pedestrian and transit reliability part of which is 40-miles of muni investments and more dedicated transit lanes, bus bulbs so the bus doesn't need to pull in and out of traffic and more room toit wa. new signals and things like that and work that i am really proud of that is still a work in process is that last may the mta board adopted a muni service equity policy which essentially says that we're going to be looking at six low income neighborhoods annually but right now we're going through and collecting a lot of data, going out and talking to customers and residents, and trying to understand what are the biggest transit challenges facing these neighborhoods and then we're going to link the new investments to both our capital and operating budget so we're in the process now of establishing

the baseline and then next january we will be bringing the mta board recommendations that then would feed into the budget process so many of the neighborhood issues where for example low income students are trying to get across the city are issues that we're targeting in the equity strategy and we're finding that the issue vary by neighborhood. in chinatown for example the biggest issue is crowding. there's pretty frequent access, easy to get places whereas in the bay viewt challenge is reliability and connectivity because it's further out. >> [inaudible] >> okay before that i had a clarifying question. when you were sharing the data about number of crowded buses how do you defined crowded and how did you collect that data? >> we have automatic passenger

counters, about 30% of the buses and circulate in the system so we get rich data this counter is essentially two laser beams. if you break this one first you're getting on and the next one you're getting off and not whether you pay or not but tracking everyone that gets on and off the bus and gives datsa how many are boarding and which stops and crowding and we defined crowding on the buses based on a square footage per passenger so we assume all of the seats are full and there are some standees but it's not packed to the gills situation, so on a 60-foot bus for example we can serve a bus if it has 90 or 100 people on it is full and for a 40-foot bus it's full if there is about 60 people on it so it's a combination of seating and standees.

>> sorry for 60-foot bus how many seats? >> there's about 60. >> about 60 so you're talking about all of the seats are taken and 50% more are standing on the bus? >> yes. >> actually i am surprised and impressed there is that way to capture that data i didn't realize we had that technology and capturing people entering and exiting off of muni and helpful and interesting how you define crowding. very helpful. commissioner fewer. >> yes thank you. so i also have a clarifying question. on the sfusd use of the transportation system -- the sort of stats that you have here do you know the actual number of students that you're serving? >> yeah, we know using -- the best data that we have is the

students using the free muni for youth because they're tag on and off everyday and we have about 29,000 boarding a day. we have additional student customers on top of that that do not meet the low and moderate income -- >> sure. >> it should give a order of magnitude. >> excuse me. this was done by the uc berkeley school of public health so i wanted to know if there is a number -- it says percentages but we don't have numbers of students that were surveyed, or is this -- >> we would be happy -- >> [inaudible] students so i am wondering about the sampling and how large it is. >> we are happy to follow up on that. >> and i have the same question for the 2013 survey on student perceptions of muni, and was this all grades? is it just high schools i guess and how

many students participated, the actual number so what does it really represent? i think that would be helpful too and also were the surveys done in multiple languages or only in english so if you can get that information that would be great too. >> absolutely. the youth vote survey is not a transportation specific survey. it's a survey done by dcyf. >> right. >> and i believe they do have -- >> coleman started it. >> i believe it's multilingual and get a robust sample size but we're happy to follow up. >> thank you very much. >> thank you. i just had a couple of follow up questions. when we were doing research around this issue we came across the transit website and they had a page just listing the bus lines serving schools in alameda county and i am curious if we have something similar along this line. it seemed like a

great resource for students and families to learn which bus lines kind of connect to which schools throughout the county. >> i think that's a great question and actually gets into the last slide which is that we are really excited about improving opportunities for collaboration, and one of the things that i think would be most impactful is a grant that anna lazzic from the department of public health which is going to transportation road map for. >> >> is it 100 schools? >> yes. >> for over a hundred schools and go into the school handbook and available to new and current parents so it will show the key transit routes. it will show the walk paths as well as bike sharing and other multi-modal facilities and that's something

i think we could then also incorporate into a more visible web page that we share so we have also talked about that and opportunities to make some of the great resources that we have more available, so identifying a single point of contact for sfusd and sfmta is something we identified as a key next step. we have also -- we have a good system of coordination in place. just this last president's day where the school district approached it differently. they wanted to give people an opportunity for a four day weekend so instead of monday as a holiday they took thursday and friday as the holiday, but we were running a saturday schedule because it was president's day and there was no work so what we did was we worked with the school district to make sure that all of the schools were notified. that blasts were sent out and we supplemented

strategically on some of the routes that i showed you so we had the extra buses were students were, so another kind of key area is to look at potentially coordinating school start and end times to ease crowding on muni routes. that's something that the schools help with but there is an opportunity to coordinate the local crossing guard program to ensure common standards and practices. we have school guards that we train but there are more local programs and then just sharing trends and statistics. we're really excited about the potential of repeating the youth vote survey in 2015 that we did in 2013. >> okay. thank you. and i just want to clarify -- actually sorry there are several more folks on the roster that want to ask questions. i want to

clarify and according to the slide you have on page 19 our students shouldn't have seen any crowding on the buses between eight and nine and three to 4:00 p.m. from november to now. >> no, i want to clarify that there is a relationship between -- >> oh i see. >> between service -- >> okay. >> but we also have -- >> [inaudible] >> systematic crowding which is why we're increasing the service 10%. >> i see. i see. >> so i expect -- now that we have all of the service delivered and we're about to increase the service that these numbers are going to continue to go down. >> i see, and the 5% that we have seen from november to now are the routes that you listed on the next page and include the [inaudible] and 14l. >> yes. the routes that are increased in april are shown on this slide and 44 was already

increased and we're going to do two more service increases in september when school starts and then in february of 2016 so we have 10% planned and we're doing it in about 3% chunks. >> thank you. commissioner wynns. >> thank you. i really want to thank you for this. i do want to say i want to particularly express my thanks to muni for putting on the extra buses during the -- because it took us years to get there, years and years and years of being told that couldn't be done, and it seemed particularly -- >> are you talking about the school troopers? >> yes and it seemed particularly difficult for students to understand that and maybe increase a lot of activism around transportation because it wasn't as much of a problem in the morning when adults go to

work when they go to school but in the afternoon there was increased frequency of buses and streetcars when adults were going home but they were very crowded in the afternoon when kids were going home from school so it took a long time and i really, really appreciate it so much, and actually the data that shows how much less crowded the buses are is really remarkable, and also i really -- i do want us to pay attention to which is kind of surprising to me, the data about how kids are getting to school, who is using what transportation systems and other ways to get to school. it is amazing how many -- what percentage of kids come to school by car, so i am hoping that we're figuring out ways to sort of market our transportation services more so that we can encourage more families to use the public transportation system, and that's an area they would like

us to collaboratively work on because it's information we can get out to our families. thank you. >> thank you. commissioner mendoza and fewer. >> thank you. so i am excited that one of the conversations that we have been having was around having mta as part of the prop c and what we're trying to build in regard to policies for young people and their families so this will be an opportunity to go forward with a lot of the recommendations that you've already mentioned, and i am just curious on the current process of communications, and i am asking because in particular because we have a school, a charter school that is getting moved from potrero hill over to the bay view and there's

conversations around how to we communicate to you guys that there's now going to be 300 new students coming into the bay view and when we look at the routes that come through and i think it's the 44 and the 54, how do we communicate to you this is happening, one? and secondly, how we can engage the ambassadors during the peak times? because we have young people coming from multiple zip codes and coming into the top of the hill, so i am curious how that can get sorted through, and i i've had conversations with director reiskin and i sent him over a heat map to show where the kids are coming from. i don't know if you saw that yet. >> we did. i think it gets to the first part here which is identifying a single point of contact, so as things like that change that you don't have to go to ed reiskin to make sure that

we're coordinating with the school. we did have an opportunity for the school. sue lu went out and talked with the principal about their program. the 44 and the 54 do go right by the site, but they're also going to be providing some shuttles to third street and glen park and what we agreed to do was to be there in the fall and then support the school as those changes will allow, but i think a key is a single point of contact. a lot of information that we get now is through principals and them reaching out. >> commissioner fewer. >> yes thank you. so this presentation actually answered many, many questions so thanks for this update. it's very appreciated. so this last week i met with some students from lincoln high school and as wanting to find out because

they have i think for a couple years have been looking at great impact of the impact that muni has had on the transportation of schools to their school around reliability. also students have so i wanted to mention some things and some of the things they mentioned actually were being addressed already so that is great but they wanted to also say that they seem to have a difference of opinion around the need for increased transportation. they felt that as high school students the need for transportation to school they need more buses there then rather than after school and after school kids disperse to many areas. they hang out with friends, stay at schools with sports and clubs and activities after school but to get to school everyone must be there at the same time so they're saying many times buses pass them up.

every single student has been late for school multiple times because of muni and they say it's the over crowding. buses will not pick emup if it's too crowded and students gave a recommendation for racks and the barack backpacks and they said what isn't on the list and i thought i would mention it. >> >> so the 48 apparently serves many schools and not just public schools so it's greatly impacted so those students on a 48 and also the 44 they say it's a constant problem but they also mention the 29 and it serves so many schools on the route and they don't often get picked up but i see it's being addressed here but the 48 service ends --

it doesn't run after 9:00 a.m. and not before 3:00 p.m.. now i never heard of that frankly and i am not familiar with the route but they said the 48 -- so if you want to get to school late you can't take the 48 because it doesn't run and they early release and yet they're out before 3:00 p.m. so they wanted me to bring that issue to you also. everyone that i spoke to, students, they all ride the bus two and from school so that is very good, but one student got a ride but it was very rare. most felt safe on the bus but they have also had phones taken. they have witnessed some violence on the buses, but and let's see what else did they

say. they seem to see less of the transit enforcers ever since we had free muni for youth and i am wondering about that. are students getting less tickets for not having a validation of having paid so that was a question i wanted to ask you. >> well, i love talking to kids because you get these very practical suggestions. the 48 -- it's probably as close to a school route that we have because it's intended to go from west portal to third street and during school hours we extend it to the beach, and it's our only route that does that and one of our recommendations that came out of the transit effectiveness project and the system study it would be simpler and mobility benefit if it extended to the beach all day long and it's not

in the two year budget but it's something we will bring to the board in the next two year budget. with that being said extending it so that we're able to serve early school let outs that's a tweak that we could definitely look at, so i will get the -- through the staff i will get the contact information for that particular school and we can look at the start times because those adjustments are often relatively easy for us to make. the routes that you identified we are increasing, so the 28 in the morning we're slipping a few extra trips just because of that school activity, but over the next 12 months we're looking to increase service substantially along the 19th avenue corridor and make the 28 limited which is now at odd school times and all day

route and extend it to the mission so we have new connections that we don't have today. >> okay thank you very much. >> thank you. supervisor campos -- oh no, i am sorry. commissioner walton and then supervisor campos. >> thank you supervisor kim. just a quick question for my clarification because i am sure i thought you said school troopers or buses can't carry students because of federal regulations and resources. >> because we receive money from the federal transit administration we cannot be the yellow school bus so we cannot deliver service that is not public and by public they mean available to all potential customers and restricted to just students, but we do start routes as i said at the school so the students benefi