>> at this point in time, the

public utility's commission is not interested in exploring the acquisition of gas assets. >> okay. and then, can you tell me, you know, they have been -- there have been constant breakdowns on the island, the utility service, can you tell me what is causing those breakdowns and what the new system will prevent -- how the new system will prevent that type of occurrence on treasure island? >> yeah, generally speaking, the vulnerability of the existing system is hi, both in the transmission lines, the above and underground portions of the existing system. they are buried and underground. many of our outages, the p.u.c.

-- the results of their work is inconclusive as to what caused the outage, which tends to indicate, it tends to point out to the primary switch here on the island. even when they are able to identify an outage as being, for instance, related to a bird strike, really, the bird strike is a cause of the outage, but the underlying vulnerabilities in the mean -- underlying vulnerability is in the main switch. the new switchgear that we will have wilma -- will be much more fault tolerant. it will be able to handle fluctuations in amperage that happens, for instance, when a bird flies into the power lines. without tripping out. so some of the things that cause outages today will not cause outages in the future because the new switchgear will be more

robust and more able to ride through fluctuations in low that result from minor faults or problems like that. there will be a great increase in the liability with the new electrical switch. the intention is also on the overhead line that i showed coming out of the new switch here to then trump off of that line to feed, for instance, the existing residential neighborhood, the department of labor, the island, and then to come down to the west side of the island where phase one of construction would be to feed the new underground electrical distribution to solve this first phase.

in each of those points of connection to that main trunk line will have their own views isolation, so if there is a problem within, they will be the campus that goes down and not the entire island. increase reliability -- there will be increased reliability. >> thank you. my main question has already been asked about the difference between the current vulnerabilities and the future. i wanted to make sure we design for them. so, let's see, i'm curious. it seems like the majority of our power sources are essentially connected from oakland through submarine cables or connections. or any of those infrastructures

being upgraded as part of the process? >> the electrical service, the submarine electrical cable was -- the cable that historically fed the island from oakland. it needed to be relocated as part of the construction of the new eastern span of the bay bridge. caltrain was paying to relocate or install a new connecting as to oakland. at that time, the p.u.c. advanced the money to have caltrain install a second line, so we currently have two cables connecting the island to oakland , either of which will support 100% -- 100% of the projected demand of the island. we have service redundancy right there. those cables are about a decade old at this point. i don't know the age of the natural gas from the east bay.

that is something i can look into, but i am not certain of its age. >> great. you spoke already quite a bit about the thought process that goes into ensuring the new overhead electrical main line, the line can handle more fluctuation and it can be isolated if there is a problem. i'm curious why it was designed as an overhead line as opposed to underground. it is obviously less attractive, there are still vulnerabilities from bird strikes. >> our permanent facilities will all be underground did, but because of the geotechnical work that hasn't been performed in these areas yet, we were not putting in permanent infrastructure, but as we build out the eastside neighborhood, we will underground that line in

conduit after that zone has gone through geotechnical work. the line along ninth street is purely temporary. the eventual feed would be in a different location. >> okay. that makes a lot of sense. and then, for the water storage, the reservoir, i have heard of evaporation loss problems with reservoirs, which i wouldn't imagine it to be a big concern here because our climate doesn't look superhot, but we are very windy. are there any potential loss issues with the wind, like water blowing in the wind? >> these will be close reservoirs. >> okay. >> again, because we are taking the water treated. we don't want it open to the air evaporation losses are more

related to open reservoirs, for instance, the san andreas reservoir that the p.u.c. owns. they would have losses both do -- both due to regular evaporation, but also wind aided evaporation in our climate. the wind made it -- the wind evaporation tends to be the larger factors. >> great. just to echo the president's concern around -- or i guess, for discussion whether or not there are opportunities for us to increase the renewable source of energy on the island, i think , if i heard you correctly, you said there is 5% of the island's and his plan to be generated by solar. are there any other percentages that would be from renewable sources? >> our primary source of electricity is from pg and e.

their primary source of power is hydroelectric -- electric, although they do own, as well, a substantial installed solar amount. i don't recall exactly what percentage of the total generation capacity is now solar , but i believe it is above 10% at this point of their generation capacity. >> i would be curious to hear what that number is just so we can understand what the island percentage of renewable sources are in cumulative sense. >> yes. >> thank you. >> thank you. any other questions? >> just a couple. currently, it is 12 kv capacity. >> yes. capacity coming over and then as it gets distributed out, it will be stepped down. >> right.

and that is enough for the buildout? >> twelve kv is the voltage. in terms of the wattage capacity , i wouldn't want to cite off the top of my head what the transmission capacity is, but that is something i can bring back to you, but the figures that were projected, each of those cables could handle 100% of the load. we have done some reevaluation in recent years because while on one hand homes are becoming much more energy efficient, the prevalence of electric vehicles is adding a new electrical

demand to the mix and trying to project out in time what sort of demand electric vehicles will contribute to is a changing picture. >> could they both be used to bring electricity so we could increase the capability or capacity? >> that is an option. we could bring more across those if we needed to. >> okay. the next question is just out of curiosity. how old is the switchgear that we currently have? >> i believe it is about 40 years old. >> so i imagine the new switchgear, in addition to being more modern and robust, will be smaller. will have a smaller footprint? >> yeah, it will have a smaller footprint than what we currently have in hangar three. >> okay.

for maintenance, do we have maintenance on island? if there is an issue like a bird strike and it trips the breakers , somebody have to come out to the island to fix that? >> the p.u.c. doesn't have line crews on the island full-time so they do have to respond to the island. even when it is weekends and after hours, their response times have been very good. with the one president they's out last for 13 hours, the average time for restoration of power over the last year and a half has been two hours, and that includes responding to the island. >> maybe they can get a boat to get out there quicker. when we are planning the

buildings, will they use natural gas as a heat source or electric have we gone that far? >> i believe most of the buildings will use natural gas where it is available, and then pricing. will the residents in buildings on treasure island pay the same price for the gas and electricity as we do here on the mainland? >> they will be paying the same price for gas. there electricity is provided through the p.u.c. is expected to be nominally lowered then the price of electricity. >> okay. great. thank you. >> thank you again. this is been very great. right now, the p.u.c. -- there is a conversion going on, unless you state otherwise, the city will automatically convert to you to the p.u.c., and treasure

island residents, being san francisco residents, i am sure that is what we are going to be confronted with. that is already going that way now. i just received my own letter. you have to state otherwise. they automatically convert to. they also did take away their new state-of-the-art, technology -- technology driving, renewable energy. the first generation where there was massive structures, and that is no longer the case. she is right. if you go to denmark and sweden, the europeans are way, way ahead of us. i think we need to maximize renewable energy, and i think that is coming out of this committee. i would like for them to explore that. thirdly, it is very interesting. even though the switchgear is 40 years old, it is very

interesting that up until now, it is not conclusive. there is still speculation as to what is going on. that is no good. with all these engineers and people like we have, someone should be able to pinpoint that. we do not know, there speculation with new equipment, but right now, if you are not able to trace what is going on, even with the new system, we might still be confronted with this uncertainty. >> maybe i misspoke or made it seem -- when i say the p.u.c., they are not able to identify what caused a surge in the system, but it is the switchgear tripping out is what ultimately

resulted in the power going out. it is the cause of the source of the surge that the new switchgear would definitely be able to override those momentary fluctuations in power demand that are causing outages today. they will definitely be an improvement in reliability with the new switchgear. >> is the p.u.c. utilizing expertise as well? >> on the island, it is just the p.u.c. is our operator today. our point of service is in oakland. >> again, we are trying to find the bottom line here. it might be wise also for them to utilize all these other experts. you know the resident frequency.

it will be a while before we build out the new infrastructure , and for this commission, and for the residents on treasure island, we are trying to get a supervisor. we want to make sure we are at least maximizing these outages because the frequency right now is not us. we are not the experts. we depend on the p.u.c. all i am saying is it may be they can solicit other experts to try and help us to do that. commissioners, are there any other questions on this matter? seeing then, thank you, bob. >> item number 6, discussion of future agenda items by directors >> commissioners, are there other items that we would like to discuss? one thing that i was telling mro bring rita back for the water

transportation. that agency is very important. we need to engage with them more it would be great if we could bring the director or whoever back so they can tell us about their plan for treasure island, and also for us to educate ourselves, learning about the plan for the area. this is where we are right now. we would like to bring them back >> okay. i can work with them on that. >> okay. thank you very much. >> meeting is adjourned. >> meeting is adjourned. thank you, commissioners.

[gavel] good morning and welcome to the san francisco county transportation authority meeting for today, tuesday, june 25th. our clerk is mr. alberto quintanilla. mr. quintanilla, could you please call the roll. >> commissioner brown? commissioner fewer? fewer absent. commissioner haney? haney ab accept. commissioner mandelman? mandelman present. commissioner mar?

>> present. >> mar present. commissioner haney? >> present. >> haney present. commissioner peskin? >> present. >> commissioner ronen? >> ronen present. commissioner stefani? >> present. >> stefani present. commissioner wallton? >> present. >> commissioner yee? yee absent. we have quorum. >> thank you, mr. quintanilla. with that we'll go to the chair's report. colleagues, this month we began with -- we begin with congratulations to the bay area rapid transit district, for its award last week of a long-awaited $300 million core capacity grant from the federal transit administration. this award is the first installment of what potentially could be $1.2 billion pursuant to a full funding grant agreement, to boost capacity on bart's trans-based service by over 30%, increasing the current 23 ten-car trains per hour to 30 trains per hour. i think we all agree this is good news for the 28,000 people

that travel by bart across the bay during the peak. twice number who travel by car on the bay bridge. bart's program is extensive, consisting of 300 new rail cars, train control upgrade, and new maintenance facilities. this is what riders have been asking for and it's really something transformative for our regional transit system. our thanks go to our bay area congressional delegation, which advocated strongly for this grant, particularly speaker pelosi and senator feinstein and congratulations also to my former colleague, chair duffty of bart, as well as general manager grace krukin who worked hard to achieve this milestone. on a related note, i'd also like to congratulate and recognize general manager of bart, ms. krunkin on her upcoming

retirement after seven years of service. bart has focused on modernization of this important half a century old system, that i remember making my mother show me as they were digging up berkeley, california, to put in the berkeley bart station. san francisco was proud to help pass the bond and we are glad to see bart improving escalators and elevators and adding canopies and station access enhancements across the system, particularly in san francisco. we're also excited to see bart advance the planning for a second trans-bay rail crossing, leading to a potential west side rail link in san francisco, something that supervisor and commissioner walton and i were discussing with our cal train counterparts last evening in san jose. and i want to thank supervisor walton for his leadership on the cal train joint powers board. turning to our local transit system, as announced yesterday,

together with the mayor, we are convening a muni transit performance working group, in partnership with supervisor mandelman and under the leadership of ed harrington and gwyneth borden. and to provide an actionable set of reforms for this sfmta board and the next director to implement a number of transit-first goals, as well as vision-zero goals. as we continue to identify sources for sustainable revenue, to build out san francisco's infrastructure, riders and voters want to know that their public dollars are being invested strategically and with accountability and oversight. they want their buses to come on time and their next bus alerts to work. they want to know that muni drivers are being paid a living wage, they want to know that the sfmta has a plan to deliver projects on time and on budget, without destroying vibrant and small business corridors.

and they want to know that transit planners are working with neighborhoods to prioritize pedestrian safety and access for our most vulnerable communities. we'll be assisted over the next several months by a number of respected transit experts, labor leaders and transit advocates. i also want to thank our executive director and her staff for lending support to this important effort. i know that all of you share in these goals and i'm looking forward to hearing your feedback and ideas as well. and, of course, these meetings will be open to the public. finally, in closing, i also want to congratulate our direct pier tilley change on her recent award as woman of the year, by the bay area transportation seminar. she and two other honorees a, annette williams from accessible services and danielle harris, from innovation and new mobility, were recognized by their peers in this transportation industry, professional association, whose mission is to recognize excellence and promote the leadership of women and minorities. because i was at my last coastal

commission meeting in san diego, bart director janice lee represented me at the awards ceremony and managed to capture a great image of director chang, fist triumphantly raised, last seen trending on twitter. [laughter] thank you, vice chair mandelman, for joining our staff and celebrating with tilley it he event. the contributions of women to city planning and transit management are truly significant and we are all very proud to have you steering this agency, miss chang, well done. and with that, i conclude my remarks. before i turn it over for the director's report, is there any public comment on the chair's report? seeing none, madam executive director. [gavel] >> thank you so much, chair peskin and commissioners, for those kind words. it was really an honor to be there and to be recognized with my peers and all of the other great honorees. thank vice chair mandelman in particular for coming and making

the time during a busy board season and our staff as well. really the ability to even aspire to lead in this way is a result of generations of women who have come before, including grace. so i want to add fly thanks and congratulations to grace. she's just known as grace in our region. she's 30 years, 40 years, i don't know how many, plenty of years. but through her leadership, originally at the f.t. ample, assistant administrator and eventually at seattle d.o.t., where she pioneered -- urban city policies, sustainable transportation at the local level. we've been lucky to have her here in the region. i do hope to see her contributing in the field, although she deserves a nice, relaxing rest and good luck and best wishes in her future endeavors during retirement. on the bart transbay corridor capacity project, that was a huge win. we were really, really excited.

as chair mentioned, the total transbay project is pretty large. it involves 300 new vehicles bringing the fleet from 700 to about 1,000. control to allow for more frequent service, maintenance facilities, power systems, et cetera, to enable real boost to that capacity. out of the $3.5 billion program, i gist wanted to note that 1.5 billion in local funds is already committed, including $460 billion in the bond program. thank you to the voters, including in san francisco, for that. $500 million from the recently approved regional measure 3 bridge toll funds. thank you again regional voters and san francisco voters. as well as $318 million from the transit and inner city rail capital program, which, of course, was supported by sb-1. as you can see, all of our work in the region and statewide to approve transportation funds is really starting to pay off, as we puzzle them together and create a program as important as

this one. moving on to another transit update. following a request by chair peskin and also bart chair, we did have a request to look into a program, an innovative program at boston-logan airport. those of you who traveled there, know of the express bus service. what they have done is prioritized security line access for those taking the mass port express bus. so again chair peskin's urging, we looked into this program. made a few calls over there and learned about the pilot works and using that information, have convened a small working group with s.f.o. and bob powers at bart, as well as sam tran folks to explore the possibility of designing a similar pilot here at s.f.o. so please stay tuned. we're working on that. and the goal of the program, of course, is to reward transit riders for using transit to get to s.f.o., in particular in light of some of the shift in demand that we've seen over the

years to transportation network, company services like lyft and uber. turning to assembly bills. a.b.1112 was the shared mobility bill, that we had to oppose, unless amended. that has turned into a two-year bill. this does give the opportunity for the author and all of us to continue working on the provisions, which really kind of seek to restrict or regulate in some way the local jurisdiction's ability to permit these new mobility services, and particularly focus on data and related issues. so that's good news that we have some time. we appreciate the author working with san francisco and other cities in california. also at the state level, a great piece of news. the affordable housing and sustainable communities grant program has awarded a grant to

treasure island. the treasure island development authority, applied for $20 million in funding from this grant program. it rewards affordable housing and transportation infrastructure programs, that demonstrate sustainability features. out of the $20 million awarded, $15 million will fund affordable housing construction on the island and $5 million supporting transportation improvements. we -- on transportation look forward to using the funds for the bicycle pedestrian path come from y.b.i. to the touchdown at treasure island, as well as new a.c. buses, hopefully electric buses. on the lombard street bill, again good news that that bill a.b.1605, sponsor bid us and asked by supervisor stefani, moved out of the governance and finance committee, heads next to the senate transportation committee on july 9th. we hope for a favorable approval there as well. and finally, on the management

front, and administration front, we held a -- we participated -- staff participated in construction management association of america night. that was featuring in all businesses and d.b.e. opportunities, public agency night. so together with dozens of other agencies, we featured the projects that we have coming forward, so that we can provide networking and learning opportunities to contractors large and small. keynotes from a number of folks really drew the community to the event. and we were happy to participate and support business participation and access. finally, reporting on those statistics, deputy director of finance cynthia fong has provided some updates here. we have small business enterprise firms participating in all of our contracts. we track these figures to ensure we're making progress on a quarterly basis and during the period from july 1st through

march 31 -- july 1st last year up until march of this fiscal year, we made 30% of our vendor payments to d.b.e. firms, 27% to l.b.e. firms and 25% to s.b.e. firms. so we're pleased with that -- those types of figures and can only strive to do more. and i want to thank deputy director cynthia fong for her great work in this area. thank you. >> thank you, miss chang. is there any public comment on the executive director's report? seeing none, public comment is closed. [gavel] i would -- i have received word that commissioner brown is running a few minutes late. so before we take the consent agenda, can i have a motion to excuse commissioner brown, made by commissioner stefani, seconded by commissioner mandelman. colleagues, we'll take that without objection. mr. quintanilla, could you read the concept agenda. >> clerk: consent agenda. items 5 to 9 approved at the june 11th board meeting and

considered for final approval. the meeting items are considered routine, staff is not planning to present on these items, but prepared to present if desired. if a member objects, any of the consent agendas may be removed and considered separately. >> any comment on the minutes from our june 11th meeting? seeing none, public comment is closed. [gavel] on the consents agenda, is there a motion to move it? made by commissioner yee, seconded by commissioner ronen. and on that motion, a roll call, please. >> clerk: commissioner few? >> aye. >> clerk: commissioner mandelman? >> aye. >> commissioner mar? >> aye. >> commissioner peskin? >> aye. >> commissioner ronen? >> aye. >> commissioner stefani? >> aye. >> commissioner walton? >> aye. >> commissioner yee? >> aye. >> we have final approval. >> next item, please. >> clerk: item 10.

update on the san francisco municipal, this is an information item. >> mr. ramos. i see both of you from the sfmta. thank you for coming here on this update, with regard to the light-rail vehicle procurement from siemens. the floor is yours. >> hello, good morning. thank you for having me. i was last here a couple months ago, where i think we made a good, collective decision to put the l.r.v.4 phase 2 funding on hold. we have since then taken a step back and are working in several areas to improve the vehicle. and i've asked to have a few minutes for the next several board meetings to keep this board up to date on our

progress. i'm not hear to ask for any actions at this point. the vehicles are still not performing where we'd like them to be. but i am confident we will get to that point. and i think that through transparency and dialogue, it is my hope that i can share some of that confidence with you all. we do have some good news and i think so it's always good to start with the good news. starting yesterday, we were able to restore full service for the l.r.v.4s. we've been locking out the backdoor and keeping extra vigilance on the front door of the trains, because of the issue that we had with the sensitive edge. as part of addressing this issue, we have now added two additional sensors. so the yellow line on this graphic is where the original sensor was placed. we've now added -- >> hold on one second.

if we could get that graphic up screen for members and the public to see. >> do i have to do something for that? >> i don't think so. >> there we are. >> bingo! all right. thank you. >> thank you. so the yellow line was the original sensor. we added two additional sensors. one is on the door itself, which will behave very similar to the braid, so that if somebody touches the door, while it's mid-closing, it will retract. and then we also added a sensor to the outside of the vehicle, so that if somebody is coming into it at an unusual angle or as the door is just about closed, that sensor will track it as well. that being said, it is still never a good idea to put your hand on the door. and we're also trying to use this opportunity and kind of any venue that we're talking about this, to talk to customers about

safe behavior. but given that not all of our populations, whether it's children or others may have the same restraint that i'm encouraging all of us to have, we wanted to make sure we have a safe of a door as possible. the second issue is related to the couplers. we were having an issue with the couplers, that was a design flaw. and the couplers essentially had a door stop, which allowed them to swing, but in the same way that you wouldn't want to swing your door open and break your wall, there was a barrier on the coupler to do the same thing. unfortunately that barrier did not have enough clearance. and so in some cases, it was getting stuck halfway. almost as if a full door of force was trying to get through a half-open door. so siemens has also addressed

that issue. we also replaced, just as in abundance of caution, we real estate -- replaced all of the sheer bolts. we had two that broke as part of this issue, because they were receiving the extra pressure from that, you know, essentially. not being able to fully swing. so as of yesterday, we're able to couple cars and also have all of the doors open. we appreciate the patience of both this board and our customers. because it certainly did create extra crowding, not having those vehicles up. we have 21 cars that had damaged couplers, as a result of the coupler issue. some were only small scrapes, while others were more significant. we are in the process of replacing those couplers and so those vehicles will continue to operate as single cars, with fully functioning doors on the j-line until the end of the month, as we work through those

repairs. >> i don't want to interrupt you. hold my questions until the end. are those all being covered under warranty? >> yes. thank you for clarifying. both of these modifications were covered by warranty. and will restart the five-year warranty. i think it's a very good example of what the warranty is in place to protect us from. thank you for that clarifying question. >> does it restart the warranty only as to those deeffects or restart the warranty as to? everything >> i believe it's specific. i can get back through the board to the staff for that. >> thank you. >> do other people want to jump in? commission yee? >> you might have said it, maybe

i just didn't hear it. so the couplers then are being replaced are the ones that are damaged. >> correct. >> supervisor yee: or all being replaced. because they would -- the ones that have not been damaged would still have the issues, right, in terms of not having enough clearance? eventually they'll be damaged? >> that's a good question. thank you for clarifying. so we -- siemens addressed the design flaw by removing those end stops that i was talking about, on all of the vehicles. we also replaced the sheer bolts on all of the vehicles. there was some vehicles that had coupler damage in other parts of the coupler, as a result of this problem. and those couplers will be replaced. all couplers have been inspected. the design flaw has been addressed. and then the sheer bolts, because we wanted to make

certain that, even if some had not fully broken, if they had microscopic cracks in it, that they were replaced. but we are not remaking every coupler unit, not every coupler unit was impacted. >> supervisor yee: and the improvement that you made, i guess has it been tested? >> yes, it has been thoroughly tested by both siemens, our engineering staff, as well as we brought in an independent engineer to review this process. we've also been very transparent throughout this process with the cpuc staff, who came and reviewed this work. and then the before we move forward with any design changes, our internal lrv4 safety committee reviewed the modification. >> supervisor yee: when you made the modification with the warranty still be active? >> yes. the warranty resets.

it would start to the -- to the full five years. ie okay. thank you. >> thank you. commissioner mandelman? >> thank you, chair peskin. i have never bought a fleet of light-rail vehicles before. i don't know what is reasonable to expect around performance of a fleet, as you roll it out. i think to the public, you know, closing on, brake problems and coupler breakdown sounds not great. but i'm wondering is this within the range of what you would expect, as you roll out a new fleet or should we be concerned? >> rolling out any fleet that's this specialized, we're bound to encounter issues. we are currently exceeded what i am comfortable saying is a reasonable expectation. just on another piece of good

news, although it's still very new, so i will report it in a future monthly report, is we continue to make good progress testing an additional track brakes, which will eliminate a problem that we're having when operators hit the emergency brake, typically to avoid something unexpected in the roadway. and we're experiencing flat wheels. that is an issue that would not be covered under warranty. that is an issue that has to do with us operating two types of vehicles and having to use the emergency brake, mushroom button, as muscle memory for our operators, because it is the only way to safely stop on the braida. the lrv4s have multiple ways to stop safely. that emergency brake being the most impactful to the vehicle, which we are in the process of

modifying. so i will continue to keep the board up-to-date on that. i raise it because it is creating one of the most significant issues in our vehicle availability. when we have flat wheels, we are able to make them round again, but that only works to a certain point. and the same way that your tire treads eventually get too worn out. so we now have up to seven vehicles that we're waiting for new wheel sets. and we expect those to be placed in august. but we are working within the next five to six months to eliminate this problem, by putting a different type of braking system on the vehicle. >> commissioner brown. >> supervisor brown: thank you, chair peskin. a question with the new trains. i know you put the new sensors on the doors. is that what you're doing? >> additional sensor. >> supervisor brown: additional. so since i read the -- all the time.

and that is a very busy line. people just back in there. and, you know, one of the things i was wondering, with the new trains, do they have the announcements that clear the doorway before they start shutting? because, i mean, i was on an old train a couple of weeks ago, somebody's elbow was sticking right here, because they crammed on. the old doors were like, you know, coming back. but i thought to myself, what if it was a new train that didn't have that kind of sensor just wondering if you have announcements on the train to have people move back? >> thank you for that question. so just to clarify, with these additional sensor, we will have that same sort of sensitivity on the lrv4s that you're driving, on the braid. we do have announcements in the subway and i believe on the vehicle as well, asking people

to steer clear of the doors. let me take that as a follow-up staff item as well to make sure, i listen to the specific audio and get back to you. >> supervisor brown: thank you. >> chair peskin: go ahead, thanks. >> as i said -- did i cut somebody off? >> chair peskin: oh -- >> i just wanted to say thank you. i think, you know, asking for this time and giving us regular updatesdates is really importan. i see how serious you're taking this and how detailed the response is. and i just -- i just wanted to appreciate and ask you to continue. it's great. thank you. >> thank you. >> chair peskin: thank you, commissioner. >> i know this isn't easy stuff for anyone. i'm sure none of us wanted to become experts on track brakes or hydraulic, you know, braking units. but i appreciate this board taking the time to understand the details. because this is, as i said, an incredibly complicated train.

and as i also indicated, while excited that we're back in service, that we have all of the doors open, that we're useing that capacity that we need so badly on crowded lines, we are having what i consider two unacceptable issues. one is that not enough of these vehicles are available for service every day. some of those are things are unrelated to the mechanics of the vehicle, either a vehicle has been involved in a collision or, as i said, you know, we have seven vehicles that are on hold because of the wheels. but there's also a number of mechanical issues that are preventing the vehicles from going out. and then we are also seeing too many breakdowns. eventually this vehicle has the expectation of having -- only breaking down once every

25,000 miles, which is more than every six months, which is five times better than what we're seeing on the brayed fleet. we are in the process of a reliability program, with the manufacturer. and we have set monthly targets to hit that reliability. and we were in good shape in april. we were at 6,500 miles between failures. and then we had a really bad may. and that number dropped down to 3,000 miles between failures, which is about what we're seeing on the historic fleet. which, you know, the younger cars are 50 years old. so that is unacceptable. one of the issues that really upticked, that related to that, was the hydraulic power unit, which controls the brake fluid. and what it was causing is for the brakes to stay locked up. so it wasn't a safety issue, it

was actually the brakes were staying too locked, rather than releasing. and we went from having five of those issues a month to in may, we're talking very similar in june, seeing 15 of those issues. and, you know, there's a myriad of problems. the motor driver circuit board, there's a valve that needed to have a perfect seal. and we realized when this brake vendor went from one manufacturing plant to another, they lost the in-house knowledge on how to perfectly polish that valve, as well as a software bug. so we're taking corrective actions on the issues that we do understand. there's a circuit board that's still under investigation, that we don't fully understand. but what that is looking like, in terms of our reliability program is that while we were making steady progress,

following this red-dashed line, which is ultimately going to get us to 25,000 miles, we dropped significantly below it. and while the hydraulic unit is not the only thing that we're focused on, it is one of a handful of problematic subsystems that we're working through issues on. this graph here also shows you the -- our target right now is to be sending out 35 of these new vehicles a day. and we're hovering closer to 20 to 25. and again moving in the wrong direction. some of this is related to holding vehicles in, to do the retrofits that i just described, but others are related to needing to true wheels and other mechanical issues. as some of you may know, part of how i'm harnessing these big

problems, with the staff that work for me, is to try to break it down into bite-sized pieces. so we are now on our third 90-day plan. we -- my expectation is that we would do about three a year. so that we have time in between to review what was working, what was not working. i presented the results of the last 90-day plan to the land use and transportation committee and received several suggestions on metrics to include, which we've done, including having a metric for our service reliability objectives, related to reducing the number of switchbacks in the system. the initiatives for this 90-day plan include specifically calling out the lrv4 program, focusing in five key areas. increasing the vehicle availability to 35 vehicles a day, completing the phase one

vehicle delivery. i think we have 63 or 64 of the 68 vehicles on property. addressingthe door and coupler issue, which we have achieved, but we'll continue to monitor closely. increasing our vehicle reliability to 8,000 miles between failures. and then getting safety certification for the new track design, won't be implemented in this 90 days, but we're taking important steps to be ready. so this is the work program that staff has outlined. i see it as my role to lay out the initiatives, but i've had a lot of staff buy-in. my direct reports developed the objectives themselves and report to me on a biweekly basis the progress that they're making, so we can continue to keep strong attention on these important problems. as we look to phase two, as i

indicated at the beginning of my discussion, we have slowed down phase 2. we want to make sure that if something isn't working in phase 1, that we don't replicate it in phase 2. so until we have issues related to these problematic sub-systems, that include the braking units, the air conditioner, the public audio, we're not going to move forward. as a result, the -- our original ask was to try to accelerate the arrival of the phase 2, as well as to shave time off at the end. we are no longer going to be able to accelerate early. it's just -- even if we gave notice to siemens today, they wouldn't be able to build the next phase of vehicles that quickly. but if we collectively feel the vehicles are where they need to

be, later this fall, we do have an opportunity to shorten the procurement at the end. , which would mean that instead of keeping the brayed, which is an aging, very high-risk fleet, in my opinion, for six to seven years, we would phase them out closer to five and five and a half years. but we're not at that decision point now. i just wanted to make sure that nobody here had the expectation that we could still keep the six months at the front end this time. the necessary, but will prevent that. , we do, depending on where we are with the vehicle in the next few months, have the student to still look at the procurement. so with that, i'm only to any questions or comments that you all have. >> chair peskin: first of all,

let me concur with commissioner ronen, we all appreciate your cander and transparency as to good pieces of news. not-so-good pieces of news. i think it's importantly, not only for us as decision makers around funding, but also relative to public perception and trust in the rolling stock and the agency. so let me thank you for coming and for continuing to come and present. you've covered a wide range of issues, ranging from couplers to doors, sensitive edges, flat wheels and track brakes, audio, as commissioner brown mentioned, reliability. that obviously is still troubling. we previously discussed what we originally heard about from the public, which was the seating arrangement in the l.r.v.s. it sounds like we need a few more answers at our next

meeting, with regard to the specifics around warranties. one thing that you did say is that the track brake will not be covered. do you have a notion of what the costs are and what the source of revenue is to cover that? >> i do not. i will bring that to our next -- >> that would be great. relations with siemens in this phase, how is that? >> we continue to see really excellent customer support from siemens. i am meeting on a biweekly basis with the president of their rolling stock unit. we also have the head of their quality control coming down on a weekly basis, as well as -- as much staff as we need on site from them, that's part of how we were able to get this door retrofit done as quickly as

possible. siemens is also responsible not just for their own work product, but also the work of their sub-vendors. that is a point of clarification. i'm yet to see something on this vehicle break that siemens built. the issues that we are having are with sub-vendors and so a lot of our discussions are focused on the expectations that we have from them of sub-vendor accountability and getting people here to work through the difficult engineering issues. that's -- for example, if that combined with reaching out to peer agencies, is also how we're pursuing this work. that's how we were able to identify that manufacturing valve issue, because we reached out to our colleagues in calgary. and they were having some of our brake challenges, but not others. and their -- their brakes were developed before this manufacturer change.

so that allowed us to diagnose that problem. so we are seeing strong support, but they're not always easy discussions. because as we talked about, these vehicles should be performing much better. i believe they will be performing much better. but we need to get there. >> chair peskin: ultimately siemens as the prime, has to held the subs accountable? >> exactly. pes then, last but not least, one thing we did not touch on was the mirrors versus screens the size of the screens that the operators use in lieu of the mirrors. how is that conversation coming? >> thank you for asking. the mirrors are an example where we have had a combination of mechanical issues, as well as we've made modifications based on user feedback. on the user feedback side, they

previously, before we started with two-car trains, the feedback we got from operators was that they couldn't -- they didn't have enough visibility from the cameras. and also that the cameras had glare. so we modified all of the monitors in the vehicle, so that they were touchscreen. so it gives you a split camera, something you don't have with a mirror, where you can see this way down the vehicle, as well as that way down the vehicle. but if an operator touches on either side, it blows up the camera angle that they want to see more closely. we are also looking at putting a larger monitor, again based on operator feedback. so we're currently testing a 10-inch monitor on the fleet. we also have had two mechanical issues related to the cameras. the first was after two sso