>> are we protecting profits for the real estate industry in are we prophetting th profits for te companies so that they can continue to maintain profits working downtown? we have no dignity homes. financing for this playing a public bank, a robust public bank, boom, boom, boom, and a california public bank, please. changinchanges are in the air. maybe we can accommodate seniors that can't maintain their homes or physically go up the stairs to their home. dignity homes, again, they

should be placed in all developments. navigation centres, i would like to repeat what supervisor kim said months ago, that we actually do better when they're removed from their neighborhoods where they're struggling. other california added 3% more to global climate change. our freeway, our society have become rivers of poison. this our democracy and where our capitalistic system change. thank you. on another subject matter,

considering teacher residency at a predominantly asian and hispanic school which ranks 2,302 out of 2,480 schools in california according to school digger. poor performance demight a despa student-teacher ratio, so as i understand this, to previous teacher or educational coursework or no cut-off score or analog test and the administrators may assess the course work. the mat thinks a anlitticcally.

the city has arrived at a new-found financial windfall so i lean toward the opinion of sousupervisor kim and can be spd as a matter of priority. ipublic matter is closed. please call the committee calendar items 28-36 out of record. >> were introduced for adoption without reference to committee. a unanimous vote is required on first reading today. alternatively any member may require a resolution go to

committee. >> ok. would any of the colleagues like to sever any items some. >> can we sever item number 33? >> thank you. >> colleagues, can we take the rest of the items, same house, same call? without objections, these resolutions are adopted unanimously. madam clerk, could you please call item number 33? >> 33, resolution to support full parody for mental health patients and clinicians at kaier permanente. >> supervisor ronan. >> colleagues, the resolution before you is about mental health parody and patient

health. i want to thank supervisor the s for working with my office on this resolution and to push for mental health parody, one of the most pressing issues facing the city today. as i have stated repeatedly, san francisco is facing a crisis of untreated mental illness, where everyday people are left to wander the streets being very ill. both our private and public systems have to step up and do more to increase availability of services and ensure that we are coordinating with each other across departments and agencies and systems. we have all been hammering and several hearings to ensure better care and availability of services. similarly, this resolution urges

kaier permanente to step up their game. state and federal laws require the healthcare providers like the county of san francisco uphold full parody for mental health care services on par with medical care for the body. this is the law and sadly they have fallen short. as a lifetime, kaieser member, i can tell you this hmo has a horrible reputation amongst healthcare services. just this past month, one of my very dear friends whose teenage daughter was expressing thoughts of suicide had called kaiser to make an appointment for her daughter and toll that the first availability was two months away. nothis was just this month. i had to intervene to get her daughter an appointment urgently.

we got the letter from the hospital council hand heard from the executive director there and some of the points that they make, that it's inappropriate to call out kaiser, one medical adviser in the city and to promote one vision, you know, that's backed by frontline workers on how to increase availability of services, that there's a nation-wide labour shortage. i'm just not convinced by any of these arguments. first of all, kaiser represents close to 4 million members in northern california, 4 million members. it think i it's appropriate for this body to weigh in on a legal issue about the mental health

care by this major private provider of medical care in our city. the fact that we worked on this resolution, i believe, is incredibly appropriate. unions are the one way for frontline providers that are actually on the ground doing the work everyday to have a say in a corporate establishment over how that work should be done and how it can be improved. and i take their word and their opinion on this very, very seriously and i think it's completely appropriate to work with them to develop ideas and suggestions for improvement of services. and finally, while there is a labour shortage around some workers and especially around workers with bilingual language

skills, every single year that they can do more to provide both wages and benefits to attract more of a workforce. now while i've made a few amendments to the resolution, i passed them all out to you. and these are non-substantial amendments, is to acknowledge that san francisco is basing a shortage of bilingual and a look at how to best improve mental health care access. it is time to take action and make sure that both private and public sectors of the healthcare system are doing their fair share to build the mental health system we need and i ask you to please join me in voting yes on this resolution today. thank you.

>> supervisor ronan, would you like to add to your amendment to just delete one word? yes. >> i make a motion to introduce the amendments as stated and pass them out to you. >> and to include that one word on your further resolve clause. it's just a typo. >> oh, ok, sorry. >> page 4, line 1. >> yes, thank you. >> colleagues, loose a motion to amend this resolution and is there a second? >> seconded by supervisor brown? and then amendments pass. colleagues, can we take this

resolution, item as amended, same house, same call? this resolution passes unanimously. madam clerk, please read the in memorium. >> today's meeting will be adjourned on behalf of supervisor walton for the late miss ruth passin, on behalf of supervisor peskin for miss edna fong and on behalf of supervisor stephanie for the forever wonderful january blum. >> that brings us to the end of our agenda. i know you won't know what to do with your spare time. madam clerk, any other business for today? >> that concludes our business for today. >> thank you, everyone. this meeting is adjourned.

>> three, two, one. [applause.] >> congratulations everybody. thank you. >> so the project was driven by the need to improve conditions for people biking and walking from beach street to mcallister. between 2010 and 2015, there

were 290 traffic crashes including two deaths, 110 bike collisions and 78te 78 pedestrin collisions. the construction was a little over two years. it including pedestrian crossing, better bike facilities, new street trees, we repaved the entire corridor. fern alley has decorative street plants and new palm streets. cbd helped maintain the alleys and they are planning farmers markets and pop ups and bands. >> the goal was to build on the economic vibra vibrancy of polkt

and to provide a safe street for and to provide a safe street for >> good morning, and welcome to the san francisco transauthority meeting for april 23, 2019, our clerk is mr. cantinia. will you please call the roll? [roll call] >> we have quorum. payers thank you,

mr. cantinia. i will go to the chair's report. i want to thank you, colleagues, for everybody participating in all of the celebrations of walking and biking and scooting this month, with walk to workday and walk and bike to school days around san francisco last week. i know we are all committed to making walking and biking safer city-wide, especially for our most vulnerable residents, seniors and kids and those with mobility challenges. i personally had a great time at gene parker elemenelementary, and spring valley schools in my district, and want to appreciate one of san francisco's finest, and that is central station school officer troy courtney, who worked with my staff to identify "vision zero" safety projects at each and every school, which slowly but surely have all been implemented. and i want to thank the

parents at gene parker who pointed out additional safety improvements that can be made and that my staff and calvin yang is working on. speaking of "vision zero," earlier this month we celebrated the polk street improvement project. thank you, again, to public works, for leading this project, along with other departments, including the t.a., which put our sales tax program to work with more than a dozen signal along polk street, higher visibility traffic signals, bow bolts, and other features on this 1.3-mile stretch of a high-injury corridor. it was a lovely beginning, and i want to acknowledge shell thomas, who's memory we acknowledge t who really started that project off. turning now to the state level, i noted with interest last week the discussions at the

california high-speed rail authority, where staff presented on continued investments in the valley to valley segment, stretching from the central valley to silicon valley, and it is currently being electrified with the help of high-speed rail. it will eventually lead to high-speed cal rail on the peninsula, including d.t.x., to which the high-speed rail authority has pledged $550 million, though that funding is not yet secured. together with high-speed rail and other agencies,our t.a. staff is doing the work of reviewing plans and organizational government structures following our review. as we undertake that work with the state and the region, i would like to respectfully ask that the high-speed rail reconsider its plans, mainlyfor building further sections of the line, and for

funding critical project development efforts in this region. i am confident, and i think we are all confident, they will find that an investment of high-speed rail dollars combined with other sources will yield better ridership and air quality from the south bay and the peninsula up to the city and county of san francisco, in comparison to other alternative investments. i also want to acknowledge the work that the newest member of the cal train, j.p. b. commissioner walton, has been doing around governments and making it very clear to his colleagues on that inned a change in governance at the cal train j.p.b. is paramount. transportation authority saf are eagetransportation authh the governance of cal train, and with that, colleagues, i conclude my remarks. are there any members of

the public who would like to comment? seeing none, public comment is closed. >> item three, the executive directors' report. >> thank you very much, chair peskin and commissioners. this month i would like to start with good news on the regional front. on april 3rd, a judge ruled in favor with regard to the lawsuit on the bridge tol. toll. that will still need to work its way through next steps, but this is a promising ruling. it is a measure that was approved by voters last year on the june ballot, and would provide $4.5 billion to transportation projects throughout the region. we'll continue to track that and hope that a second lawsuit will also be addressed very soon. on the high-speed rail authority, i thank the chair for his remarks on their meetings. we will continue to follow that closely with our partners at the state and the regional quarter, all the way thro through gilroy.

it is a valley to valley strategy, and i think that is something we very much hope continues in some form, understanding that the governor has said he would like to see further extension in the central valley. so reexamining those options at the high-speed authority board is something we would be happy to support and would like to provide direct input to that as well. on our downtown extension work, i just wanted to mention we had a very good kickoff meeting with a number of agencies. all of the stakeholders participated, high-speed rail, city and county san francisco folks, a.c. transit and some others. cal tran and high-speed rail also provided information on their respective projects and business plan efforts as they relate to this project. our next workshop is scheduled for this friday, and we'll focus on the

governance and management and oversight topics. iwith a number of the folks that i mentioned previously, as well as experts around the state and around the country and around the world. excuse me. we will be bringing the recommendation of the panel to the board in june of 2019. and hopefully in conjunction with the reopening of the center has we here that trans bay staff have worte reported that is the plan for reopening this summer. turning to our lumbar crooked street effort, i had a good day yesterday with assembly members teams, which are sponsored 1605, which would provide a potential reservation system for the management of congestion on the crooked street. the bill was moved out of committee, and we'll be

seeing it moved to the senate for a vote. if it passes, we would have that authority to decide whether or not to implement such a program, and we understand that the full board of supervisors has already taken, of course, a support position on this bill, as the t.a. has as well at the last board meeting. we'll continue to work on the study, which is designing the resvariable program. i'll be at the meeting on wednesday. i had an initial meeting with the new commissioner chair, emily sparr and staff and community members last week, and we had a robust discussion about up coming planning efforts, including the 22nd street, and the 101, near th the almeny over

change. and the potential b.r.t. connections across east west to the harney shipyard site. and the meeting will happen tomorrow evening at 6:00 p.m. at the southeast community facilities commission. finally on the slowly side, i want tod wanted to mentn we will be celebrating bike to workday on may 9th, and highlighting a number great projects under way this month. at this time, i would like to bring up our director of communications, eric young, to present a brand new, recently updated website design. this is something that has been in the works and planning on for over a year. and i the idea is to better highlight our activities in every neighborhood and city-wide.

i would like to very much thank eric for leading the charge here, along with his team, paige miller, as well as the consultant team, who did a very nice job. with that, eric? >> thank you, ms. chang. mr. young, good morning. >> good morning. >> we cannot wait to see the updates to what is truly the worst website in city government. >> all right. well, i trust that you will feel differently after you see what we've done. good morning, eric young, senior communications officer. i'm pleased to give a quick overview of the updated website. we had a number of goals for the redesign: it had to work well on mobile. it had to provide quick links to translations, and it had to provide simpler organization so that people can find what they want and see more clearly the work that we do. across our home page, we have organized all of our

work using just a few tabs. and then on each one you can dive deeper: projects and studies let'syou see all of our work listed under various categories. under funding, you can see the various funding plans we administer. policies and initiatives lists the major initiatives that we work on. under tools and data, we highlight the numerous interactive maps that we've created to better translate to folks the complicated transportation data. under what's happening, you can see links to our public meetings and our new blog. and finally under "about us," it speaks about the agency, job opportunities, and more. we hope that users find the site to be useful and easy to use, and we're seeking the public's

feetback by clicking along the blue bette banner at the top of any page. that concludes my presentation. i welcome any questions. >> chairman: thank you. colleagues, any questions for mr. young? commissioner brown? >> hi, thank you chair peskin. so i always have my constituents have a hard time finding how to go about doing a traffic study. it's -- you know, they always contact our office. we can't find it on the website. so on this new website, where would they go? >> so we have a "contact us" area, where we invite feedback really on anything. that could be a place where they could go. we also have other contact information, our phone numbers, so they can reach out. >> no. i mean if -- so there is a whole process for a community when they want a traffic study on their block or street or in their neighborhood. and they have to go through the process, get the signatures, and, you

know, they have to get on line to first find out all of the information. so that's where i'm trying to find, if we're making that easy for people? >> but commissioner brown, isn't that an s.f. m.t.a. subject -- >> i'm wondering. is it under "traffic calming." >> it is the neighborhood-based "tragic calming" program under the s.f. m.t.a. they can ballot to request such a study, and the m.t.a. will follow up. >> i was just wondering because of the fact i think a lot of people were going to the transportation authority looking for that. >> no. i think we can find a way to make it easier to redirect them. >> that would be great. thank you. >> that is the problem between the s.f. m.t.a. and the s.f. t.a.. i just want to encourage

members of the public to take mer young up on his offer and help make this new website the best it can be. with that, is there any public comments on the chair's report? seeing none, public comment is closed. colleagues, commissioner stefani contacted me and said she would be a little late, and insofar as we're about to vote on the consent agenda, is there a motion to excuse commissioner stefani, and that motion is made and seconded. mr. cantinia, read the con jent. >> items five to nine were approved at the april 9th meeting. the remaining items are considered routine,staff not planning to present on these items. if a member objects, any of the consent items may be removed and considered separately. >> chairman: would any members like an item severed from the consent agenda? seeing none, is there any

comments on the minutes of the april 9th meeting? so no public comment, public comment is closed. on the consent agenda, a roll call please -- a motion to move the consent agenda, made by commissioner fewer, and seconded my commissioner walton. [roll call] >> we have approval. >> chairman: the next item, please. >> item 10. for final approval. allocates $62.7 million improper "k" funds for the light rail procurement. this is an information and action item. >> chairman: thank you.

colleagues, let me start by saying that the reason we have two rearg readings on an item, both here an at the board of supervisors, so that in the intervening period between those two meetings, we could learn mnew information. virtually all of the time we vote the same in the second meeting as we did in the first meeting. this may be an exception thto that ruling. since april 9th, when we heard the request for $62 million for the purchase of accelerated light vehicles, a number of issues have come up. we've heard from members of the public at our hearing two weeks ago with regard to primarily the dissatisfaction with seating arrangements, which staff that the m.t.a. indicated was

fixable, and they received the same information. i had anecdotely heard some news about coupling systems, and all of us are elected officials. i don't think any of us are transit experts or engineers, but i did actually pose the question relative to some issues around train coupling systems and staff of the m.t.a. indicate that that those problems had been addressed. in the intervening two weeks, we have found out, actually, that a couple of shear pins in the coupling systems have failed, and that all of the previously procured seaman's l.r.v.s have been inspected. and in addition, we have now have all heard or seen very troubling information about the sensitive edge of the door closure systems. which includes a video, wherein an individual had

her hand caught in a door and subsequently fell on the tracks. since that time, i have received other troubling information, which i would like to discuss here today. but with that, i want to ask ms. lafort if she want to make the staff presentation relative to what is in the report, if we want to start with that, and then ms. cu ms. curshbalm from the m.t.a., who replaced mr. hayley, who i talked to and gave full notice about the questions i'm going to ask this morning, will be here to answer my and any of your colleagues' questions. >> good morning, deputy director for policy and programming at the transportation authority. we were also notified during the period of time between these two meetings about the problems with

the couplers and with the doors. and so we're looking forward to having a robust conversation about what to do about it. we were not made aware, prior to, you know, when everyone else discovered in the "chronicle's" stories, and we're looking to make sure that these vehicles are safe, which we have been assured by the m.t.a. staff, that the p.c. u. has inspected the doors and they meet safety standards. but it is very troubling, and we would like to ensure that the vehicles are safe and they meet the high standards of san francisco riders. >> chairman: ms. lafort, let me -- i caught our executive director this morning, but apparently she didn't see my call. set forth in your report,

it indicates that the entire procurement, when all is said and done, would be 219 light-vehicles, of which 68 have been acquired. how many have we actually acquired to date? do we have all 68 of those? >> i believe that 58 have been received, and 50 are in revenue service. >> chairman: and what does that mean, "are in revenue service"? >> that they're on the tracks, they're serving the public, people are paying fares to ride them. >> chairman: do you have any information, or has t.a. staff inquired of the m.t.a. how many are actually on the tracks? at any given time. >> no. but our expectation would

be that if 50 have been identified as being in revenue service, that 50 would be on the tracks at any given time. >> chairman: thank you, ms. lafort. ms. curshbalm, or whoever is here on behalf of the s.f. m.t.a. we've known each other getting on 20 years, and i have nothing but respect for you personally. and this is not a comfortable thing, and i don't want to put you on the spot, and i did, i think, what is professional and right, which is to call you to tell you what i was going to ask you today. and before we get to issues of the doors and the coupling, it has come to my attention that actually, as we discussed last evening, at any given time, only 15 to 20 of these $3.5 million per vehicle vehicles are on the tracks at any one time due to the phenomenon of

wheel flattening. would you like to expound on that? >> yeah. we'd be happy to provide the board or the t.a. staff with the daily count of the number of vehicles in s'in service. it is usually 20 to 50. when we say we have 50 vehicles in service, what we mean is we have '01 vehiclehave 50vehicles that havd inspections and have been certified by the california public utilities commission. before a vehicle even goes into service, it goes through a robust testing process. we submit all documentation, first internally to the m.t.a.'s safety division, and then to the cpuc who reviews the documents officer a three-week period before

the vehicle is put into service. of those 50, we typically have a small number that are available for training. we have some that are in various forms of maintenance, in some cases to do retrofits on things that we're learning about the vehicles in realtime. and then we have some in service. over the last several weeks, we've had more vehicles than i'd like to see not in service because of flat wheels. the vehicles on the seaman's vehicle -- the braking system on the seaman's vehicle is different than our brada system. it is designed to minimize falls on board. when an operator hits the emergency brake, or when the automatic train control system brings the vehicle to an emergency stop. when we first introduced these vehicles into service, we were seeing

flat wheels primarily from issues that we're working through in the su subway. so the automatic train control system would experience an issue on the train that it didn't understand, and it would take the most prudent course of action, which was to stop the vehicle. and when the vehicle stopped, the wheels would flatten out. and then in order to provide a smooth ride for costumers, we would bring it back into the shop and do what we call "wheel truing," which is smoothing or rounding the wheels. starting in late fall, when we started training all of our kind of full codray of operators on the vehicles and started to see the numbers i described, up to 2 20 to 30 vehicles in service, we also started to see flat wheels for other reasons, related to emergency

braking. san francisco has a very dynamic environment. there is a lot of things that our operators need to be alert for when they're out in the system. and so when they use the emergency brake on the seaman's vehicle, the force -- the full force of the braking is absorbed by the wheels, which flattens the wheels. it is a -- i think a part of the transition process. we do have a brada fleet which will only safely stop if an operator pushes the emergency brake. so we've gone through a pretty significant investment in both training and in operator education to get them very comfortable with hitting the emergency brake, even if it does have a tradeoff of a fall on board, because if there is something or someone in front of them, it is vital

that the train stops immediately. the seaman's has multiple ways in which it can achieve that immediate stop, both pulling immediately back on the "t" stick, as well as hitting the emergency brake. but because our operators are trained to rely on the emergency brake, we are seeing more flat wheels than we initially expected. and so we are working with seaman's to redesign the breaking system to more mirror how the brada is designed. but i do want to clarify that this is not a safety issue. the seaman's vehicle stops that the same rate and rapidity that the brada stops, but it is designed to absorb the force of that stop differently. and as we kind of work through what it means to have two types of fleets -- in this

instance, that difference is creating vehicles in the yard when i want them out on the streets. so right now we have 18 vehicles that we're currently in the process of smoothing out the wheels before we get them back in service, and it is certainly limiting the number of vehicles we're seeing in services on a day-to-day basis. >> chairman: so this raises any number of questions. when did the city, the m.t.a., take title to the first of the lrv4s. >> the first the vehicle arrives for what was about nine months of testing in january of 2017. it went into service in november of 2017. we did take a slow and steady approach to the roll-out, as we had a small number of vehicles on property, and we were working through some of

these introductory issues. up until late fall of 2018, the majority of the vehicles were driven by expert operators that had been involved in the testing and had a lot of experience on the equipment. we trained all of our operators by november of 2018, which is when we started to see a much higher rate these vehicles and services available to our costumers. >> chairman: and when you "true" the wheels, how many times can you true them before those wheels become obsolete? . yeah.so that was one of our lead mechanics.

the question drifted off in my area of expertise a little bit. it does vary by ho how flat the wheel gets during the braking system. but we do have multiple opportunities to true the vehicles before the wheels need to be replaced. we currently have, i believe, five vehicles that are on hold because we have trued the wheels as far as we can go. and we have additional wheels on order that we expect to arrive in early summer. >> chairman: and what about the truck system? do those systems needs to be replaced? the wheel assembly system. >> when we replace the wheel? we typically do. >> chairman: and if you could just state your name for the record. >> my name is emmanuel enricas, and i'm currently

in charged of testing of the vehicles. i'm currently in charge of the testing and acceptance of the vehicles. to answer your question, any time we replace the wheels on a vehicle, we have to remove the trucks, remove the axles, replace the wheels, and put them back together. but the way our system is built, we have extra trucks that we put in the vehicles. as we replace them, we take the removed trucks back and we overhaul those and basically send a car in service while we're working on the other trucks. >> chairman: is seaman's making all of the parts, the trucks, the wheels, available to them as you need them? >> yes. >> chairman: there is no back order, no delay? >> there is a back order of parts because the materials themselves come from germany. that is typically taking us about six months to get

tires, but we have ordered the tires quite a long time ago. >> chairman: how many vehicles are not in service by virtua virtue of the fact it takes six months to get them from germany. >> right now i believe it is three cars. >> chairman: relative to the component of 50 vehicles, how many of them are in service, on the tracks, at any one time to the best of your estimation? >> sir, we can go anywhere between 20 cars all the way to 40 cars. because typically, by our standards, you have to have a 20% margin for maintenance. as the cars are out there, we're compiling miles. and we are -- by our standards, we need to bring the cars in every 3,750 miles, to do maintenance on them, and we're very strict on that. >> chairman: and can you

provide this body with the number of miles on each and every vehicle, and how long they have been in revenue service? >> yes, sir. we can do that. i don't have it on me. >> chairman: i would not expect you to. do you have any kind of guess as to what the mileage is on the existing vehicles, average? >> some of the vehicles is as high as 20,000 miles. >> chairman: and 20,000 miles -- on a brada, what would be the normal period of time where 20,000 miles was incurred? >> that would be six months. >> chairman: so you're saying that the most your vehicles have is 20,000 miles, which would be incurred in six months? >> yes, sir. it's between six and eight months to get to 20,000 miles, but you have to keep in mind that we use these vehicles for training. and the cars -- for the

first few months we've dedicated most of the cars, if not all of the cars, to training the operator, the 300 plus operators we had, to train them. they were not going out 2 22 hours a day, but they are now. >> chairman: the nine months of training and testing that went into revenue service of november of 2017, that car should have close to 100,000 miles on it today? is that right? >> the first three cars were used for testing, cars one, two, and three. 2001, 2002, 2003. car number one, car number two, and car number three are being retrofitted. except for car 2002, which recently went into revenue service -- those cars took some work before they could be put in revenue service. basically, they were the test cars.

everything that we can do to find out as much as we can about those cars were done on those first three cars. >> chairman: so everything that you figured out on the three cars that required retrofit, is that where you figured out that the braking system was sub par and was causing wheel fleaflattening? and did knows changes get made for the succeeding 47 cars. >> let me make this clear: the braking system of the car is not sub par. >> chairman: okay. >> th the braking system of the vehicle is highly reactive and it is a very good braking system. the differences are is the way seaman's has -- the way they operate their vehicles, which is done at other transit agencies, while we operate our vehicle in a different way. we have trained our operators to use the mushroom, which is what julie referred to as the emergency brakes.

due to the accidents that we were having a while ago, it was best that we teach our operators to use the mushroom as the first line of defense when there is an emergency that occurs. it became muscle memory. it is the best kind. muscle memory, they get any sign of trouble, they hit the mushroom, and hopefully they'll not hit anybody on the streets. that was the first goal. now, the seaman's vehicles, their primary emergency braking is through the "t" stick. the brada vehicles also have a "t" stick for emergency braking, but there was a quirk to that "t" stick, where if it wasn't at the right angle, it would not go into emergency braking. that is also the preferred braking for that car. but since you had to have it at a certain angle, sometimes the operator might fail to put it into emergency brake, so they were taught to hit the mushroom. if a muni operator was to put the "t" stick into

emergency braking, we would not suffer the flat wheels because the slide control, what we call the spin slide system, would take over, and we would actually get better results from the braking. >> chairman: okay. that's helpful. so, ms. curshbalm, let me turn it over to you for questions of warranties. how much of this is warranted by seaman's? how much are you paying for in maintenance and replacement costs? how much of it is being paid for pursuant to a warranty? >> issues that are deemed to be related to the vehicle or the vehicle design are covered by the warranty. an issue, like, redesigning the brakes to replicate a brada braking system would be something that we, as a city, would need to absorb.

so it does depend on the technical issue and the root cause. >> chairman: and as you're asking us for $43 million, which at $3.5 million a pop is approximately 18 vehicles, would these have a brada-like breaking system that would not lead to the wheel flattening and lack of service that we're seeing? >> yes. it is our -- we are working to retrofit the existing vehicles. we expect that work to start in about six months. the delay is related to the pipeline that it takes to actually order the additional track brakes. and the modified brake design would be built into the phase two vehicles. >> chairman: can we talk a little bit -- i notice on the operation side -- can we talk a little bit

about the procurement process? how did the procurement process work? what other competitors and what other products were considered, and why was seaman's ultimately selected? >> that's a great question. before we even put out an r.f.p. on the street to order new vehicles, we took a step back and worked with both our costumers, as well as our staff, to try to understand what was and wasn't working on our current fleet. as you know, the bradas are an incredibly vulnerable fleet. we face a lot of risks, particularly on issues related to doors and steps, as well as propulsion. we also know that the vehicles are crowded and that we didn't have enough at the time to really handle the growing city.

so all of that informed our initial process. then we reached out to the car manufacturers themselves. and we said, before we put an r.f.p. out on the street, we put a request for information out. and we met with many car builders, and we said, these are the types of problems that we're facing. these are the reliability issues that are challenging us. and we used their feedback to inform and build a request for proposals. from there, the proposals were evaluated in a very rigorous way, both for how they met our performance spec, as well as on items of cost. and seaman's was selected as a result of that

process. it has been an, i think, very positive experience. one kind of happy coincidence is the location of seaman's. being in sacramento, it allowed us to work much more closely throughout the design process with the vehicle manufacturer as we developed the vehicle. san francisco, as we all know, has a very unique terrain, and a lot of challenges that we face in the design of our vehicles, they need to work in mixed traffic, but they also need to work in a subway that is controlled automatically. we have hills, so we have doors that have to stay closed even when working against gravity to push them open. and that is why the first three vehicles did go through nine months of stefting.

testing. and it is also why, as manny reported, those three vehicles weren't ready to hit the road. they needed to be retrofitted with all of the enhancements we identified throughout the process. a lot of which came from our kind of testing and tinkering and doing our best to break the vehicle and fix it again. but a lot of it also came from feedback that we got from staff, including mechanics and operators. >> chairman: and was the wheel-flattening issue identified in the first three vehicles? >> in the first three vehicles, we saw wheel-flattening, but almost exclusively related to emergency braking in the subway. we did not see it during our testing in part because of operators that we were working with were very comfortable with and relied on the primary emergency brake, which is the "t" stick.

>> chairman: okay. i have any number of additional questions, but there are several members who have their own questions. we obviously -- i'm not done with wheel-flattening, and we've got obviously the couplers and the sensitive edge of the door issues to left to talk about. but why don't we open this up to members of the commission. we'll start with commissioner brown. >> thank you. is there a seaman's rep here today? >> yes. thank you for asking. michael calhill, who is the president of rolling stock for north america seaman's is here. >> i actually have a question for this person. >> oh, thank you. >> hi. thank you. >> good morning. >> can you talk about the door specs and how they compare to the specs of trains around the world? >> yes, of course.

the -- as julie said, the san francisco environment is somewhat unique in some areas, but the door systems and the door specifications around the world and in north america do differently in some areas. in north america, the door specifications are largely governed by the american standards associations, and they have put a lot of work in working with agencies across the country to define a set of required standards that all of the doors should meet in terms of safety. there are some differences in the standards between, for example, european stands and the upta standards, but all of them largely take the same approach to try to minimize the risk to passengers, both in terms of doors closing and operation of the vehicle subsequent to the door

closing. when i say "minimize the risk," there is a recognition by all of the standards boards that there is almost no hope of a completely fail-safe system that will eliminate the risks. and that's in it's standards as well. one of the elements of the upta standards is to make a very objective and very clear attempt to minimize the most likely scenarios, but also to put a lot of emphasis on testing, repeatable testing, so it is not subjective, and you don't get into a situation where some people think it is good and some people think it is bad. upta prescribes a set of tests that doors should go through, and that was done for the vehicles here in san francisco, as it is done for other systems across the country as well. in other systems, there is less prescription in terms of what is needed to be done from a testing perspective, for example, in some of the european systems.

>> i have a question, too, about it. isn't there any sensors? because our old trains had sensors, and i know sometimes when they were packed trains, they had a hard time closing because people were standing two close to them too close to them. it seems like it is old technology, but it works. having the doors have sensors, so if they sense anything, they won't close. >> that's a good question, and there are sensors on these doors. i think one of the things that is important to remember about these systems is that even in the presence of sensors -- and there are sensors, and i can describe them in more detail to you -- no one system, whether it is sensors or anything else in terms of technology on the car, carries all of the responsibility for safety. there are three key elements necessary for a safe operation, and they are largely: