>> okay. page 3 contains the same reminders about the two most common strategies. page 4, just to refresh with the board, last year we had, from 2018 until 2019, the year we are presently in, there was a 0.3% rate decrease, and so we are certainly looking in conversations with kaiser to strive for more consistent renewal and insured premium change actions from year-to-year , but again, i will note that the 5.9%, which is really from the plan cost stan point, four-point nine% is consistent with national trends. and the increased as result from two key elements. first, there was an almost eight % increase in actual per

member claim experience 2017 to 2018, or early 2018 claims that serve as the basis for 2020 rate development. this is higher than prior year-over-year comparisons, and was especially higher for early retirees, and then we have talked about the tax coming back and the under rating detail is in the appendix. so we include the fully termed drug premiums from kaiser. the vision plan, the sustainability, the charge of $3 and then again, i mentioned earlier to reinforce there required change to fertility member cost share for 2020. currently it is $20 co-pay that will move to 50% of service cost for 2020.

>> that seems like a huge difference. was there some mandate that kaiser do this, or is it something that kaiser decided to do from their own actuarial experience? that could be a huge hit for members who want to access this, if i'm reading this correctly. >> i will ask a representative of kaiser to speak. >> hi, kaiser permanente. the change in the benefits, it is my understanding that it is for the actual infertility diagnosis and treatment, not -- it was already at 50%. so we have a policy within our organization that we have those benefits in alignment, and so we , two years ago, addressed that we wanted to face it in, and we gave the two years. we paid for the enriched

benefits this past year ourselves with the understanding that it would be changed this year. it is to make the benefit in complete alignment, which is the policy within our organization. >> alignment with what? >> i'm sorry, these more expensive procedures are already at 50%. this is for any other diagnostic services. it was out of alignment in our system. it was the 20-dollar co-pay. we are bringing this in alignment with the rest of the benefit. >> is there some sense about -- i don't know how much these extra diagnostic procedures might cost a member. i assume that they are invasive and all that, is there some sense about what we're talking about in terms of cost to bring this in alignment. >> really good question. i can get back to you on that. i frankly don't know the cost. i think it is probably a wide range of things. some would be more invasive,

some would be regular, but i will need to check on that. >> is this part of what you're looking for? >> it is my understanding that this decision was made a couple of years ago for all the plans to be at the same level. and i think they didn't put it into the contract, so that is my understanding, that the other plans have the same cost structure, correct? >> it is my understanding that all the plans are 50%, and that is one of the things that we want to be into alignment. >> we will verify that. >> thank you. >> okay. >> okay. i will take you then to the rate exhibits themselves, page 7 and 8 documents the changes in the monthly rates for employees and retirees, and then employer

contributions, and the total rate. we have talked about 5.9%, recognizing that the $3 sustainability fund charge are in the same vision, that's why you see percentages that are slightly under 5.9% on this exhibit, but that is what everything is going up by. and then on page 8, the 196 contribution strategy for actives, as well as the early retirees. i will note that the city charter employer contribution formula creates an environment where early retirees paid no contributions for kaiser permanente. and then the resulting rate cards themselves are exhibited on slides nine and ten of the presentation. with that, i take slide 11 where

i ask the board approve the rates and contributions for active employees of retirees as included in this presentation. adopting the 5.9% premium increase from the 2019 plan year to 2020, for active employees in early retirees, and then also approve the rate cards that result from kaiser's rating action for the interim. >> thank you very much. i see a motion again. >> i moved to approve the kaiser permanente premium contributions were playing your 2020 as presented in slide 11. >> second. >> second. >> all right. is there any public comment on this item. no public comment. all those in favour? >> aye. >> opposed? it is unanimous in favour. that concludes our benefits.

thank you. we now are going into regular board matters. that will be item number 16. >> item 16, reports and updates from contract health representatives. >> does anybody have anything to say from the health plan representatives? nothing. okay, public comment on this item? come forward. >> excuse me if this is not relevant or bit into my agenda me is meeting, i expressed my concern about charges for laboratory tests under the unitedhealth dpo, like when these tests oh, curve, there is a charge of $25 for that, and i'm thinking that,. >> wait a minute, we're still

under item number 16, which is the contracted health plan representative comment. >> okay. >> that we will be on the item in a second. >> excuse me. >> there was no public comment on item 16. we will moved item number 17. >> item 17, opportunity for the public to comment on matters within the board's jurisdiction. >> as i was saying inappropriately, yeah, there are several -- a person who is seriously ill may have to have extensive lab tests, and let's say, suppose at a rate of $25, say there is ten lab tests in succession, that comes to $250, and especially if you are low income, this could work as a disadvantage, so i'm thinking that this would have bearing on the rates and benefits for the

coming year. >> i would just like to call attention to the fact that we wrote a paper on the co-pay issue, and it was included in last month's materials. >> i'm speaking for a protector of benefits. we are still inquiring about how this is a medicare issue for kaiser, and we look forward to the answer next month with regard to the rights to medical treatment that was part of medicare's benefit, and is in the u.h.c. package for medicare advantage. we are waiting to hear officially about whether or not kaiser will also give those rights. we have heard unofficially that they asked me to direct the question to the board. thank you.

>> any further public comment? no further public comment. item number 18. >> opportunity to place items within the board's jurisdiction on future agendas. >> does anybody have anything they would like on a future agenda? seeing then. any public comment on this item? public comment is closed. all right. and we are finished with this meeting. if this -- if there is no objection, this matter is adjourned.

[roll call] >> please be a revised -- advise that director brinkman will be absent from the meeting. announcement of the prohibition of sound producing devices. sound producing electronic devices are prohibited at the meeting. any person responsible for one going off, everyone will be invited to leave the room. cell phone set on vibrate may cause microphone interference. the board request they be turned off.

item four, as approval of the minutes from april 16th and april 23rd meeting. >> is there any public comment on these two items? >> i have not received any. >> this is closed. board members, unless there is questions, i will entertain a motion on both at once. all those in favor say aye? >> aye. >> item five, mr. chair, board members, item 12, the special order at 3:30 p.m. regarding the lowell students, they will be pushed back until probably closer to 4:00 p.m. >> members of the public are aware of what is going on. we have some students are coming in here to speak to us about transportation needs, equity, and that sort of thing. obviously they should be in school right now so we will have a special call for them at about 4:00 p.m. when they arrive. thank you. >> item six his introduction of new or in are in finished business by board members. >> okay.

, great. i just wanted to take a moment at this meeting to acknowledge i believe we have experienced our 12 fatality on our streets this year, which will put us on track to surpass several previous years in terms of total fatalities. i just want to make a moment to honor and acknowledge that that is where we are in this process. i want to reiterate i look forward very much to seeing the 90 day action plan that was requested. i look forward to seeing the pollux -- policy text of the quick build strategy improvements, and a detailed analysis of what it will take. really looking quarter by quarter over the next several years to hitting that milestone of eliminating traffic fatalities in 2024. thank you. >> very good. is there any new or unfinished business from board members? if it is not needed, i would suggest that to underscore the director's point, you can read the article on the soccer team

that lost a teammate. it is touching and really points out how important this is in the city. thank you. no further knew or unfinished business. we move on to the director's report. >> good afternoon. members of the board, members of the public and staff, we will give you a brief update on vision zero's part of this support -- report, but certainly we'll come we will come back with more in-depth reports, but you will get a flavour of it today, and to have -- to have two more people since the last meeting killed on our city streets is just tragic, sad, and unacceptable. we will be speaking to that. first, though, i do want to take the time for our deputy directors to recognize some of their outstanding staff. first i want to ask tom maguire, our director of sustainable streets to come forward, to

recognize two individuals. >> mr. maguire? >> good afternoon, directors. i'm here today to ask you to recognize my colleague. eugene and alan are transit fare inspectors who, on generally 14 th, 2019, responded to the van ness station where they found a young woman unconscious. they performed c.p.r. until paramedics could arrive on the scene. allan was telling me before this meeting that this is not the first time he has performed c.p.r. on a munimobile patron or m.t.a. customer. just an example of this service that are transit fare inspectors and all our m.t.a. providers are providing to the public every day. i hope you will recognize alan and eugene. >> absolutely. please come forward. do you have some words? >> thank you, board. twenty years ago i was a videogame artist, and i did not

know that when i applied and received the job with the sfmta seven years ago that i would be joining a team of fare inspectors going out in the street on a daily basis, and doing things that were worthwhile. doing c.p.r. i got my e.m.t. card, and i started pushing towards the medical field, and i enjoy it. but i joined the team and i realized on a daily basis, we uphold the sfmta's goal number 1 we provide and create a safe experience for all the ridership , and we are out there every single day doing it, you know, having me and my team, thank you very much, the guys are right behind me. [applause] >> every day. i will be taking the award for eugene who cannot be here. >> please extend our thanks to him. please accept them from us on behalf of the city and all the citizens of san francisco. as our city attorney reminds us,

we take on a special care -- a special duty of care when we take on our passengers, and it is wonderful that you fulfil that duty, and help save someone's life once they entered our system, and the fact that it is connecting to you to the mission statement of this agency is particularly rewarding to this board. thank you for your comments and thank you for your service. congratulations. [applause] >> i do want to recognize a number of fare inspectors who are here, not to make it obvious , but it is a good time to evade fares on munimobile right now because they are all in the room, but just to recognize the whole group. it is an exceptionally difficult job that they have. many folks are not happy to see them approaching, though many folks are. most of us who pay the fair are happy to see them on board. and as alan said, they do add to the stasis and the ends --

safety and security on munimobile under very difficult conditions. i want to acknowledge all of them for their ordinary work, as well as alan and eugene for their extraordinary work. the next extraordinary performer will be introduced by our director of transit. >> welcome. >> good afternoon. this is the first opportunity that i've had to recognize a staff member to this board, and i am thrilled that scott is the person that i am sharing with you. the contributions that scott has made over a rich career has been tremendous, but i think what i wanted to share more than anything is that scott has the funnest job at munimobile, and you would not ordinarily think that maintaining underground fuel tanks or elevators and escalators or subway fans and restrooms would be fun, but

scott would simply have it no other way. that is how he approaches this work. i asked some questions about scott to prepare this and what i found is that he is fun across the board. so how he approaches his work is always a meant -- as a mentor and a teacher and somebody who brings new energy to every project that he does, and that's how he approaches his personal life as well. for example, he and his brother, mike swam from alcatraz to christie field one afternoon, in 20 knots of wind and 4-foot swells, just because it seems like a good idea at the time. that kind of same flare is also how scott designed our new escalator system, where we have rainbow lights celebrating diversity in the castro. so i have been really honoured

to be working with scott. he is going to be retiring in a couple of months. we are going to be bringing him back to help us go through the final testing of central subway because his expertise, his systems, facilities, stationary engineering. because he is reaching a milestone in his career, i wanted to take this time to honor him, but also let you know that we are not letting him go too far because he needs some time for these big adventures, but also is going to help us close out what is a tremendously important project for the city and county of san francisco. >> wonderful. is scott here? >> scott is here with his family >> i'm very glad. for the past 13 years, roberta has been telling me i have the funnest job at munimobile, so i'm glad i can now push back on her and show who actually has the funnest job at munimobile.

>> there's also a number of transit colleagues here that i just would like to have some waves and say hello. they are all here to support scott and the tremendous work he does. [applause] >> the applause does not let you off the hook for giving a speech , so take your award. [laughter]. >> i'm speechless. >> you will be the first person to ever have that affliction at that podium if that is true. >> thank you, julie, for the kind words. i will say i have the most fun job at munimobile, so i'm sorry. >> i knew roberta was wrong. [laughter]. >> the variety has been incredible. you were talking about the peer inspectors earlier, i haven't paid a fair -- you were talking about the fare inspectors earlier, i have not paid a fair and over 23 years, but i think i got the best right out of anybody. all the people i have been working with been great to work with. i cannot say enough nice things. i feel like by retiring, i'm

going away with my family like i'm moving away or something, so julie offered me a little work to help out with central subway to ease the pain of doing that, but thank you for the ride. i started out growing up in the outer sunset and got to work on working on everything, working on cable cars, storage tanks, elevators, escalators, it couldn't have been a better ride i want to thank the city for giving me the opportunity. it has been fun. >> thank you very much. [applause] >> are there any further recognitions? >> there are not. i will note for the record that mr. broder exercised much more prudence in his day job than he did when he chose to swim from alcatraz to christie field. >> if i may interrupt you while

we're on recognitions, it is no secret your announcement earlier that you will not continue past the term of your contract, i said publicly, and will say again, how impressed i was with a character in which you handled that, but today, we will have a more formal thank you. we will not just cram it into your report, trust me, but i just couldn't let go the fact that the relationship you've built at this agency is just pouring out as we saw with the fare inspectors, and we saw scott talk about his colleagues. thank you. >> thank you. [applause] >> i hate to follow a positive with something less positive, but i do want to have julie come back up while -- with her more in-depth report that will come at the next meeting, given the extreme every week that we had following our last board meeting , and a six ordinary not in a good way. i wanted her to have an opportunity to give you a little

bit of an update on what happened that week and what to expect going forward. >> this will not supplant our monthly report. >> not at all. we will not cheat you out of that. >> very good. >> on friday, april 26th, we broke what had previously been a very strong month in terms of not having major incidents in the subway, but we did have one of the worst incidents that i've seen here, i wanted to make sure that we talked it through. before i dive into the specifics , i do also want to ask the overhead lines and emotive powers staff who worked on the incident, and are incredibly stressful conditions and may the repair, to stand up. i've asked them to come today and thank them. [applause]

>> you are not going to tell as they have the funnest job, are you? [laughter] >> part of what made their work so challenging was the nature of this incident. we had, around 6:30 a.m. on a friday, a failure of an overhead wire splice, and where the wire broke it got wrapped around the second pantograph of the two car trains. it is what connects the train to its power system, and so as the front of the train continued in power, the back of the train went down almost 1,000 feet of overhead wire, and it required

us to use buses as well as a truncated train system to deliver service for almost a 13 hour period. we weren't back up and running until almost 7:30 p.m. that night. the incident was unacceptable. we missed something important as part of a routine inspection, and it is something that we are taking very seriously as we move forward. the splice, which is a metal contraption that connects two separate pieces of wire had been in our system for about three months, so a defect on that part did contribute to this incident, but at the same time, we had warning indications that we could have caught in advance. while we take this incident very seriously, i do think it should be viewed in the light of our

overall overhead line track record in the subway. prior to this incident, we had lost no time. we had zero service impacts related to overhead lines, and that's in large part due to some very intentional improvements to our asset management and preventive maintenance programs. for example, all of our maintenance and the way we work is tracked on online dashboards so we can look at and track the quality of our inspections, and our asset management program, which is looking at the overall needs of our system, which are extensive, but is also an area where we have made a lot of investment. it has identified overhead lines is something that we are really going to be focusing on over the next year. in one of the things that is already planned is to digitize all of our overhead lines maintenance records so that we can look for and see these types of patterns. what we will be doing immediately is we will be doing

a full assessment, not just of our overhead lines, but also our track and our signals. we want to make sure that we don't miss another situation like this, and we will be investing more in our q.a., qc program. we have a very extensive quality assurance program on the vehicle side and we will expand some of those lessons to our maintenance more broadly, though, both this incident and some of the incidents that we faced on the l r.v. four is also allowing me to look at what we need as a division to really be addressing these problems, and more than anything, what i think we need is to start promoting a culture of questioning and of problem-solving. and debriefing on this incident, we learned a lot from the staff,

some of the folks that are here today, about what they need to better support their work. for example, we only have one working high rail or, which is what we used to make this repair , and 1212 weeks previous, it had not been working, so we are looking immediately at procuring a second vehicle and adding in that redundancy, but encouraging more questions, encouraging more problem-solving , and really improving communication overall is something that we are going to be very focused on over the next year in the transit division, because i think that both the lessons we saw in overhead lines, as well as some of the lessons we've seen in l r.v. four, really come down to that. are we asking the right questions, are we listening to the answers, are we communicating with each other? on the service side, i believe we also had some lessons learned

we were bringing customers by train to church station and then turning trains back, and we pulled as many buses as we could , and we were starting summit castro and some at church we also had big waves of customers that were getting off the train and walking down to the church street intersection. we very quickly, because of the unexpected nature of this incident, overwhelmed the few buses that we had, and kind of the intersections. moving forward, what we have talked about is always trying to preserve as much of the subway as we possibly can. in retrospect, we would have moved the bus bridge and had buses exclusively at church, and then up, and then we are also in the process of getting the van ness crossover back into operation. we just completed a wiring project.

we were only actually a couple weeks away from doing testing, but had the van this crossover been ready and tested, we could have gotten folks to the edge of downtown, and that's where the b.r.t. mutual aid really would have kicked in, along with all the other service that we have on market street. at the end of the day, we tried to get folks home by using a combination of the buses and the trains, and what we essentially did is we only had the track in one direction, but we stacked as many trains as we could at sixth and cain, and we started running inbound trains on the outbound track. that was the first time for us. we have not really done single tracking in the subway, and it didn't -- and it didn't work perfectly. we need to improve our communications, we had station agency didn't fully understand the plan, and were sending people back to the surface, but at the same time, we tried

something new, and we want to continue to do that and encourage that. we also, not only in my incredible he grateful to the overhead line staff, but also to the service management staff, as well as the dozens of folks who came out from all aspects of the agency to be ambassadors. i think that really helped. the fair inspectors and medially dropped with they were doing and helped manage both west portal and church and market, which was critical, but we also need to standardize those plans so that we can immediately send the people that are doing that work, these are your talking points, this is where you need to position yourself, this is how you're going to need to interact with folks, so i think we've gotten the first step of really understanding that we have to have a mass deployment of staff when we have an incident this serious, and now building the playbook so that we have a media -- immediate materials at our

fingertips is also a critical next step. so i don't want to minimize this situation, it is a huge deal to go 13 hours without having subway access to the downtown, and we are doing everything that we can to develop lessons, but then implement those lessons, because there is a lot to learn from this situation. >> okay. director, i'm sorry, where you done? >> yes. >> do you mind if we split up your report for questions here? are there any questions? >> so this actually goes -- will send a little funny, but this reminds me of a book i once read about an astronaut. people were asking him, why is he not afraid to go up into outer space, and the reason that they said, the culture of nasa is to explore every possible thing that could go wrong in

advance, and have a plan so that they know exactly what to do. it's almost like they know something will go wrong, which we could probably adopt as an assumption of our operating agency, we know something will go wrong, and we play out those scenarios of every single thing that might go wrong so we have a contingency plan in place when it goes wrong, and that this astronaut perspective was what made him not nervous at all, because he knew exactly what to do when something happened. i want to explore this concept of contingency plans, knowing that it is a certainty that things will continue to go wrong , things will break, but to -- have we done that thinking of thinking through, what will we do in this case? to me, that ties very much to the idea of ownership, and are we empowering staff, every pushing down decision-making to the lowest levels of the agency possible so that staff on the ground no, i know what the plan is, and i am empowered to act quickly on that plan, because we've all talked about it and we

have vetted it in advance. that may allow us to act more quickly in this situation. finally, i like what i'm hearing from you in a sense that we are trying to learn from this, and continue to get better. i want to be affiliated with an agency that operates in a culture of continuous improvement, that would keep learning, we keep getting better , and we keep getting smarter and smarter over time. i'm happy to hear you say that, and that we just continue to learn, and we are on a trajectory for continuous improvement. >> related to that, you talk about creating a playbook. do you feel like you have the tools and the authority you need to be able to line all those things up to do contingency planning that the director talked about, i mean, do you have other roadblocks or limitations, are there things that we can do to help you? >> i feel that we do have the pieces, and i think we even have a good shell of what those

contingency plans are. i think it's having the discipline to do the practice with those contingency plans and to make sure that they are disseminated broadly and built in to all of our standard procedures and training, and things like that. i don't anticipate any barriers. i've actually seen quite a bit of buy-in, at least from staff at the agency, that they do want to be prepared, and they do understand that things are going to go wrong, but we want to play it out in a way that has the least impact to our customers. >> and then i guess you talked about the dashboard and how we missed something, and you are reworking all of that. can you talk a bit about our prioritization? we have a lot of projects going on, but the underlying prior to his asian has to be the subway and the system operating at all times, in addition to that work. do we look at that? a know it sounds like we missed

those basic inspections or standard things that we look at, and how do we prioritize the subway, for example, over bus line things. buses you can fix a little more quickly than you can obviously with the subway. >> we do prioritize our inspections based on use and also film ability. the subway certainly does receive the most inspections relative to some of our surface areas that are lower use. i think where we need to get more stringent is to make sure that when we have competing needs in the subway between various construction projects and testing new trains, and also doing our standard preventive maintenance that we are always starting with maintenance needs first, and fitting in other needs around that. i do think that is certainly something i have taken from the

situation. we absolutely do prioritize our maintenance work based on where we have the highest use, where we have the most vulnerability, and also the heaviest ridership. >> i know we have talked before about the off hours, and that you are increasing the effort in the off-hours to do more work, do we reasonably have the amount of time that we need to do the work we need to be doing? is it the amount of time that we have, or the prioritization? what would make it better for us to get to those things? >> i think i would like to get back to you on that. i think that we have enough time to do our standard maintenance, but i think there are some things like for example, reducing the number of splices that we have in the subway, and running more continuous wire that would require longer shut down windows, but without

drilling down into the specifics , i would be talking off the cuff. >> okay. , i really appreciate this very detailed, you know, information. i love hearing that you are trying new things, and obviously those things need to work, so look forward to seeing the playbook, and the contingency planning, and the practice, and maybe even involving public when doing our practice ransom of the contingency planning. so they see that we are making the effort that we are needing to and we learn the lessons realtime. thank you very much for this. we look forward to further progress. >> to just follow up on the two sets of questions. i think to the question of, you know, what are the barriers to doing this, we talked a number of months ago about setting up a playbook of contingency plans.

the stalled train at civic centre station, what is that game plan look like? i think the biggest challenge is time. you have a whole organization that is focused on getting the service out every day, and dealing with day-to-day issues that happen. most of them are small, some of them are big. to be able to carve out the time , and then this gets into your second question of the nonrevenue time, which is ace pretty small window at night, which is when we were going to start testing some of these moves using the crossover more systematically in ways that we don't during revenue service, and his reluctance to do it because we don't do it often, but to start using that window to start testing some of these plans, that then is in competition for the time that we need to do the preventive maintenance. i think it is a great question you asked of whether we should look at that nonrevenue window, and expand it.

i know we did have some discussions when they initiated it, a large maintenance project, as to whether we should move to a later start so we would give ourselves more time, and i know our maintenance folks would love it if we do that. we try to balance the relative needs of early or late night riders, and the convenience of the rail versus the bus, but it is a great question. i think what we need is to dedicate the time, and give folks, julie and her team, and the rest of the organization that is supporting them, the time the space to do this work while they are trying to run this virtually 24/7 operation, but those are the right questions, and this is the right area of focus. >> so thank you for your candour and thank you for admitting that this was a preventable mistake. i think it's important that we admit that, but he think it is also important, and i say this isn't acceptable.

when folks were denied transit for almost an entire work day because of a mistake that should have been prevented, that is unacceptable. i realize no one did this on purpose, i realize there was no efforts to scuttle the system or anything like that, but this should have been prevented, and i think it is important that i am in this position to say that this is unacceptable. i think it's important that i his position apologized to the city that this happened on our watch, and i will say to you, with respect for the fact that you've come here today to admit what happened, and that happened on your watch as well, i've been hearing this for a while. something bad happened, here's how we are going to fix it. that is a question that i have been asking for years. how are you going to make sure this doesn't happen again? and i thank you hit on a bigger issue. we can't keep playing walkable with the system. i strongly urge you to talk to your staff and the people who

know this system best to do what has been described a little bit here today and identify a list of all of the issues that can cause this sort of significant disruption in service, and come up with a plan to address them. and the director's story about the space exploration is helpful , but i think at some point we should not assume something will go wrong. we should assume that we can protect ourselves against even at least these very significant delays, whether it be a switch, a wire cross, whatever it is going to be, and identify the things that have the potential not to disrupt service for 15 minutes, as annoying as that is, inasmuch as we'll talk about that in the next meeting, but sort of luck it a priority list of what are the things that can go wrong, and completely disrupt the system in an unacceptable way like what happened on friday , in the figure out how we will deal with those. to your point, if that means we need to take a little bit less

revenue service on a sunday or late at night, let's do that. this is a simple analysis of how do we serve the most people, and if by taking an hour or two of service away on a sunday evening , or on a late night, it will allow us to prevent disrupting service for tens of thousands of people on a friday workday, let's do that. that's number 1. i really urge that. we need to switch from a walkable, fix it as we can, to a proactive approach. is a very big system, but as i understand it, there is a set of a few things that can cause that major disruption, and the idea of a checklist of how to deal with those, i like that, and if we need to close a little revenue service to prevent this, it will have a meaningful prevention effect, i will tell you, i would support that as a board member, even as someone who writes a system every day, and sometimes at night -- who rides the system every day, and

sometimes at night. crossovers, operate them all. it is an emergency response, and you know full well that i am going to be pressing you at the next meeting to use them in regular service. we all know there are design flaws in the system, there's not a lot of options once a train is stuck, there's not a lot of flow options. the crossovers, including the one i insisted being the twin peaks tunnel, a really valuable, not just for emergency response, but also for future design plans please work with your staff as best you can to get all these crossovers operational, and figure out ways we can use them in the short-term for emergency response, and then we can talk about, at the next meeting, i'll use them to redesign this somewhat fall -- flawed flow plan. finally, communications. he knew i was going to say this. if you want to put together a bullet plan for what every station agent should say in each one of these contingencies, i'm okay with that. i'm not opposed to that, but relying on dozens, if not

hundreds of different people to coordinate on emergency message in short-term, and get it all right while our passengers are looking for information and confused, to me, seems like a herculean task. we have a system announcement system. i would suggest that we tell our station agents, when advised, to listen to the station announcement and spread that information. we can centralize the messaging from one person, you or the director can make the call as to what that message is, but we need to provide a quick and unified message to all of our customers. it was better on that friday, as i understand it, i was actually out of town, it was better, but i heard enough people say they were getting different messages exactly as you admitted from station agents and others, that it just seems to me time to change the protocol to go to the notion that the overhead announcement, the systemwide

announcement will carry today, and people in the systems, whether customers or staff, should follow that unless instructed otherwise. it is time to take responsibility for these issues with the systemwide announcement , it has been too long since we've done this. look, i don't get to make these decisions, i just give advice, but having done this for over a decade now, and having dealt with a lot of these, it seems to me like the proper solution here , so strongly urge you to consider it. we have a lot of work to do. i very much appreciate your candour, you're taking responsibility, your approach to this, working organically with staff that encourages me, but this has been a difficult month. i'm glad we are focused on the service, and i have to agree with the vice chair here, this is the workhorse of the system. we need to focus our resources on not having this again. if you were telling as that we don't have the staff resources, or you were telling us we don't have the out of service hours,

let's fix that. we need to focus on our high ridership, the work commute, metro service, and make sure it is as flawless as it can be. >> thank you. >> okay. i don't have to have the last word. if there's anything you like to say in response, you may, and we will call for public comment. >> i still have more. >> understood. okay. director torres, do you have a question? >> maybe to you, being one of the newer members of this board, not as long as you have served with distinction, is there, and i may be naïve, but is there a required performance audit of this agency periodically? >> because you just got a performance audit, and with remedies. my question is, is there a function to have a performance

audit, for example, our stem cell agency, which i am the vice chair, we have a performance audit required every three years which examines externally how we are doing. >> yes. >> i don't know whether we have that here. >> under the regulatory agency, the callaway public utilities commission does do an extensive try annual audit. they review all aspects of our programs, including our inspection programs. we have -- we had one completed recently. we have not, as of yet, received the findings or the closing audit, yet, but we did put in some immediate improvements based on the feedback that we got throughout the process. it is a try annual audit every three years. >> and those recommendations, are they made public? >> yes. >> you be helpful if i could see that, the last recommendations. >> great. if we could get that to director

torres, please. >> thank you. >> not to dive into another hard topic, but would you like me to also cover some of the recent issues that we have had with the l i.v. four? >> i think that would be appropriate for the next meeting , but if you think there's something when you know about before the two weeks, please address it. >> i would just say that we have put in some operational changes that are inconvenient to our customers, including operating one car trains, and blocking out -- locking out the back doors. i do want to reiterate -- >> just so we can levels we are on the same page, so the issues we are talking about are the coupling issues that we have experience with the new cars and the issues we have encountered with the rear door closing sometimes through an obstruction , such as someone's hand. since we are in it, go for it. >> okay.

>> please. >> on april 12th, 2019, we had an incident involving an elderly passenger at the embarcadero station who tried to hold onto the single panel door and fell into the track way. she was transported to the hospital as a result of her injuries. prior to that incident, we were already working on door enhancement, including adding a second sensitive edge, but even with that second sensitive edge, and what the edge does is when it is attached, it essentially opens the door back up, or in the case of the current design, it prevents the door from closing. we were still finding some instances where the door could close on a hand, including my hand. we have been working closely with siemens, but we did also bring in an outside expert who has been providing us with a lot

of industry best practices and a fresh set of eyes. on the door issue, we are going to be, on an interim basis, putting a third sensitive edge on the car body, so we essentially have the original edge, which is on the car body, a sensitive edge that will be added to the door, and then a third sensitive edge on the car body. this is an interim solution because the maintenance -- for maintenance regent -- reasons, it is not optimal to have that much sensitive edging on the door, but it will significantly enhance the doors, and allow us to put the vehicle back in service. what we intend to do is after we have vetted the design, reviewed it with the independent expert, reviewed it with the l.r.v. 4 safety certification committee and our state regulators, bring it back to our next meeting so that you all have a chance to

review that assessment and make sure there is a comfort level before we move forward. the same is true with the coupler pins. in both these instances, i believe that we are very close to having working solutions to be able to put the trains back in service and stop the disruptive customer impacts that we have recently been experiencing. i will have a more thorough update, including a recommended timeline and path forward at the next board meeting. we also, later this week, will be providing a fairly long, i apologize in advance, a fairly long technical memo that describes the safety certifications that these vehicles have already gone through, the issues that we faced, a couple other issues that we have faced and have been resolved, and our process moving forward.

the second issue that has garnered a lot of attention relates to the coupler heads of the vehicle, which is what we used to connect trains, both mechanically and electronically, so it is what allows one operator of the front of the train to operate, for example, the back doors of a two car train, and on april 11th along the judah, this year bolts that are part of that coupler system rope. at no time -- broke. at no time -- and in that particular incidence, we were at the terminal. there was nobody on the train, but we did do an immediate inspection of the vehicles, and we found one other train with broken couplers, but as we expected every single vehicle, we found upwards of 25 to 30

couplers with damage, and so we have looked at three possible causes. the first was the bolts themselves, you know, was that what we expected, where they built to the design standard, and we haven't gotten the official report, what all indications are that the bolts were manufactured by design. the second thing we looked at was the actual system. when we designed these trains, extensive mapping was done so it wasn't just able to work in a typical light rail system, it was able to work in our system. for example, we looked at where we had our tightest curves, and our steepest hills, but we went out and mapped all of that again to make sure that there wasn't more swing, for example, in a turn than we expected. all of the mapping came back that the vehicle is designed within the same parameters we are seeing in the field.

so what actually happened was related to the actual design of the coupler itself. the coupler has -- i guess i can still be described, it is an end stop, up it works very much like a doorstop for your door, so when you open your door and you don't want your door to slam into the wall, you have an end stop that prevents it from going that last five or 6 inches, but in the train, the engineering was such that there was very much -- very little margin of error to allow the end stop to swing, and so on some of our trains, it was scraping, but still fully swinging out to where we wanted it to stop. on two trains that we had the broken bolts, the end stop got caught by another part of the train. it was almost like as if you had a door that is trying to swing all the way open, and it can only get a third of the way open , and so the pressure on the

vehicle, on the coupler had ended up breaking the bolts, which are the weakest points of the trains, so we are going to need to reengineer that and stop so it has enough clearance to be able to fully swing open, and we are working on that now, as well as siemens will need to replace all of the coupler heads that have been damaged, but understanding the issues at play will allow us to fix them very quickly. we plan to bring you a set of recommendations that have gone through this setting -- does vetting and reviewing process at the next meeting, with the goal of june getting back to fully operational two car trains in the system. >> thank you. on the door issue, one question i have hasn't been answered is why is it the four door? i assume that is not just because the door that is people are likely running to get, why

is it that doors having the issue as opposed to the other doors? >> we are only seeing it on the single panel doors, so the front and the rear doors are designed just a little bit differently, but the centre doors have two panels that close so that they have a sensitive edge that works a little bit differently. on the rear door and the front door, it is a single panel that closes to the car body, rather then to another door. >> so are both doors now locked on the trains? >> we have locked the rear door, and then we are working with the operator to have extra scrutiny on the front door. >> okay. and you mentioned that there is an interim fix which is to add to the additional sensitivity panels. will that be done on both the one and the four door? >> yes. >> okay. who is paying for that? >> siemens will be paying for that. >> great. you said that is not a perfect solution, and as i understood it

, maybe at the next meeting or soon, you'll have a timeline for the interim solution, and then a plan for the permanent solution. >> i can commit at the next meeting to have a plan and a timeline for the interim solution. i think we are still working it all out on different directions on the longer-term solution. if we don't see some of the potential maintenance issues, the interim solution could be, what we carry forward, is it just has some risks. >> by engaging in this interim solution that siemens will pay for, we are not undermining our ability to have them pay for the permanent solution as well, is that correct? >> that is my understanding. >> that is our expectation. >> on the coupler, same set of questions. we have -- my understanding is we will run a single trains until we can fix the coupler, at the next meeting you have a timeline for both the reengineering solution, not a temporary solution, a permanent solution that will solve this problem allow us to get back to two car trains with the siemens

trains, is siemens paying for all that? >> yes. >> directives, any other questions on these two issues? >> i guess my only question is, if we discussed -- usually we expect siemens to expect -- should we expect them to pay for those things. have we discussed them paying for the interim and the long-term solution, has that been part of our solution, or are we assuming that? >> for those issues that we have clearly identified as a design problem, that's a very clear that siemens is responsible for that. >> for those issues, siemens has accepted responsibility for those. there are a number of different changes that we are making, some of them are based on correcting design issues, some of them are things that we are adding, or we are requesting of them, so each one has a differe