they are prohibited -- prohibited at the meeting. if you are responsible for one going off, you maybe asked to leave the room. cell phone set on vibrate may require interference. item four, approval of the minutes from the may 7th, regular meeting. >> we have the may seventh meeting minutes. are there any questions or concerns about them? is there any public comment on this item? seeing then, public comment is closed. i will entertain a motion. >> moved to approve. >> second. >> all in favor say aye. >> i have no communications for you at this time. item six, his introduction of new ordinances. >> any board members that have newer unfinished business? we have a lot of unfinished business on the agenda so we will get right onto that. item seven, director's report.

the floor is yours. >> nice to see you. >> nice to see you, as well. members of the board, public and staff, i have a couple quick things, and then we will have a monthly update on munimobile from our no longer acting transit director. a couple of things, and first, it is my sad responsibility to let you all know that we have had another two people who have lost their lives on our streets since we last met on saturday, may 11th, the 13th and 14 th traffic fatality. both lost their lives on our streets that night, and like every one of these, both tragic and preventable. the first one involved a pedestrian who was struck in the crosswalk while crossing, struck

by a right turning vehicle. we do not have a lot more of the circumstances by the police department. the second fatality that night was a motorcyclist who was struck by a left turning vehicle at the intersection of pine and poke. likewise, we are awaiting the investigation results on the police department. we did, as per our protocol, sin folks out to evaluate the intersections absent the investigation report, and looking at the existing conditions, and anything we can do to enhance them. for golden gate, we will be restriping some of the lines around the intersection, and we will be implementing a pedestrian scramble, which is

and always stop for motorists that gives all directions of travel a right of way to pedestrians. we won't initially be able to put in a day i can all crossing because we will need to upgrade the infrastructure to allow us to do so, so it would still just be perpendicular crossings, but we will put those two in place, and then at pine and poke, we will implement a lagging north north turn left arrow so that we can better separate the traffic. in terms of the scramble, it is something that is part of, we have reported to you before on the north of market, south of market signal timing project. it has been underway for quite a while. we have been evaluating as part of the project scrambles, as one of the potential tools. it does, you know, have traffic congestion impacts, and in this

case, potential munimobile impacts for the 31 balboa, but we will be doing this intersection, as well as a few others in the tenderloin area as part of the timing upgrade. so that, unfortunately, is -- is vision zero update. the only other thing i was going to touch on our some service changes that are going into effect on june 15th. one of them is the extension of the ll service. this is in response to the late-night transportation task force planning from a few years back. increasing nighttime service on the 25 treasure island, and route adjustments to the 30 x. marina line marina line. we will be extending to fishermen's worth, to ferry plaza, to serve as a direct connection to market street and

other regional providers. munimobile provides the late-night service every 30 minutes from 1:00 a.m. until 5:00 a.m. monday to friday, and this is really responses -- responsive to concerns that we heard over the years the folks in the fishermen's wharf area, many work in the hospitality or restaurant industry, they have a hard time getting to or from work when they end late or start early, so i believe this was funded by a lifeline grant that we got from the t.a. or from the region that will allow us to close that gap in the network and make it easier for folks to get down to the markets where they can connect to other transit. for the 25 treasure island, will be increasing the frequency for 1:00 a.m. to every 20 minutes.

this was based on feedback that we got from supervisor haney, and also from community meetings in treasure island where folks said the evening service was not as frequent as the folks who use that service really need it. after a lot of community outreach, we were able to work this increasing service into the existing schedule. we are also hoping that it will be complement it soon by the reopening of the transbay transit centre, which, as you know, the 25 is a great beneficiary that gets direct connection from the centre to the bridge, does not have the timing with traffic. the all the other thing we heard from outreach, our reliability challenges, which we think are somewhat associated to having to be on the streets downtown. that will change once the center reopens. and then a small change on the 30 x., we will be removing the bush and battery stop because it

puts the bus into a very traffic congested area, but we will have new stops on the new inbound route to california and battery, and on davis and pine. just some efficiencies there. we got feedback from operators and writers about the challenges that they have expressed during rush hour. that completes my portion of the report, and i'm happy to take questions and turn it over to the director of transit. >> director, any questions at this point? dr. eakin, please. >> thank you for the update. i've been thinking a lot about vision zero recently and just how many of the fatalities are pedestrians, not just in this year's data, but in the previous years. in thinking about the conversation we've had with respect to bicycles and the desire to continually upgrade to a protected bicycle facility,

and thinking that that conversation, that thread, has stayed pretty relevant when it comes to pedestrians. thinking about this idea that you are waiting across the street, then you get the little walkman and he says go. there is a signal, i believe it says it is safe for you to be here at this time and in this place. the problem with allowing the right turn to cross that space -- it is truly not always safe. i think about this because my daughter is starting to walk home from school by herself. it is not always safe to be a pedestrian in that place and at that time. when you have left turning cars, you have right turning cars. you actually have to be on guard as a pedestrian in the crosswalk i just wonder, i would love to hear you guys think about the idea of unprotected bike lanes, and we are moving towards protected, which are truly safe, to me, it seems the only truly protected crosswalk is a pedestrian scramble. when you stop other vehicle movements, and only pedestrians

are allowed to move, and i understand that these upgrades are very costly, but it feels to me as though if most of the fatalities we are experiencing are pedestrians, that is the right conversation for us to be having about what is truly a safe, protected intersection for pedestrians, and i just wanted to know that washington, d.c. has introduced legislation to ban a right turns on red city citywide as a safety measure and new york city has done the same. i wonder if we are thinking about that kind of bold move to take that serious step forward to reach vision zero that the mayor has challenged us to do. >> yes, i think those are great points, and definitely looking at separation where we can through signalization. the idea of banning rights on red citywide is not something that i have really discussed, it is something that i think would be great for us to look at. i presume that we have the authority locally to do that, so definitely bring that back to staff.

>> i would add on that, if i may interrupt, it could -- i mean i don't -- i'm not saying it has to be citywide, but we could be more targeted than that, in figure the intersection floor there is heavy traffic on red right turns and then fix the problem. >> absolutely. we can look at it in a few different scales. you may have noted, i probably should have included this in my report to the board of supervisors, we will be doing it today, or last tuesday, a resolution urging us to significantly reset the amount of daylighting we do. this is perhaps -- to provide signalized protection everywhere , i mean the reason why we don't do separated phases or scrambles everywhere is that just because of the time delay that it adds to the whole transportation system, including

munimobile's system. we are always trying to balance the need to permit for the flow of traffic, but particularly the flow of munimobile, so we can provide reliable service. we can give you a more comprehensive review of where we have them, how we use them, what it would mean if we use them a lot more, i think that would be a good policy discussion to have , and what the trade-offs associated would be, what benefits we think we could gain. of course, there is still the compliance issue that is relevant, but i think that would be a good discussion for us to have with the board. >> i would just say, i would disagree with that comment. i have worked for five years of the corner of bush and montgomery, and the only time when pedestrians do dart across -- i mean, the combination of having the separated turn, if

known as and the one lane, he would dart across, even though they didn't have a walk, and the safest time was when you had the full scramble, and everyone moved about. wouldn't having signal privatization help get rid of the issue with munimobile, if then munimobile then triggered that everything stayed in a certain way, and then we did the scramble afterwards, wouldn't that solve the problem in terms of being worried about timing? that is a question i have. >> you know, it starts getting the logic of the program and of the signal controllers is part of a network that is getting complicated, but we can definitely -- i think, how to address munimobile flow issues as part of thinking about more protection, which is essentially lengthening the time that it gets to reach the cycle of an intersection, it is something we can definitely bring forward as part of this discussion. >> the other question i had is the l service.

maybe you can bring this up in another report about how things are going with the earlier hour with bart now being open an hour later, and s. doing the early morning service. i want to know how that is coming along, and how that has impacted many of our other service sprouts. >> okay. and if there are no other questions, i would like to ask our transit director to come forward for the monthly meeting update.

>> my apologies. >> there it is, perfect. welcome. is this your first one of these know that you are permanently in this position? >> yes. [laughter]. >> we didn't scary of the first three times. >> not yet. i'm the director of transit. >> congratulations. >> congratulations. >> i'm really proud and excited to be doing this. despite the fact that we have had a very difficult six months and, you know, we are -- we have

been in a leadership transition, we are struggling with some basics like, you know, getting the service out on the street and dealing with a pretty significant operator shortage, we are renewing our entire fleet and dealing with some of the challenges that go along with that, particularly on the rail side. our customers are feeling that impact and i am acutely aware of that, and i don't want, in this presentation, to give the impression otherwise. i can say that i am personally committed to redoubling our efforts, as is the team asked -- at sfmta in supporting this work people are really passionate about delivering quality services to our customers, and i think you'll see, i will start first with some of the difficult things that we have faced recently, but as you see some of the progress that we have made in the 90 day plan, i thank you will see some of that passion for the work come through and

why i am confident that even though we do have these difficult problems, we also do have a strong foundation to build on. so the recent challenges i want to cover our the major subway delay, we talked about it briefly at the last meeting, but given the extent of the scale of it, i wanted to make sure we covered it again. the operator availability issues , i will cover as part of the 90 day plan because while we haven't seen some of the results of the progress that we made, i'm very confident that we have turned this ship and that we are going to see a reduction in open service. i have really positive updates to share on the l r.v. four door and coupler issues. we shared some of the findings in a memo to you, but i will

share some of the results, and then just to say that subway reliability continues to be a challenge, but also to be something that we are razor focused on. the subway overhead wire delay that we experienced on april 26 th was extensive. we had over 1,000 feet of overhead wire go down. i think it is worth noting that had this incident happened with a new l r.v. four, we wouldn't have had the level of damage that we had because those pantograph his are designed to retract when they have something unusual happening like in this case, significant amounts of wire getting wrapped around the pantograph, and then dragging the train through. what i heard loud and clear at the board meeting two weeks ago,

was two sets of complement tree instructions. first, was to put on our astronaut caps and to really make sure that we are anticipating and working through all of the problems that we could have in the subway and making sure that we have good plans to address them, and the second was to do a full assessment on problems, and fix them before they break. we are, -- we are at the beginning of both of those efforts, starting, first and foremost, by going through the subway with some of our senior management team, with our preventive maintenance checklist , and making sure that the preventive maintenance has a q.a., q.c., so any immediate vulnerabilities can be addressed , and not with the intent of being punitive towards staff who may have overlooked something, but to really use it as a training opportunity, and

also to look at our standard operating procedures. are we specifying that you have to measure something with a gauge, verses eyeballing it, those kinds of things that are going to get us to the type precision that we need. on the l r.v. four we have made good progress on two significant design issues that are creating an immediate customer impact. we are currently only running single car trains, and we are locking out the back door because of two challenges that we are experiencing on the system. while these challenges are creating a significant customer impact, the way that we are approaching them is not unlike how we are approaching other issues that we are experiencing,

and that are very typical of a new train, an example that i will give is the cameras. we rely on camera monitors instead of a traditional mirror on this train. some of the benefits of that is that we can see looking behind, as well as looking forward, so we get the cameras in two directions. but we have already made two modifications to the cameras. the first was based on operator and trainer feedback, so now, the split screen that shows a two cameras is actually a touchscreen, so if you touch it, it can zoom out to the image that the operator wants to see more closely. the second thing was more mechanical related. after we brought the train in, the first season it rained a lot , and we didn't have any issues with the cameras. we did not have a lot of trains out there, but we experienced no

issues. in the second year, we were starting to get water on the surface of the camera, which meant that the camera -- the train could not be in service. and what we found was that the washer pressure on the cameras for the 18 months that the train was in service was not meeting our expectations of wear and tear, so we have now implemented a new design that siemens designed and paid for under warranty. it has been implemented on 90% of the trains, and by our next rainy season, it will be 100% through that process. we are constantly learning and going through issues. we will be much more diligent moving forward that we are transparent about those issues, both including on this report, and also sharing them with

customers, so that they understand if there is a short-term fluctuation in something like availability, why and how we are addressing it. on the single panel door, which is at the front and the rear of the train, we have been working to make the door more sensitive. in this photo here, you will see a yellow line. the initial train design had a sensitive edge only on the car body, which meant that unlike one train that you catch midstream, the door will close all the way before it would retract. we have worked with siemens and the door designer to put in two additional sensitive edges. the first is the red stripe which is on the door itself, and then the second is at the blue

stripe which is on the outside of the train. in addition, what we found was that if we overwork the door enough, the sensitive edge didn't behave as designed, but our testing procedure, which was following the industry standard, it was only testing it straight on, it wasn't picking up that wear and tear, so we had a situation where the test we were using were telling us that the door was working, and common sense, you know, my hand specifically being stuck in the door and it was not working. and so we have redesigned our approach to the test, so we are now testing it at multiple angles, in addition to straight on. we have now, i think, a much more sensitive door. we have a better testing

procedure that will allow us to make sure that the train that we put out today continues to function as expected throughout. we are going to watch the third sensitive edge over the next several months. that is the blue edge. is a little bit unusual to have a sensitive edge on the outside of the train, and it may come with added maintenance burdens. so we are going to continue to look for other design solutions in case that becomes something, not from a safety perspective, but from a maintenance perspective, we don't think is worth continuing. this design has been reviewed by our outside expert, our l r.v. four safety committee, the cpuc, they came out and looked at it yesterday and had no concerns. based on some of the feedback we here today, we are looking

forward to putting the train back in service with all of the doors operating. [indiscernible] >> not that i'm aware of. >> my understanding is that we may be one of the few, if not the only that has the single pain design. the problem does not exist at the center doors which are double pain, and i think the typical product is all double pane doors, so while we are not aware of this problem happening everywhere else, we are not aware of that -- this design anywhere else. >> i think based on fitting with the rest of our system, this was the design that is somewhat akin to the doors we have on the

existing trains. >> so do we have a city attorney for any litigation in this area? >> just to clarify, and i want director torres' question answered, please, but just to clarify, siemens is paying for this. >> yes. >> the manufacturer is paying for all of these upgrades and fixes. >> i was also referring to the potential losses that could be filed. >> deputy city attorney, i believe that the train, as far as we understand at this point, was designed to the specifications, but perhaps the director of transportation can confirm that, at least as far as we know at this point. that would be the question. if it wasn't, then perhaps there would be some kind of action. i don't think we need to answer that question here. >> has a lawsuit been filed? >> i think she has filed a claim

>> a claim, okay. >> thank you. >> thank you director torres. >> the second issue relates to this year bolts that connect two parts of the coupler. as you may recall, we had share bolts break in service. at no point did the train separate. there's actually several redundancies that keep two trains connected, and at the time that the bolts broke, there was nobody on board. it happened at the terminal. that being said, this year bolts are not supposed to break as part of regular service, which is why we have been running the single car trains, until we had a better understanding of why these bolts were breaking. as we discussed at the last meeting, we eliminated two

causes. one was that we confirmed that this year bolts were built to design, and the proper strength and mental aspect, and that there were no unexpected turns or curves in our system that were already captured in the initial design of the vehicle. we remapped the entire system where they two car train travelling through, not only our revenue service, but also the terms in our rail yards. what we did find is there was a design flaw. that the end stop, which is equivalent to a door stopper on your door, in a couple instances , it was getting too close to the plate above it, and so instead of being able to swing all the way open, and allowing the train to turn, it was only moving about halfway, creating a lot of pressure, which then backed up onto other

parts of the coupler head and broke the bolts. we will be addressing that issue in the short-term by removing the end stop, which will allow for a full swing, and we will also be repairing the couplers that had scraping as a result of this condition. and then finally, just an abundance of caution to give ourselves a new baseline, we are going to replace all of this year bolts. that is probably more than what is needed, but to give us a comfort level, we will be replacing all of the bolts. that also has follow the overall review process with no concerns raised by the safety committee or the cpuc. this photo here, this is the end

stop shown on the left-hand side the red circle is an example of some of the scraping i was talking about that will need to be fixed at siemens' expense. >> company bolts will we replace >> there are two per and, on the order of like 200. >> how long will it take to do that? >> we are hopeful that by the end of june if not sooner, how we will have all of these repairs made, with the exception of the couplers. there may be some instances where we have a trained remain as a one car train, but we would just put it on the jay line, for example. the couplers all need to be sent out to be repaired, but we have a couple of float, so what we

will do is we'll put good couplers on the train, we will take the old couplers out, we will repair them, and then continue to work through the fleet. >> i assume we are prioritizing our busiest and most crowded lines? >> absolutely. >> just a follow-up on that, because my question would be one is this done? obviously the doors are an important issue, but this is a critical issue to the ability to service our customers. when i'm in the tunnel at rush hour inacio one car train go by, it is frustrating. all that capacity is lost. we only need one driver for a two car train. i heard you say the end stops will be fixed by june, but maybe the couplers won't. when will we be back up to full ability to run two car trains where you want to in the system? >> i believe by the end of june.

the coupler damage is contained enough that we can operate where we need to with two car trains. >> very good. are you at a break in your presentation? okay. we have one of our members of the board of supervisors here, and if i may, although this is in your report, i would just ask that we pause you report because supervisor safai has to go back to the board meeting. we will pause the report. >> absolutely. >> all right. supervisor, with that -- he doesn't say that about many people. with that introduction, the floor is yours. please address what you would like to. >> thank you. i appreciate the opportunity to speak today. about a year and a half ago, we had been contacted by a number of neighbours that were on a

very narrow portion of the 54 route in our district. it is such a route that regardless of whether or not it is a bus coming or going, two cars cannot pass at the same time. and over the years, significant numbers of cars had been sideswiped and so on, so i think it was a source of frustration for the drivers, a source of frustration for munimobile, and a source of frustration for the community. we initiated a process working with the director and his staff, and the planners, and we looked at the opportunity to reroute the 54, similar to the route that it goes when it is going outbound instead of inbound. we spent the last six months working on that. we came up with a really good plan. staff today really good job with community outreach in minimizing the impact in terms of the distance on the route. i think we have made some

improvements. there is one more little tweak i would like to see, but other than that, i think it is a really, really solid proposal, and i just came here to speak in support of it and just give my full support for this rerouting. i think it is community driven, community supported, and it will be something that will improve service along the way. other then the one little stop that we want to get in front of the firehouse, other than that, we are good. >> any questions or anything? >> i would like to know what the tweak is. >> we have crocker amazon park, and this is a spot that we moved it is actually going to be a stop, but we want a stop sign there. the neighbors have been asking for it for a long time. it is a major entry and exit point into the park. we did a major tree planting there just two weeks ago.

even though we were planting trees, a number of the neighbors came up and said because of the route where the trees were, staging to where we were going to plant on athens. and by the way, m.t.a. staff have been very helpful to get significant numbers of stops. we thought since the bus stop is moving to that corner, would make sense to have a stop sign. other than that, everything is 100%. minimize the impact of parking, minimize overall the distance that people would travel, seniors, and so on, we have made improvements to this proposal. i want to commend staff for their work on this and doing the outreach, and working with the community. >> thank you very much, supervisor, for coming down. we appreciate it. >> thank you forgiven me the opportunity to interrupt. >> good luck downstairs. >> julie, your moment of the hot seat was short-lived.

>> mr. ramos, please come plummet the supervisor for being so concise later. [laughter] >> all right. >> i will try to follow his lead this is my opportunity to share with you the results of our second 90 day plan. i think what distinguish this from the first one was that we really empowered staff to bring forward the objectives based on the initiatives that identified as i identified as being highest priority for our service, and we also added this element of reporting out to you all, which has been really helpful in making sure that we are making good progress throughout the process. the initiatives that we were focused on included the rapid network, the subway performance,

reducing the amount of miss certain -- missed service, looking for opportunities for improved staff engagement and morale, maintaining quality service during the mission bay platform and its construction, which i'm really pleased to say that i think we achieved, enhancing customer information particularly in the subway, and continuing what i think it is been a very positive trajectory along safety, but still quite a bit of work to do. the april metrics, i think they show some good positive momentum collisions, we continue to meet the targets. we also met our goal of reducing subway delay by 10%. as i said, we did not meet our goals for service delivery. in my mind, the only true goal is 100%, but setting these milestones is important because it will do several large -- take

several large classes before we achieve that. we have our first large class graduating on may 30th, so that's really the first opportunity we're going to see for some of this work to take place. we have maintained very study service on the rapid network where we are reducing the number of -- that a little bit of time that customers have to wait. we are still seeing some challenges on managing gaps in service, as well as managing on-time performance on our infrequent routes, which i will share as we continue through the presentation. this is an opportunity to look at the trend data for the service delivery. the l r.v. service, in the last 90 day plan, we really put a strong focus on rail training. we have a lot more control over real training because we control the pipeline, but we have been able to achieve high levels of

service delivery on the rail and we will continue to do so. >> so before you leave, that graph, the drop in the bottom two lines, is that attributable to driver resources, or is there some other explanation? >> it is driver resources. >> thank you. >> we are addressing that problem by completely revamping how we approach new operator recruitment, and over this 90 day period, we started 260 person classes. the first of which graduates next week. we also have committed to doing a new lift every two months, and publicist -- publicizing that list in advance. it used to be that we could create an operator list every 15

months, and people would wait months, and months to be munimobile operators, because it was a higher wage, it was a good benefit, but it is a much more competitive job market, and people have -- people are approaching jobs differently. they want to know if i'm least -- leaving my job now, what is my next job going to be a relatively short time period? creating more frequent list allows people more frequent opportunities to consider munimobile operators employment, but it also allows our nonprofit partners, which are helping us to recruit and publicize these job opportunities, to have some certainty. what we are ultimately trying to get to is a continuous list where you would always have the opportunity to go in and sign up as a potential operator. it would take a longer time period to get that implemented, but in the meantime, we've gotten some really good feedback

by just making that test time periods public and certain so that every two months, people have the op expectation there will be a job opportunity. and then i think the most success we have had in this area has been partnering with the mayor's office of economic and workforce development on their city drive program where we are now making an opportunity for anybody who is on the munimobile list to take a free course which will help them get their class b. permits. we are really seeing significant numbers of people take advantage of this opportunity, addresses what was the biggest hurdle before, which is, i'm on the list, but i don't have the class b. permit to start the course. >> can you tell me how long is the course, how many hours you need to complete, it will be good for the public to know. >> i believe it is about two weeks.

>> and talking about the class that you had to go through to be an operator. >> it is about nine weeks full time. >> so you would have to leave your job. >> so when someone starts the class, they are starting work as an employee. it is not a different training class, so they are full time, paid city employees at the very start of the class. you cannot have another job as you go through it. >> thank you. also, can you tell us the date of the graduation? i think there maybe board members who want to come to the graduation to recognize the new graduates. >> we will definitely send that to you. it is may 31st at 11:00 a.m. we will make sure that you have that information. we would love to have members of the board attend. >> okay. >> i would encourage you to come it is a really special ceremony.

we invite family and friends to come as well. the second place we were focused on is managing our rapid network , as well as our subway performance with the goal of trying to reduce the amount of gaps or wait time that we had on our heaviest ridership routes. we continue to see a lot of good success on the rapid system. investments we have made and protections of traffic, as well as the frequency of service, is allowing us to absorb even the current condition, which is that we don't have enough operators. i expect that we will continue to maintain, if not see an improvement in these numbers once we are able to fill all the shifts. on the rail side, we covered around our goal, but we really didn't meet our goal this last month of april, we are going to continue to look for opportunities to reduce the amount of gaps that we have. the subway is a big part of this

because when subway problems happen, they propagate through all of the lines, but there's also important -- opportunities to better manage caps on the surface as well. one place that we saw some small , incremental improvements, but did not meet our goal, is for the infrequent routes, the hour route, some of the circulator routes, there i do have the expectation that our folks are looking at a schedule. if i take the 2:05 a.m. trip, i want to know that that 205 trip will show up and be reliable. we are doing our best to prioritize filling the service because if you only have, for example, three buses on a route, even missing one could have a pretty big impact, but we are going to relook at this in the

next 90 day plan and see what we can do to better manage it. what i'm encouraging staff to do is really put a personal face to this, because there are so few operators on these routes, there is a real opportunity to work with these operators to really understand the benefits of on-time performance. a lot of these operators are committed to the customers they're working with. they see the same customers every day. they have close personal relationships. unit addition to managing from the control center, and trying to make sure we file service, we are also going to be doing some work at the divisions on these specific routes. some of the successes that we did have was attributed to having a comptroller who is specifically assigned to line management. we are working, as with staff about the control center, to

increase the number of people whose sole focus is on making these small adjustments in service. with your help, we also were able to approve the downtown third street project, which as it gets rolled out, will significantly improve reliability on the 30, the 35 and the eight x. we also did some signal timing experimenting on mission street. we have signal priority on about half of our transit signals, but we wanted to look at how we can get the most travel time savings on them. we went through a period where we turn them off for a week, and then we turn them back on, but with varying levels and approaches to the signal priority, with some good results we really found that the signal priority was having a benefit to

the travel time, but that there were some things that we were doing, and some time periods where the signals were competing with themselves that we are going to make some adjustments moving forward. system of the lessons that we have learned on mission street, we can then provide to optimize the signal priority in other parts of the system. and then before i dive into the subway, we did have several actions, eight actions related to safety. a key one was related to our operator security. we had already had about 90% of our buses that had the option of the operators having a protective shield while they are driving, with some of our oldest or ryan buses just did not come with that shield. we retrofitted that fleet.

it was about 86 buses. so now all of our buses have that option so that if operators choose to have that protection while they are driving, it is available to them. we also implemented a rules and compliance course. this was a course that was developed our field manager and transit inspection team. based on some of the collision patterns on rail and some of the rule issues that we consider to be the most important from a safety perspective. speeds, signals, cell phones, alertness, and the course, it is an eight hour course. it is taught in a very small ratio, just three or four people , and what we do with the operators is we watch videos instances that happen in service , so they are real, something that folks can relate to, and then we talk through how

better rules compliance could have prevented that collision, or in some cases where we have an opportunity to focus on a positive example, we do that. when we're talking about operator alertness, we use an example where an operator it saved a life by being able to stop quickly because they were alert. we are seeing some really good -- we have about 60 operators who have gone through the course we have about 300 total for rail we are seeing a lot of good dialogue happening. senior operators coaching and talking with newer operators about how they face different situations. on the subway side, as i indicated, we meant hour delay metric. we were also able to reduce the number of major delays. well we did have a very big one in april, we only had two total. and we really haven't had any in

the month of may. we had an issue this morning that technically met the definition from 5:00 a.m. until 5:30 a.m. where we had a no permissive signalled that prevented a couple of chains from being able to enter west portal, but for the most part, we have seen a significant reduction in the number of major incidents. we have not, however, been able to get the embarcadero turnaround time down. some of the changes we have made with the four doors are not helping, and we certainly need to continue to look for opportunities to reduce delays at embarcadero, but the investments that we have made at west portal and some of the other maintenance improvements, we are seeing quite a bit of payoff. that being said, you know, from a customer perspective, what they care about is how long it takes them to get from point a

to point b. we did see that creep back up. i think we were seeing a significant improvement in february, particularly reducing the delays with people stuck between stations, but we need to continue to campaign because we have seen now the time, particularly the outbound time from embarcadero to west portal creep back up to that 22 minutes where we would like it to be closer to 20, if not 19. some of the major things that we did accomplish with the focus on the subway was transitioning to the transportation management centre, i think it continues to pay off. we implemented some additional support to manage traffic and we are also going to be presenting today some additional traffic

modifications in the a.m., which would complement those parking control officers. we also inspected 130 of the couplers in an effort to reduce the number of breakdowns we were having. anywhere in the system is problematic, but particularly when the breakdowns happen in the subway. they really create problems that propagate through the entire day so as i think through this work and where we are going with this next 90 day plan, a lot of our priorities are not going to change. we're going to continue to focus on safety, we will continue to focus on service reliability, subway performance, and then i am going to pull out at r.v. four as a stand-alone item. i think it is important that we closely track the progress and

make sure that not only are we addressing these near-term issues, but that we continue to stay on the trajectory of the reliability program to get the reliability up to where i know it can be. i also think that, and i think i started with this, that we have a lot of things working in our favor that will continue to complement these ninety-day plans. we did do a major upgrade of the infrastructure, we have the greenest fleet in north america, we have some really great technology, a lot of which is already working for us, and some of which i think we can continue to push the envelope on. we have increased real service, so even under the situation where we don't have as many new trains out as we would like, we still have more chains than we have ever had in the system.

we have got now really new classes of operators coming and a strong program of transit priority. there is a lot to be proud of, but still a lot of work. using these ninety-day plans to focus on the biggest issues that we are having, i think will continue to still be an incredibly effective tool, but we will also be complementing it with some of the things i talked about at the last meeting, which is questioning, problem-solving, troubleshooting, really pushing that ownership to the next level

>> what are we doing to really try to drill on that problem? >> we need to look at it in two pieces. the first is what we talked about at the workshop in january. looking at opportunities to reduce the number of trains that have to do that turn around. and the second is the remaining trains that are turning to troy to turn them as quickly as

possible which require a lot of pieces and to work correctly. including making sure that when the train gets turned around, the rider is ready to hop on and go. >> one question and a larger global comment. the building, knowing the class sizes, knowing that maybe not everybody who goes through the nine-week training program becomes a operator, just knowing that pacing, when would be based on the current understanding, when we be in a position to deliver 100% of service? >> so, i believe starting july 1st, we're going to start

slowly increasing with every class graduating delivering more and more of the service. i think that we're between six to nine months out from getting to -- getting close to that charter requirement of 98.5%. even then, we will still be using operator overtime to get to that so we need to continue hiring on an ongoing basis. i expect within the next six to nine months that we will see relief. >> great. and just a second piece building on the comment from a moment ago, hearing how you are troubleshooting and all the -- s

like we are reinventing the wheels. given all the transit agency and it seems the universal issues would be know able bable by now. it feels like we're working through, trial and error and testing things out and failing. having delays of the system. i wonder why it feels like that that we're reinventing the wheel. are there not networks or opportunities for exchanges with they have worked through these challenges. i mean i have to imagine you are already doing that but it does -- is it i because we havee system and nothing is -- it feels like we're going through labor and someone has got to have done this already. >> i think that those are good

observations. the difference between a train and say a car that you drive for your own personal use, is that that car has actually gone through years and years and years of testing before it even gets to the dealership. it probably is many preexisting cars repackaged to then meet your car. the lrv trains, we do benefit from the fact that other properties purchase them and used them but they are a very individualized product built for our environment and the single-panel doors are a perfect example of that. we have much tighter turns in a system that you designed in 1985 versus something you designed much earlier