to colin. >> thank you, ben. good morning. the first of these that i will talk about is an effort to look at service in the all-night period. and we look a look at the existing service and how it is performing as well as where there are gaps in the existing network. we identified a set of recommendations that include things like improving route 91 as well as extending service to fisherman's wharf and some service improvements to the east bay and the peninsula. in terms of what is going on now, they have implemented a pilot of some of the service to the peninsula. meanwhi meanwhile, sfmta has applied for lifeline fund for the extensions to fishermen's wharf. meanwhile, a.c. transit, that service is in question at the moment because some of it was -- some of service is funded by bart pilot that is expiring. so we'll need some new funding to implement the service

recommendation there is. turning to location specific improvements, we worked with a couple of interested business districts here to conduct surveys of employers and employees. and identify what some needs were specifically in those neighborhoods, but could be generalized to other areas in the city. those include safety improvements, and lighting improvements as well as better access to transit information and so in addition to the city wide efforts and recommending as the agencies on the late night network and the vision zero network, we make sure we are incorporating the late night needs going forward. we launched a couple of rounds of the services that exist on

the street with the portal and a number of portals to point folks to that portal. it resulted in significantly increased traffic, so people are learning more about that. we recommend as we move forward that both transit agencies and m.t.c. could use the materials and information to continue to help spread the word. >> we worked with monitoring performance of the all nighter network on an ongoing basis and develop specific matrix including ridership and reliability. moving forward, we are formalizing that process of a biennial monitoring effort that will plan to lead. a couple of other things we worked with sfmta on share d soe proposed contracts and regulations proposed to the taxi task force. and also the transit agencies that operate rail service all agreed to produce white papers looking at the opportunities and

operating more service hours during the night. bart and cal-tran have released those taking a closer look at the barriers and maintenance and capital issues to running more service hours and sfmta is wrapping up their own white paper. moving forward, an as well as working with agencies on funding for implementing additional service recommendations. and our umbrella recommendation here is that moving forward this is really a regional efforts a a lot of late night travel is regional. we have been working with m.t.c. to hopefully hand over the leadership of the late night effort to that regional effort and had some great conversations in term of setting up the working group to cover both late night as well as other transit coordinating issues. so we can continue those conversations and they are

interested in taking that on. so with that, happy to answer questions, ben and i, and thank you. >> commissioner? >> yes, thank you very much. so this is an issue actually that i have been interested in because younger women than me, but even women my age have been telling me that do not safe riding on muni at night. when they do ride, they notice they are the only women on the bus many times and it is mainly males. when you are doing data collection, i didn't see anything addressing that and even those who are wholly dependent on public tapgs and transportation and this is a crucial data point to make women feel safer on public transportation after hours. >> thank you. that is a good yes.

and we actually talked a lot with transit operators about whether there are ways to look at safety data and it's challenging because it's a regional system and there are a lot of different agencies that are collecting that data. it is not always -- some could have incidents on the transit vehicle and some incidents on the street and not necessarily waiting for the bus, but not associated with the transit week vooek and limited numbers of incidents in quantity because there are relatively few rider, but it is an issue certainly that we can keep as part of the

discussion. >> a lot of it is about perception and how you feel personally as a woman going into a dark parking lot, but when asking other women now, they never take muni at night, so maybe not some regional transportation but about muni and what to do around muni so that people are not taking them and actually using the public transportation system. i will say that it is as a woman, you can have a sense of the environment and get the sixth sense of what is safe and not safe. i think that my email counterparts can agree that if you feel the situation waiting for a bus, too dark or too long and the only one at the bus stop and also on the bus and notice

you are the only female on the bus. i feel like that is that you could be a target. i would love to see some data on what women are really feeling overnight and met with ed ruskin and a preliminary, not by gender, but just overall, and the numbers with age groups and the data point on that to make women feel safer. >> commissioner safai? >> thank you, chairman. thank you for this report. one of the things that i wanted to recommend that i wasn't sure was reflected is there are a lot of folks in the service sector.

i wanted to know if you had reached out and a lot of people in the industries that were asked the normal hours of service. that something is that what we talked about with the janitors union and folks that live in my and supervisor ronen's district. bart cuts off time and late night service is an important thing. and we are talking about 4,000 workers in the downtown core and the vast majority is women, so it could be great to have someone represented an continuing from the service sector industry that would be helpful in informing the direction of the group itself. >> i greetly agree.

so as we continue to push forward on this that redefinitely need to do. >> i want to echo about not feeling safe on a bus. i just received a message yesterday from someone that they felt they just -- we feel helpless out there and a crazy man on a bus, drunk, and threatening a woman and the bus driver didn't or couldn't do anything. they couldn't stop the bus, couldn't call police. it is something i heard all the time so that will need to be considered. thank you, commissioner, if for bringing that up. >> thank you, commissioners. if there is no other questions or comments, are there members of the public who would like to testify?

>> yes, i was in the working group and i told the gentlemen to look into the schedules of 2002 and back to where the service got cut and look at how often and how regular the buses ran and that, therefore, the hotel and workers could get to and from work. at fisherman's wharf and

fishermen's wharf was hurting because they were losing money and didn't have that many people. they didn't have many worker there is. i suggest someone from the community talk to the union and talk to the veteran driver who has been on the street for many years and the service was cut because of what was going on in the city and talk to the bus drivers and the union because the people do want the jobs back. the new drivers don't want the

mickey mouse runs at muni. they want muni and sfmta and something that can bring them pleasure like taking people to and from work. >> thank you, ms. sacks. public comment is closed. thank you for that information item. mr. clerk. next item please. >> item 15, discussion of the san francisco county transportation authority board's meeting structure. this is information item. >> as i mentioned in the chair's remarks if there is no objection, colleagues, and you are welcome to weigh in, we will call this yearlong experiments concluded shortly and return to a finance committee and plans and programs committee as well did in the past and i was initially hopeful that having 11 of us bring about moments of

robust discussion and there have been moments of that, but it is tough to get us here twice a month, but once a month committee of the whole and have two committee meetings in the intervening weeks, and staff will bring that forward. is there anything you want to add? is there any public comment on this item? commissioner tang? >> it is me. hi. yes, chair. actually, i like the format and hear colleagues from my -- and i hear comments from the colleagues especially because many of the items don't concern my district. it is nice to hear about the opinions of supervisors of where the projects and money is being spent to weigh in on it. i personally like this and feel colleagues have a hard time getting here on time, getting

quorum. you would love my colleagues to feel a sort of greater responsibility around the timeliness of this. , and so we're not waiting and we have had an incident where we didn't have quorum, people left and lack of quorum. and if my colleagues are amenable to this format, i actually like it, but just want to say that i am new to this and probably the only format i am familiar with. but i think it's okay. thanks. >> commissioner tang. >> i also like this format and might be some days to shorten the agenda a bit. i know that when we had a committee structure, we had attendance issues there, too. so either way we will struggle with attendance in quorum and so forth. so i think maybe we could just continue monitoring if we go back to committee structure and whether we keep it here and

structuring the agenda a little differently. >> i appreciate the comments. commissioner safai, are you nodding your head? >> i agree. i prefer to have a group discussion about a lot of the issues. and it's true before when we had the committees it was harder and when issues came here to kind of grasp on to them. i agree with what commissioner tang says. sometimes the agenda is a little bit too long, but other than that, i would prefer to keep it the way it is. >> commissioner yee? >> i concur. i really don't. but i prefer this fort mat because we might discuss something in length at the committee, and then we have the same discussion from the full m.t.a. board, and this prefrnts

duplication of -- this prevents duplication of discussion, so i prefer to keep this format. >> mr. ronen? commissioner ronen? >> when i complained a few weeks ago and put this item on the agenda, it wasn't necessarily the full board meetings but the fact that we were arriving so late as a board, but 30 minutes into what should have been the meeting we didn't have quorum to start the meeting. and that it was just getting ridiculous. and i felt particularly bad for the public that was waiting to testify on items which we never got to because partially because we got to so late. and i am fine with either committee structure or the full board structure. i just feel like we have to make a commitment as commissioners to get here on time like we do every week for the board meeting. >> got my commitment. commissioner cohen? >> thank you.

>> wondering if there is a way we can change the date. does it have to be on a tuesday? the structure i can live with. but tuesday. >> there is nothing magical about tuesday. that is the way it's been, but we can easily with a vote of this body change that to another time. >> just wondering if there is an appetite. supervisor kim doesn't look like she has much of an appetite for it. >> supervisor kim likes to eat. >> it is not the appetite, but we have committee meetings on monday, wednesday, and thursday. so it's not -- i understand the challenge of having it on tuesday morning. i don't know what day we would switch it to. that is why i made a face. i think there is no perfect day. >> i agree. >> maybe we can start with suggestion that i will work with staff on making sure we don't have the lengthy meetings that run up against our board meeting. and then we will always take a solemn pledge that we will do everything in our power to arrive at 9:59 to if there is no

objection, i will reverse what an i heard from you t a various meetings and let's continue the experiment, but let's let members of the public weigh in. are there any members of the public who would like to testify on this item? seeing none -- i don't want to discourage public testimony. going once, going twice, public comment is closed. thank you for that discussion, colleagues. i really preeshlt appreciate it. is there any introduction of new items? any general public comment? please come forward. >> good morning. i appeared here several months ago to sheet about one of the procurements that you were funding of diesel buses.

last week myself and several colleagues were at the sfmta making the same point. since then joe fitz reported that m.t.a. is moving forward on a modest pilot. i think we should applaud them for that. it's been a long time coming, especially in light of supervisors ongoing policy statements by the city. but the undersigned groups on this letter that i am going to submit to you believe that much more needs to be done. our procurement system remains oriented towards diesel for the non-trolley buses and no -- state deadlines are looming and are actually pushing us and driving and ought to be driving procurement decisions and operations planning decisions. and our system or there remains no real systemic effort to get

m.t.a. ready to incorporate this as the new technology. and prepare our fleet and operations for electric buses. so as in your role as a funding agency and the overturned agency in the other role as the city's legislative body, hope that you can provide leadership and help and expedite the process on the pilot and do what you can to move the m.t.a. and to be the leader on this. and san francisco has been a leader on clean energy and clean transportation technology for a long time, but the problem with that is the that people close on you and people surpass you. and we need to constantly keep at it. we hope that you can do that. the other folks here will talk more to that point. thank you very much. >> thank you. next speaker please. >> somebody will come get that. >> i am jack fleck, a retired

transportation engineer from sfmta. i do know some of you. i am now active in a group called 350 bay area and climate activists trying to push as hard as we can to reduce greenhouse gases. and so i am just here to support muni's effort to electrify the system. office little chagrinned to see in 2007 there was a ballot measure passed that said we should move expeditiously to electrify and eliminate the greenhouse gases and here we are over 10 years later we haven't done it. i am thinking, hey, come on, let's get this thing moving. the technology is really here and many cities have the electric buses out there and let's support the pilot program. that would be great if the electric buses could replace the trolleys. that would be a big savings for the city, but in general we are here to support you and your efforts to get this done and do it as fast as possible. >> good to see you, mr. fleck.

next speaker please. >> good morning. my name is brad mcmillan, and i have a company that designs and manufactures electronics primarily for the electric power industry where it is used to automate the electric power grid. i am an electronics engineer and worked almost my entire career in this industry, and my family has lived in san francisco since 1854. i am here to address support for migrating to an all-electricity transit system. over the last few decades we have seen rapid advances in clean energy technology, solar panels, utility skill wind farms, electric cars, and ever higher capacity batteries are all undergoing advancements to make them more powerful, easier to use and cheaper. these technologies are being created in response to the problems caused by the burning of fossil fuels. in addition to global warming, the use of fossil fuel causes mountains of coal ash we don't know what to do with, inevitable

spills that pollute the land and water, and the awful smog that we have to live with at any of the major cities. in contrast, clean engineer technologies have much less waste and there is nothing to spill, and we can begin to make smog a thing of the past. these clean energy solutions don't need fuel once they are built. if you go to professional conferences or look at the papers being published in professional journals, steady progress is made in developing technology to generate energy more cleanly and efficiently. for san francisco a recent article published in a newsletter stated that the entire city could be completely powered by an offshore wind farm with only 363 turbines. the main point i would like to make today is that these cleaner technologies are clearly superior and so they are going to be implemented, and each of

them operates by generating electricity. as a result, it is in the best interest of the citizens of san francisco both present and future to migrate to the transit system to one that operates with electricity as soon as possible so it can be seamlessly integrated with the cleaner energy sources of the future. >> thank you, sir. next speaker please. thank you. >> thank you. >> good morning. i am emily and i am an outreach coordinator with the union of concerned scientists. thank you for the opportunity to comment today. on behalf of the union of concerned scientists and our nearly 8,000 supporters and members in san francisco, we are encouraged by your recent commitment to move forward with 0 emission bus project and urge you to take seriously the need to convert muni's fleet to 100% zero emission as soon as possible. we appreciate that the city is

beginning to address the potential operational hurdles by deploying the fleet and launching the pilot project, and we are optimistic about the results. as you look at the performance measures of the same model of transit buses across engine types, the performance is better if not better than combustion technologies including acceleration, gradability, and torque. as you likely know, cities across california are finding the solutions they need to transition fleet to to zero emission like los angeles and oakland. we believe it's well worth it for san francisco to start a zero transmission as battery electric buses on today's grid have 80% lower life sooik l greenhouse gas emissions than diesel and nearly 40% lower greenhouse from buses powered by renewable diesel. and including the ones in san francisco and not mention that they have no emissions because

they have no tail pipe. we are excited to hear you moving forward with the project and are hopeful of the commitment that this critical step signals. we look forward to working with you to provide clean buses and air to san francisco residents. >> thank you. next speaker please. >> hi. good morning. my name is paul court, an attorney with earth justice and also a san francisco resident. so we are all here together to ask for this board's oversight and leaderership to move the city forward. and there is activity going on across the state at the state resources board, public utilities commission, the energy commission, and we have been disappointed that muni has not been at these tables. because this committee is focused on overseeing funding, i want to just highlight a few quick figures with you this morning. first, the state resources board

and for battery electric buss is now lower than the cost of ownership for any combustion-type bus. second, california's hfit program now offers $150,000 voucher for each electric, battery electric bus purchased by a transit agency. this alone makes the cost, the purchase cost, the up front capital and lower than the cost for diesel hybrids. third, the city would not only save money on fuel costs by switching to electricity. it could actually make money because the state's low carbon fuel standards pays up to $9,000 per bus per year in incentive funding. and then finally and this is one of the bigger concerns, infrastructure costs are now at

this moment being subsidized by the state and by local utilities, but that funding is not going to be available indefinitely and so delays on the part of muni in making this transition have the risk, face the risk of foregoing available opportunities. thank you. >> thank you. are there any other members of the public who would like to testify on general public comment? ms. sacks. >> i want ed to tell you people that i think that i have been up since my ten your and there was always a plans and programs committee meeting where they discussed things and there was a an and discussed these things and all those items came to the

full board like you have today. i like the old -- i like the old structure because you can do like the board of supervisors and committee reports and committee as a whole. you can sign up and tell what you want -- and find out what went on in the finance committee meeting. you can tell what went on at the plans and programs committee meeting and therefore, the meetings and the meeting would not too long that way either. thank you. >> thank you. so we will close general public comment. and just while we don't and can't engage in discussion, we will definitely -- i have our staff talked to m.t.a. staff about the issues raised. i know that m.t.a. has been diligently observing your comments and director chang will

follow up with sfmta director so that we can achieve the promise of proposition a of 2007 which i think is the primary author of, so very interested in seeing the electrifycation take place. with that, we are adjourned.