>> chair borden: i call to order the sketches, 2021 of the board of directors. please call the roll. [ roll call ] >> clerk: you have a quorum. >> chair borden: please call the next item. >> clerk: announcement of prohibition of sound producing devices during the meeting. we have no announcements. item 4, approval of minutes for

the november 16 regular meeting. >> chair borden: are there any addictions or correction? seeing none. members of the audience if you like to comment on the approval of our minutes from the novembe. >> clerk: for members of the public who wish to make public comment the dial (888)808-6929 access code 996-1164.

>> caller: just couple of minor things on page 2 item 4 approval of minutes. here it says on motion to approve, unanimously approved. i think it needs to include the roll call vote as is on all of the other items. what the minutes who may have seconded the motion. i believe the minutes are supposed to record in all instances both the motion and the second. i would encourage that for item 4. on page 3 in the middle of public comment, i think it

should be d.a. costa. the rest of the minutes are fair description of what happened at that meeting. thank you for listening. >> chair borden: thank you. next speaker please? >> caller: i'm here to speak on the muni services. i'm not here to speak on the minutes. thank you. >> chair borden: okay, thank you. if you are on the line but you don't want to speak to this item, don't press 1, 0. we are on the approval of minutes from the november 16, 2021 regular meeting. >> caller: i'm so sorry. i have a public comment for item

10.5. >> chair borden: we'll get there shortly. thank you so much. next speaker please. we'll close public comment. directors is there a motion? >> director hinze: i will move the minutes once secretary silva confirms the minor correction as noted by public commenter pilpel. >> chair borden: secretary silva, please call the roll. >> clerk: on the motion to approve the minutes with corrections. [roll call vote] the minutes are approved. >> chair borden: that bring us to our next item. >> clerk: item number 5,

communications. >> chair borden: due to covid-19 this meeting is being held virtually. we ask the public to participate remotely by writing to the board or leaving a voice mail message. we received comments and we appreciate them. we want to thank you for honoring our request and encourage you to continue to do so. if you have not had a chance to write the board, you may write us at m.t.a. board at sfmta.com. while the technology allows us to hold meetings teleconference, it may not be seem -- seemless as you like. all of that means that we

appreciate your patience when we have silence and there's gaps and there are issues that might arise. the team is working hard behind the scenes to coordinate technology platforms to ensure access to the public. we will stop if we lose connection and pause the meeting and will not restart until we have things reestablished. i want to thank everyone on the team who worked so hard behind behindthe scenes for making our meetings happen. thank you members of the public for your continued support and patience. >> clerk: this meeting is televised by sfgov tv. there's a time lag between the actual meeting and what members of the public seeing on of it of it. --seeing on sfgov tv. if you wish to make public comment, the phone number to use is (888)808-6929.

to address the board, dial 1, 0. make sure you're in a quiet location that you mute any tvs or computer streaming the meeting. it will reduce any echoes. you'll have two minutes to provide public comment otherwise noted by the chair. i will announce a 30 second warning and when the time is up. this places you on item number 6. introduction of new or unfinished business by board members. >> chair borden: i see several hands. i will go around the screen. director yekutiel. >> director yekutiel: director lai and i spent some time on the routes we'll be talking about today. where we received feedback from the public and see how they are going and what -- get our

firsthand experience about these routes. i wanted to bring up for new business is, i imagine director tumlin will bring this up in his report. there's been a lot of news reports and also i received lot of frantic e-mails from small businesses with regards to their shared spaces and coming in compliance. i know we brought this up before. it might be time to have a real conversation about these communications, how they're going out to small businesses and how we can turn the temperature down and help these folks make it through the end of this year and the new year without worrying that they will lose their parklets. i would love to put that front and center in the next two weeks. thank you. >> chair borden: if you're interested having this conversation? director lai? >> director lai: thank you.

my itemfuls also related to the shared spaces. i want to acknowledge that particularly for the small businesses that are operated by monolingual community, they found it difficult to navigate the system. there's lot of confusion and fear. we appreciate that this is an interagency effort. that's very complicated. we have to create rules and protocols in reviewing these in short order. i do think that now with mayor's expansion essentially not enforcing the season until march, give us little bit of time to regroup. i do think that they should have a more systematic conversation about how we should be dealing with these compliance issues. i want to also second that.

>> chair borden: director hinze? >> director hinze: that was as my item in response to kind of the article and the real struggles. it will be nice to have a hearing where we have all the departments that come together and kind of have a conversation. i don't know what our role is in that. definitely to have the conversation in some setting where we could all sort of weigh in and have the public do that. that will be great. >> chair borden: thank you. are there any further comments by board members at this time? seeing none, i will open up to

public comment. that's the opportunity for members of the public to comment on the items that board members just discussed. if you are in the queue and would like to speak, press 1, 0. are there callers on the line? with that, we'll close public comment. we move on to the next item. >> clerk: item 7, the director's report. >> chair borden: director tumlin? i think you're in the room somewhere. [ laughter ] >> director tumlin: hello, can you hear me? >> chair borden: yes, we can. >> director tumlin: i'm excited start off my director's report

[ indiscernible ] >> i feel like we're doing an episode. it is profound honor to be doing a recognition for robin wright. robin is a deputy city attorney with 40 years of experience, 30 at sfmta. this is wasn't of the few opportunities that we have to do a recognition at the interagency. in our minds -- [ indiscernible ] it took me several years working with robin to realize greatest

hidden secret. she's a huge fan of transit. she is passionate about transit, about our history, about where we're going when we move forward. when she makes contributions that protect our agency, she's think being it from the perspective of a user and a historian as she is an attorney. robin has for more than 10 year, right up until covid have office hours at sfmta. right down here. they were tuesdays, you can come up. you can walk in and you can ask her anything. lot of times, she would send us right back out. [ laughter ] more often than not, she would help us work through really

complex problems. she's been invaluable college for us with a deep understanding of state, city, federal laws and regulations. she's helped us navigate all of the government complexities. there isn't a vehicle procurement that we've done in the last decade that robin wasn't center point on. she also has been our go to person on american disabilities act, accessibility issues. according to -- [ indiscernible ] she's been passionate about the civil rights and that work represents. i did have -- there was a lot pressure for me because there's so many different people at the agency that robin has worked with. i wanted to share a couple of

quotes from annette williams in our accessibility don't. she says, robin worked for the city attorney's office, she's always been an honorary sfmta employee and considered our own in-house counsel. she will be greatly missed. even more than we can now predict by the sfmta family. her transportation knowledge is legendary. we need to clone her. [ laughter ] [ indiscernible ] i had the privilege of knowing and having worked with robin well over 20 years. she has been my most trusted colleague and expert in everything having to do with contracts. she shared little bit about what robin does outside of work.

really emphasizing, in addition to all the amazing things robin does for us, she has a fulfillly life outside of her led addition of sfmta. she's a mother and a fundraiser for the national kidney association and walker with friends. it's such a huge pleasure. >> robin, congratulations. >> thank you. >> first of all, thank you for all this recognition and my work over the years.

i especially want to thank the wonderful staff at m.t.a. that i worked with. [ indiscernible ]

as far as staff goes they've been patient, cooperative, respectful. even when i get frustrated at times. sometimes i have to say no or i have to say get out of here. i learned a lot from staff and the agency that has made me a much better attorney. certainly more knowledgeable about transit and other agency issues. i open that the agency has -- [ indiscernible ] i think attorneys need to be part of the project from the get go. not really someone that need to pick up a pieces when there's a claim or a problem.

i want to thank you for making me into a transit geek. i appreciate the diversity of the transit system. when i traveled to istanbul, i encountered such diversity. i traveled on all of them because i did not take a car the whole time i was on a bus or a train or whatever. after i retire,ly continue to work in transportation.

thanks again for this honor. i really appreciate it. thank you. >> director tumlin: i believe director heminger has a question. >> chair borden: was it about this? >> director heminger: not this but i want to comment on robin. i wanted to add my compliments to robin on a really distinguished career. she has been one of the wise women in the region because she has been through so many issues

-- so many times. robin and i worked intensely on the clipper card before i even got to this body. that work was rewarding as well. sometimes pretty tiresome with meeting after meeting. recently, i've been seeing robin more often in golden gate park than anywhere else. we're neighbors. i expect that will continue. i'll say, see you around. >> absolutely. >> chair borden: thank you director heminger. >> director tumlin: thank you all. we'll go back to the director's report. [ indiscernible ]

>> chair borden: there's an echo happening. >> director tumlin: i'll go back into my office. next topic is vision zero report. [ indiscernible ] >> chair borden: director, tumlin, we can't hear you. you might want to turn off your video now. your video quality is not strong and it might be affecting the audio.

>> clerk: he may be trying to log back in. >> director tumlin: during this reporting period, we did have a fatality motor vehicle traveling northbound. our revenue response team has made some recommendations about daylighting and changes to parking. we will update you on the final completions there. we also did reporting period released two vision zero documents including the updates on the action strategy. this is a document that you played a strong role in shaping, given your comments on our previous routes. it's a strong product of i believe put from elected officials, communities, city

staff and agencies and community advocates. we are looking forward to your and citywide support and moving forward on implementing that. we implemented -- we published our evaluation report on our safer intersection project which was designed to calm left turning traffic. you probably seen around the city at corners along with small rubber speed bumps designed to get motor vehicles to make sharper and therefore slower left turns. this is part of staff very creative efforts to push the limits of what's allowed by the control devices and other standard guidelines in order to get traffic so slow down. particularly in places where

we're having greater conversation of safety incidents. this initial pilot was very successful. they reduced speed by 17% and more importantly, we got 71% reduction in the likelihood of cars turning left at over 15 miles an hour at the seven high crash test intersection. this is good news. all of this was funded of $2 million. we're looking forward to expanding that effort no that we have some demonstrated success. we also in the last period, got final approval and will be moving forward this winter on the south end of quick build project. this is a conversion road taking the four lanes of south -- we're

continuing for the fifth year our motorcycle safety program. we did receive a $75,000 grant from the california office of traffic safety. we'll be participating in a whole variety of different safety education and training programs for motorcyclists who represent a significant share of traffic facilitate -- fatalities. next topic is one that you probably seen a good deal of reporting in the press. that's our flag stops at muni. muni has a long history of closely spaced bus stops in neighborhoods. there's mostly just a pole and

nothing else. no removed parking at the curb, rarely any shelters and never any -- [ indiscernible ] we got about a thousands of these scattered across 46. they are historic artifacts. one that we long wanted to get rid of. we are grateful for the strong support from the san francisco board of supervisors to remove park from the dock to improve transit access. the board of supervisors resolution built upon pilots that we started on removing the stops for the 1846 avenue. this was work that we were doing before the pandemic that we put on hold as we contended with all of the impacts of the pandemic. in san francisco, we have over 1000 active flag stops. we'll be looking at different

options. we'll be removing parking from the first 20 feet of the stops. that will be removing about thousand parking spaces. what this does is not only improves accessibility to the bus doors but it is also doing double duty as part of our daylighting program. there's another level of effort which allows the bus to pull up to the curb. this requires removing about five parking spaces at each stop in order for the bus to pull in and out. the advantage of removing all of those parking spaces is that the bus can pull to the curb. the disadvantage is that it will add significant bus time as the bus moves in and out of traffic. there's advantages and disadvantages there.

of course the most desired investment would be doing fold outs at all stops. that would require a massive investment of funds. simply doing the red curb cross between $6 million to $10 million for all of the stops citywide doing bus hold outs. next topic is our scooter program.

supervisor peskin called for a hearing to address the many issues. this hearing took place yesterday. our staff with supervisor peskin ford to talk -- in order to talk to them to ensure scooter users do not ride on the sidewalk and many of them have been developing detection technology that physically stops the schoolers when they are operated on the sidewalk or collect information that can be used to penalize the users directly. we're happy that they had a

unanimous resolution to install the technology. asking sfmta require them to have technology for the next permit term. we are happy with this outcome. the next topic is an interesting one. this has been getting some attention at a regional level. that is the cross-agency transit pass program. the metropolitan transportation commission has been leading. for the last year and a half, we've been playing a strong role on the regional fair integration task force for the metropolitan transportation commission and the m.t.c. to create francis --create transit passes that wil work in the bay area. as you know, muni has been a

leader in interagency passes and discounts. we have long had a joint program within san francisco and has been collaborating with other agencies on transfer discount programs. this effort will go above and beyond that. the details are still being worked out. if we receive a commitment that funding a regional transit program would not require service cuts or raise fares, we continue to work with m.t.c. and all of our partners to make that happen. next topic is the expressway site. we have been working collaboratively with several city departments.

we had to mitigate a pretty severe humanitarian concerns following the rains that occurred in late october, flooding portions hunters point expressway along with a major encampment that formed there. some collaboration and other city departments. we have been working to relocate that community to a safe site off the roadway have been working on cleaning up and health and safety issues along the roadway. the resulting work would mean that hunters point expressway

will be closed to the public through january. although the state park will continue to be accessible via gilman as well as hunters point expressway from the other side. this has been important partnership effort where sfmta has provided strong support to s.h.h. also have access to basic sanitation facilities as well as community services. next topic, we've gotten a fair amount of coverage in the press about our work supporting the san francisco police department and the mayor's office around union square.

the san francisco police department has removed much of on the street parking. as a result of that, the mayor's office and other agencies asked us to help promote use of the three publicly owned parking garages in the union square area. we're providing discounted parking for the first couple of hours and working with the mayor's office make sure that we are reimbursed for the costs. the costs will be between $400,000 and $600,000. we are expecting to be reimbursed. promoterring the muni and ensuring when the street closures happen in the evening, that muni buses are prioritized through union square. next up, we got little bit of

press on our response to cruises application to the california public utilities commission to start driveless passenger services in san francisco. as we've talked many times the sfmta is eager to support technology companies and innovation to best use the public rights of way. we are concerned about private companies profiting off the public right-of-way. we submitted letter of concern points out some concerns we had with applications, specifically their promoting videos showing vehicles picking up and dropping off passengers in the travel lane, not complying with vehicle and transportation codes prohibiting, standing and parking in the street.

san francisco does not have jurisdiction over this issue. we felt the need to speak out to the state p.u.c. we thought it's important as we experiment with these new services in the public right-of-way we get the details right and the impact to the passengers. we're hoping that the p.u.c. will take our concerns seriously.

another milestone we think the -- we hit this month, coming to closure on the contract for the second phase of the reconstruction project. we will be rebuilding the streets on the west portal. we learned a lot on phase one west of sunset boulevard. we'll be doing outreach throughout december and january. we expect to begin construction next month with construction including fall -- concluding fall of 2024. we've also been working on refinements to the shared spaces program. the shared spaces guidelines were collaboratively updated by several different agencies. we'll focus on three main issues. the first is traffic safety. making sure there's sufficient

visibility at crosswalks or pedestrians. many of the shares spaces program were put up quickly during the pandemic. this is an important issue that we needed to address. we worked prioritizing enforcement and implementations on the networks. guidelines also have in lot of refinement around wheelchair accessibility. which is especially important as the program moves in permanency. finally the shared spaces guidelines makes lot of adjustments around fire safety, making sure that emergency services have access to critical features but deal with conflicts

with shared spaces. i think we stand by the guidelines themself, director yekutiel forwarded to me some e-mails that have been received by restaurant owners across the city. we have clearly dropped the ball on the kind of communication that we are having with our actual shared spaces customers. it is clear that the departments who are involved are not coordinated language that we are using is excessively bureaucratic. for non-typical installations, which there are many of around san francisco, some of our shared spaces owners are getting the bounce around across different departments. this is not acceptable. we will be working in the coming week to make sure that all of the efforts we put in to

streamline and coordinating our bureaucratic response, we have a thoughtful and customer oriented approach as we move into the post-pandemic period. we hear the criticism loud and clear. i think that is all that i got. that's a lot of material. >> chair borden: thank you. that was a very thorough report. we'll start off with director hinze with a question. >> director hinze: thank you for that thorough report director tumlin. i will tray to go in order. with the flag stops, it's good to hear that we're on a path towards getting rid of some of them in the not too distant

future. i was curious if you have sort of a timeline in mind for when you might come back with some of your preliminary findings? i know there's a lot of neighborhood by neighborhood work to be done. i'm curious if you have a timeline in mind. >> director tumlin: this is something that we want to move forward on quickly. street director tom mcguire and transit director may be able to state when they can come back with a plan. i expected we'll take a parallel approach where we accelerate the existing efforts that we already had while at the same time, planning for the long-term. obviously, anything that involves the significant expansion of the sort of

improvements on key corridors like geary and fulton that, will require a huge increase in resources. >> director hinze: congratulatio ns for the fulton news, by the way. my next question is m.t.c. fare integration. this past pilot. we had -- one of our recent meetings i was curious based on all the information that you have, are there thoughts kind of similar to what they presented to us? i know there's a lot of work to do. are you able to --

[ indiscernible ] >> director tumlin: we're referring to larger regional effort and we're playing a large role in that. there's program details that we're interested in. especially making it possible to sell universal regional transit passes to employers as a part of voluntary or mandatory as part of a development agreement program, whereby larger employers would offer universal regional transit pass. i think the mechanism to do that has been a goal of sfmta.

>> director tumlin: there will be no net impact for budgets. keeping in mind, regional fare

promotion programs will increase total ridership and bring in new revenue. we want to make sure that revenue and costs get matched. so that we don't have to cut local service in order to subsidize regional service. >> director hinze: right. on the journey garage -- union square garage issue, i'm expected we'll be reimbursed. that's the news there. i appreciate the agency taking a strong stand with the cruise applications. particularly with the disability needing to make sure that a.i. can recognize devices.

thank you for that. my last question is, i was curious if you had any vaccination related updates? you wanted to share? >> director tumlin: i do. we made substantial progress on getting our workforce vaccinated. currently 98% of the sfmta workforce is fully vaccinated. another 1% are partially vaccinated. we're still going through the process of doing either reasonable accommodation requests or separation with the remaining workforce and we're hopeful that all of our employees will get vaccinated. we will welcome back to the sfmta any one who gets their vaccination at any point in the near future. we want to make sure that everyone is vaccinated, everyone is safe and everyone is able to maintain their job.

>> director hinze: we're still going through the accommodation process. >> director tumlin: i will point out, the unvaccinated workforce is disproportionately among our transit operators and officers. we are currently missing over two operator graduating classes. we are working as quickly as we can to hire and train. probably at the next meeting that our financial outlook continues to improve. we are eager to continue accelerating hiring just as

rapidly as we can and move towards restoration of all our agency services. it has been very challenging for people throughout the agency. i believe our average vacancy rate is 20%. >> director hinze: thank you. >> chair borden: director heminger? >> director heminger: thank you. jeff, that was a juicy report. it will prompt a few questions from me. i'll be quick. on the flag stops, you mentioned board of supervisors resolution. do we need their permission to remove parking? >> director tumlin: we do not need their permission. it's intense. it has been political opposition

to parking removal. this unanimous support from the board of supervisors is very helpful to us in order to clear a path in order to gain community acceptance for the loss of parking in order to provide accessibility and transit. >> director heminger: that's good to hear. on the schoolers -- scooters, this is a subject i've been dealing with since authorize making the program permanent. i voted no. the gps solution that you refer to about the scooters caulking out on the sidewalk. we were told at the time, it wasn't accurate enough to do

that. is the technology better now so that's a live option? >> director tumlin: in part because of leadership at sfmta, the industry has been on notice about the need to develop with science and technology. they have been testing that technology here in san francisco for global deployment. this is an issue in cities all over the world. we're getting increasingly confident that a technology will work. i think having clear language about desired outcomes in the san francisco contract can help us shape the global market for scooter services.

>> director heminger: are we close to being able to require it? >> director tumlin: i don't want to overstate. this will be a topic we will follow-up with you on. there's a strong desire from supervisor peskin other board of supervisors and all of my staff to continue push it in the right direction to get scooters off the sidewalks. >> director heminger: the related subject, i don't know if you brought it up directly, let me do so now. i believe we added a new column in our vision zero reporting on fatalities for scooters. we're starting to have scooter

fatalities. obviously one of the problems that the program has almost inherently is there's no helmet that comes with the scooter. far too many scooter users aren't using helmets. is there any movement on that? my recollection, there's some law in sacramento that the scooter industry got passed to preempt local regulation of that. >> director tumlin: it's not an avenue we're exploring. instead what we've been focusing on is speed limitations. the human skull is design tolerance is peak running speed. that's about 13 miles an hour. we've been trying to match the maximum speed of scooters according to the design tolerance of the body.

we have also noticed scooter operator behavior as we're noticing significant uptick in motor behavior in this late pandemic period where people are dealing with trauma and crises exhaustion. another thing that we are definitely interested doing is finding ways of increasing education and stability on our streets across all modes of transportation. this is something that we're putting a fair amount of thought into and identify resources in order to -- [ indiscernible ] >> director heminger: thank you. >> chair borden: thank you. director eaken? >> vice chair eaken: i'll be brief as well. i wanted to thank staff and the board of supervisors for raising

the flag stops. this is one of them that felt a real gap for a long time between practice on the ground and m.t.a. values and having to navigate your way to parked cars to get on a bus or off. it's not a high quality transit experience. thank you for focusing the attention here. i wanted to raise an initial suggestion as you think about that. the universe of the challenges one thousand stops. how we ice data to sort through and prioritize. i understand there may be challenges around fixing it all at once. thinking about some of the transit effectiveness, prong recommendations around stop removal with a new stop.

may be there's plans down the road to eliminate that spot for speed. there's a lot of data that can go into that. really glad we're focusing on this. we've gotten lot of public comment over the years this is just not who we are to have flag stops. the other issue is circling back to the autonomous vehicle question. thank you for your diligence on even though we're not directly regulating autonomous vehicles. also thinking about vision zero in reflecting on some of the erratic driving behavior. director tumlin you mentioned to us. one thing an autonomous could be programmed to do is drive more safely and drive more slowly. it does feel like there's some

hope, some important nexus between autonomous vehicles. i'm so cognizant all the challenges you articulate in terms of reality of autonomous vehicles becoming part of the system. if you can reflect how you're think being the idea with autonomous and vision zero goals. >> director tumlin: we feel strongly about it. autonomous vehicles are regulated properly that they can play a very strong and positive role in improving safety outcomes and the transportation system. we have to start with regulations that focus on outcomes. safety outcomes are in our minds, allowing autonomous vehicle a.i. to make their own decisions about when it's appropriate to break the law is very concerning to us.

having an autonomous vehicle application where the autonomous vehicle has not yet learned to parallel park and cannot actually pick up and drop off at the curb is very concerning to us. an autonomous vehicle that is being warned without any consideration of accessibility to people with disabilities, it's also very concerning to us. when there's an opportunity to design accessibility from the ground up. we have been focusing on asking technology companies, please, help us improve the accessibility of the transportation system to people of whole array of different disabilities. please help us improve the efficiency of the transportation system to allow our streets to move more people rather than having our streets move fewer

people. i think we've learned a lot from the rollout of uber and lyft and our failures to regulate it correctly. it is necessary that we take the time to focus on outcomes and collaborate with the state particularly the california public utilities commission who's responsibility it is to navigate the right-of-way. we need to define the consequences that we are concerned about and we have seen from other technology on our streets.

>> chair borden: thank you. seeing no additional questions from directors at this time. open up the public comment. this is an opportunity for the members of the public who like to make a comment on the director's report and the questions that were asked board of directors following. if you would like to speak to this item, please 1, 0. are there any callers on the line? first speaker? >> caller: hi. first, thank you all for your

efforts and support for vision zero strategy. i would like to suggest that common measures be used at every intersection and that the transit build out be expanded to bus stops throughout the city. additionally with the increased number of private and electric scooters, i would like to see the sfmta explore ways forcing private scooters to incorporate safety measures with private cell companies. also, would like to encourage the existing m.t.a. to use scooters along the bike lanes or mobility lane, considering that lot of people that i've seen in the streets here in the

tenderloin aren't aware. >> chair borden: next speaker please. >> caller: thank you, chair borden. good report. i support these all agency transit passes. i've been going to lot of those meetings. i i think it's doable. i think it's a most good way to raise revenue. concerning these scooters. i use them. i wear a helmet. i want to be safe. you will never see me riding a scooter on the sidewalk. i will not embarrass myself with that. i will not risk my driver's license and having to pay hundreds of dollars for a ticket. i don't know why people are

doing nap i think that everybody shroud ride the scooter on the streets. at the same time, i'm concerned some kind of sensor technology may cause the scooter to lock up if you have to walk the scooter from mid-block in order to get to a curb-cut so lower it down into the street. technology has to work. i'm hoping we'll get these autonomous vehicles. you'll use them. i'm a person with disabilities. i'm a person with modest means. there's equity in the pricing of that. i don't have to worry about them being impaired or tired, they don't carry whether i wear a skirt. technology often does move faster than policy. i ask that you be open minded. anything that restrict opportunity innovation comes at my expense. thank you. >> chair borden: next speaker please.

>> caller: hi. good afternoon. today, we're doing a caravan around city hall in protest how slow the process has gone regarding debt relief for the purchase. in the meantime, regarding director tumlin's report, first i want to say -- i know he just signed it, his protest letter for the permit to cruz was written extremely well. i like to sign on to it by figuring out how i can participate the protest. the arguments were fantastic. this to the state p.u.c. i like to see how i can participate. the second issue is about the scooters. having driving at night, i see

lot of dangerous driving behavior. the scooters, they are taking their chances out there by running lights and stop signs and riding on the sidewalks. the behavior is horrible. you want to -- you want another person to die, continue to allow this to happen. regarding the scooters on the streets, they are going faster than 15 miles an hour. it's faster. i appreciate that you do a lot more exploration into this behavior, particularly in the evening and night time hours when there are fewer cars around and there aren't enough cars they can't see them. lights on the scooters are not that bright. thank you for your time.

>> chair borden: thank you mr. toronto. next speaker please. >> caller: this is david pilpel. long report. i agree strongly with the recognition for deputy city attorney robin on her retirement and wish her well. robin is one of the few people that goes as far as back as i do with the agency. she is served the agency and its predecessors well as deputy city attorney. i think very highly of robin and i wish her well in her retirement. next, please send me a copy of the board of supervisors solution on the bus stop parking removal. i was not tracking that legislation. if somebody can relate to me the

file number that would help. i can go grab it. i would like a copy of that resolution so i can look into that. i hope next, i hope that effort to keep scooters and other rental vehicles off sidewalks will include rental bicycles. bicycles are never allowed to operate on the sidewalk under the state vehicle code. yet, they do from time to time. if there's a way to restrict rental bicycles from sidewalks using the same technology, that would be great. there's an outreach event for that project for monday night. i look forward to that and finally, please also send me a copy of director tumlin's director's report prepared talking points by mail. i look forward to reading that more carefully. >> chair borden: thank you. next speaker.

>> caller: hello. this is mack allen. i'm calling mostly to urge the board of directors to continue to process the elimination of the flag stop in san francisco. i think it's incredibly important issue related to disability. i want to encourage the board of directors to consider signage at these locations, flag stop signage is notoriously difficult to use. it can be difficult to determine where to make the appropriate drop off with flag stop. this is an important issue. i wanted to highlight the importance of daylighting intersections related to the shared spaces program. i want to encourage the board of directors to consider the intersection of our muni buses

and rooftop structures of parklets and shared spaces. i think sfmta should consider some perspective how these are put together. those are my comments. thank you very much. >> chair borden: thank you for your service. thank you for calling in. next speaker please. >> caller: i have some concerns about scooters on the sidewalk. there are also bicycles on the sidewalks that pose equal and endangerment to pedestrians.

as far as the parklets go on the street, i realized they are necessary during the pandemic. but also, we have to consider the fact that it makes less parking spaces available. which means let's take it from businesses. one way it's productive and other way it's counterproductive. what should be done is so strike a balance. have the parklets outside the restaurant during the pandemic but take steps to remove them afterwards. i think people like eating inside a restaurant anyway. it's more pleasurable. especially when it's cold and with the onset of winter, i

don't think people will be prone eating outside. >> chair borden: are there any additional callers? next speaker please. >> caller: hi. my name is parker dave. i wanted to call and say that in the last month, i've been to vigils for those pedestrians who were killed walking on the streets in san francisco. more recently, past week, went to a vigil for the pedestrians, on his way home from work,

80-year-old, coming home running over. i think we can do so much better than this. painting crosswalks and adding stop signs seem like a no brainer. could have potentially prevented this. i ask that we do little bit more to go toward vision zero goals. thank you for your time. >> chair borden: thank you. are there additional callers on the line? with that, we'll close public comment. we'll move on to our next item. >> clerk: item number 8. the citizens' advisory council report. >> hello, good afternoon

directors. we have very busy time on the c.a.c. we had four reports and we come to the board with six resolutions. which may be the most that we've come in the past six months. first item was customer information system with around stop signage. we have no resolution on that item. second item, j.f.k. drive came to the c.a.c. last thursday. we had one resolution that recommended current routes and extend as much physical protection to individuals outside motor vehicle as possible on the shared road

section of the car free pass currently. the last item that we have is around the muni service plan. i'll introduce one motion and then -- [ indiscernible ] the first motion is a request that the agency adjust its

frequency guide online and in documentation to reflect its frequency and schedules by time of day. currently, the information that customers see reflect to one frequency for the entire day. that is not quite correct because we know that service has dropped off in the evening. the request is to make that information more accessible. for the second two motions, i will yield time to the vice chair. >> thank you very much. i'm the vice chair of the citizens' advisory council. i'm here to present two motions in regard to the winter 2022 plan. i want to join chair chen in expressing our gratitude to the m.t.a. staff. the motion i'm going to read

first is in support of the bus network plan. the second in regards to the j church. agrees with staff's recommendation. i want to point out that both motions i will read were approved unanimously by the c.a.c. and represent views of councilmembers from all parts of san francisco. i will go to the first motion about buses. that is c.a.c. supports the bus network improvements and restorations included in the 2022 service plan given there will be consideration of additional service restoration in 2022 if conditions warrant. second motion about the j church is more lengthy. first, whereas, the sfmta has an

obligation to provide safe consistent service to all riders especially those most vulnerable, for example, the disabled, elderly, women and families. whereas the technical analysis presented by sfmta staff support option 1 and option 3 for the j church omits the following. improvements in subway performance go far beyond removal of the j church line. the dramatic reduction from ridership across all lines approximately 50% and speeds up boarding. there's no a.m. peak services. trains operate on roughly the same schedule for most of the day. another source of service reduction. the recent subway shutdown of unprecedented duration resulted in improvements to boost system reliability. point two, under the agencies recently stated 30 trains per hour limit. at least four can run without

degradation. a vast majority of 68% of those surveyed oppose making transfer permanent. less than 22% of their suffered support transfers. transfers can be challenging for riders with disabilities. 73% found them difficult, 68% all surveyed found them difficult. whereas, the proposed option 3

for the j church would be needlessly confusing for riders due to different bus and rail stops while providing inconsistent and poor overall service. whereas, the sfmta and c.a.c. has received more than 300 individual letters and petitions with more than 500 signatures supporting option two. the c.a.c. recommended sfmta return to j church lines to the subway for all day service. given the three options presented to the board, this would mean option two.

just to close, while i know we may disagree with some of the staff recommendations. we don't want to take away that we appreciate the hard work involved. we share commitment to transit system that works for all san franciscans. thank you. >> chair borden: thank you. i think director hinze had a question?

>> director hinze: yeah. it will be very quick. it's for mr. chen. i'm curious, there are several accessibility improvements that are discussed in tandem in partnership with j.f.k. drive effort. i'm curious if any of your c.a.c. members, if there was discussion about accessibility improvements in any of your c.a.c. members had any thoughts on those? >> it's not in the motion. i would say because it did not come up, there's support for the agency's initiative and rec and park initiatives to improve accessibility. we had lot of discussion about the shuttle and improvements to make that more useful.

>> chair borden: are there any other questions from board members? i will open up the public comment. this is time for members of the public to comment specifically on the c.a.c. report that was just presented. if you like to speak on this item, please press 1, 0. are there any callers on the line? first speaker please. >> caller: hi. we represent j riders from the outer mission and excelsior. we support the c.a.c. resolution. it thieves in the -- it achieves m.t.a. authority, it's feasible, serves low income and communities of color and has overwhelming public support. few words about each of these. first, transit must protect the

most vulnerable at all hours of operation. seniorings-- seniors, people with disabilities and women traveling alone. second, m.t.a. staff has provided data showing that the subway has capacity without degrading performance for any of the other subway lines to accommodate the j church. four cars per hour is less frequent than we initially advocated. we support the resolution's option because it was developed by m.t.a. staff themselves. the resolution rejects option three, which was poorly conceived and disadvantages riders from low income communities and communities of color in the excelsior and outer mission by forcing them to transfer at market street.

the resolution choice of option two thieves m.t.a.'s priority of serving senior and disabled riders all day is technically feasibility, serves low income communities of color and has overwhelming public support. thank you very much. >> chair borden: next speaker please. >> caller: i support the council's recommendation to return the j church line to the subway for all of these services.

it's the best option for seniors, people with disabilities, families with children and so many other j church riders. light rail vehicle riders hate to force transfer. they have to get off their light rail vehicle, walk into the subway and wait for another train and do the reverse going home. it's so unfair when riders on other lines can stay on their light rail vehicles without wasting all this time to transfer. it makes riders who forced to transfer -- [ indiscernible ] those who can afford t take ridership rather than wasting the extra time with the unnecessary transfer. the policy requiring these transfer goes against san francisco people. i urge you to return j church line to the subway for all day service.

>> chair borden: next speaker please >> caller: hello. i'm a senior who lives in district 8. i i want to thank vice chair of the c.a.c. for this resolution in support of option two for the j church. sfmta should work to increase transit ridership and j church riders are already opting not to ride muni due to the forced transfer. the proposed option 3 would needlessly confuse riders due to different bus and rail stops while providing inconsistent and poor overall service. the transfers can be challenging for riders with disabilities. sfmta has an obligation to provide safe, consistent service to all riders, especially those

most vulnerable, the disable the, elderly, women and families. i thank the c.a.c. for all their word work over several months getting this resolution together. please take note of it. thank you. >> chair borden: thank you. next speaker please. >> caller: this is very important. i'm not a citizen of san francisco. i don't have to be.

i. support the c.a.c. recommendation of returning to the j church. i mentioned that i'm a rider with disability. i'm sorry i'm not there in person to show you my reduced fare clipper card. there's an elevator. if the elevator doesn't work, what good is it? there's the dip which makes it hard for people to traverse going across that intersection. i believe we can reasonably ensure the capacity to run additional train through the subway. for me a person of disability, it is difficult if i have to leave a vehicle where i had my sideways facing seat. the disability community is very

diverse. it's not just citizens of san francisco. i don't know if i can ever be a citizen of san francisco. i was born in new york city. i'm a citizen just as much, no matter in the world the person comes from, they should have a seemless ride on the j church. >> chair borden: next speaker please. >> caller: good afternoon, i'm mark christianson speaking as an individual. i sent an e-mail to the board, one page letter supporting returning all service lines to pre-pandemic levels. first regarding the j church and supervisor mandelman's letter to the board, i'm surprised he would say option 3 is a bear minimum. it's a huge step backwards. it does not represent the vast majority what the ridership want

especially youth, elderly and especial needs riders. only solution to return full service of the j church, balboa park and embarcadero. why do riders of the j to make the sacrifice. full restoration is the only option. with regards to the 23 monterey and 57 park merced, full restoration is the only option. please read my comments that i sent to you. with regard to all other lines,, full restoration is the only option. in closing, sfmta needs to work together with its transit riders not against its transit riders. once you return full restoration, then contact the various communities to work on other options schedules, adjusted time sequences, yet pitting one part of the city

against another. we're all in this together. thank you. >> chair borden: thank you. next speaker please. >> caller: hi. i live across from the park, frequent j rider. it's pretty ridiculous that we're the only line that's forced to transfer at market street. i'm not disabled, that is a challenging intersection to get across and adds 15 minutes plus probably missed connection. i strongly urge you to reinstate option 2. thank you very much. >> chair borden: next speaker please.

>> caller: i live in dish like i like to support the resolution. i like to say that i do understand the justification for it. i understand the capacity constraints and tunnels, i understand the j is the lowest ridership streetcar line, i understand it helps it improve the reliability and which is the highest of the streetcar lines. the problem is that for me, muni is not keeping up with end of the bargain. it was supposed to be accompanied by a high frequency, ultimately three car s shuttle line running constantly in the tunnel between castro and dcyf.- embarcadero. this was widely publicized in

august 2020 that when rail service returned earlier this year, this idea appears to have been totally dropped. while there are occasional trains in the tunnel, there's been no mention of this high frequency s. it's not even shown on the revised service diagram on trains or on platforms. the service in the tunnel at church has been anything but high frequency. there's very long waits if you miss it transfer. 15 or 20 minutes. this is not the level of service that was promised when the service was introduced. it feels like a bait and switch. we've seen this over and over from muni. option 3 is needlessly complicated and i think the bus in particular, the 30 minute night time bus is doomed to fail. i would support option 2 restoration of the j to previous

configuration. thank you. >> chair borden: thank you. next speaker please. >> caller: thank you for listening. i strongly support option 2 for the j church. not all transfers are the same. if i go to richmond, i cross the platform at 12th street or mcarthur to transfer at church and market requires me and my disabled husband to negotiate an exchange. as seniors we travel by day. the night time option one tunnel is useless to us. option 3 is a cynical choice that slides in the face of transit first policy. it is not safe. it is not an attractive to

travel by private automobile. this is not just an agenda item to me. it is a path for me to participate fully in civic life in san francisco. thank you so much. >> chair borden: thank you. next speaker please. if you can mute your background if you're listening to us. next speaker. >> caller: i'm in district 8. i want to thank the c.a.c. for their support and option 2. i say i'm a person who used to ride the j church religiously. i never drove downtown. i now opt to use my car all the time. which goes against the green policies what we're trying to do in downtown san francisco making it car free. the reason why i do that is not only convenient, as a woman i do not feel safe standing at night

waiting for the train to come. that intersection is unreliable in regards to safety. i used to be on crutches. there's no way i can make that transfer having to cross the street. i think this is a way of cutting off district 8 from our downtown. it will also discourage tourists from coming out here and bringing their tourist dollars to our retail business that need it. i would like to see option 2 immediately restore the j church. if there are going to be edits, we need community involvement. the community has spoken. they have said they do not support a fourth transfer. i like to see the m.t.a. listen to their riders because that is the role of our transit company. thank you. >> chair borden: next speaker please.

[ indiscernible ] [ indiscernible ]

>> chair borden: thank you. next speaker please. >> caller: this is gerald. i'm speaking for the bay area transportation working group.

i heard the citizen council's report for the first time today. i must say, it was very well done. it was thorough. it looked at the options. it came out with some logical conclusions. i certainly agree that the j service should continue to downtown san francisco without a transfer. i wish i seen more of this kind of thoughtful report coming from agencies as well as citizen advisory committees. thank you. >> chair borden: thank you. next speaker please. >> caller: my name is sarah greenwald. i live in district 2. first, i want to say you all and everyone who works on transit and everyone who rides transit, is a climate hero. let's start by getting all of

our heroes back on to transit is my point. we got to do this. transportation is about half our climate pollution in the city. even before covid. we can get out of the gas cars and on to transit. we know that the gasoline fumes are a toxic. they are sicker near the freeways which is in lower income communities and communities of color. we need full restoration of all muni service and we need expansion to become truly worthy to claim san francisco as a transit first city. thank you. >> chair borden: thank you. next speaker.

>> caller: hi. thank you to the board for taking time to hear from members of the public. i moved to san francisco in 2015. i had a car. i quickly found out there were better options. like a bike, i can take muni, i loved walking. recently i moved to noe valley with my partner. to our surprise, the j church is currently a-- is a line to nowhere. please restore full service to the j church. the residents of district 8 and residents of noe valley deserve same access to safe, reliable and sustainable option to public transit as the rest of the city. thank you for the consideration. >> chair borden: next speaker

please. >> caller: my name is ann kelly. i live in district 8. i lived here since 1999. i've been commuting downtown since 2008. i anticipate moving back to the office next year, probably in february or march. i have not been taking the j. i'm ashamed to say that. i have appointments during the day. i cannot afford to waste potentially an hour getting downtown because it is too unpredictable how long it will take me to get downtown using the j. similarly, recently i gone the

valley for dinner. i will not take the j home because of the time. i end up taking rideshare. if the j is not restored on my return to office. i would have to take uber or lyft. it will be expensive for me to park downtown where my office is. thank you. i support option 2. >> chair borden: thank you. next speaker please.

>> caller: good afternoon. karen kennard. i'm calling in to thank the c.a.c. chair chen in particular for the resolution. i like to support it and restore m.t.a.'s option 2 by restoring the j to the subway. i think the problems with option 3 are too obvious to need repeating here. i think they are apparent. the benefits of option 2 have been well covered by everyone. i think i want to thank the c.a.c. for listening. it is so gratifying. i sat in on lots of public meetings. that was the first time i felt there was an agency that was listening to the riders. i appreciate all the hard work they did on the resolution. one thing is that, there's a misperception that it's repeated in the staff report that the j serves a privileged community that has other options for travel downtown.

that is a misperception. the j serves a very diverse community that extended from the excelsior and the tenderloin families that take the j to the delores park. that's reflected in the citywide nature of this resolution which was passed unanimously by c.a.c. representatives who stand for the entire city in requesting that the board support m.t.a.'s option 2. thank you. >> chair borden: next speaker please. >> caller: i don't know which one to support, i just hope that the it never gets cut. when it comes to the e line and

f line -- >> chair borden: are you more generally commenting -- we're talking about the c.a.c. recommendation. we'll going in later on the agenda to the service plan. if you have broader comments beyond the resolution that was made by the c.a.c., it will be better under item number 12. we're discussing the citizens' advisory committee report and their recommendations now. >> caller: okay. i'm not on the committee. i'm just commenting generally. >> chair borden: general public comment -- if you're commenting on the service lines of item number 12 and you're commenting more generally not on our agenda, that will be the next

item. >> caller: i will comment more generally on the next item. >> chair borden: next speaker please. >> caller: my name is carroll roderick. i'm confused, i was waiting until you got to 12. everybody has been talking about the j church. >> chair borden: that's for item 12. people are commenting on the c.a.c. specific recommendation related to that. if you want to comment there, if not you can wait until item 12. we'll make a decision. >> caller: okay, i'll wait to item 12. thank you. >> chair borden: next speaker please.

>> caller: this is david pilpel. item 8 c.a.c. report. i support the last three c.a.c. recommendations on the j church on the bus changes and on the frequency guide and i want to call attention to those three recommendations in the future, i think it would be important and useful to bring the title vi analysis on service changes to the c.a.c. for their review and possible comment that did not happen last week. i would encourage you to ask that be made part of the practice going forward. if i haven't made it clear recently, i believe that c.a.c. chair michael chen and vice chair are doing a fine job. i appreciate their leadership of the c.a.c. at the present time. to chair borden i urge you to announce periodically to announce how many callers in the queue. that's why i have to keep jogging back-and-forth with the

screen. it is available on the sfgov tv feed for some reason it's not available if you're just listening on the phone. you don't hear you have 6 callers waiting to speak. you only hear that on sfgov tv. you don't hear that on the phone. >> chair borden: thank you. next speaker please. next speaker on the c.a.c. report. >> caller: i was calling from glenn park. i observed the citizens' advisory council meeting. i support the j. >> chair borden: next speaker please.

>> caller: hi, i'm a resident of noe valley. i really do hope that the board supports the citizens advisory committee recommendation. these are the voices of the rider. i find it disheartening to make a transfer now. no one likes to transfer anywhere whether you're on plane or bus or any kind of transportation system. as a commuter, i can't rely on the j if you have to make a transfer on the church line. whether you're a commuter, you going to a dental appointment downtown, you going shopping. it's such a discouragement to make it a transfer. i do hope that you consider extending the line all the way downtown and providing service throughout the day. even if it's reduced service. we can count on that. that's important. >> chair borden: thank you. next speaker please.

>> caller: hello. i'm a senior. i live in district 8. i have been a regular j church rider. i drove downtown to the parking garage just two days ago because the j is now a hassle. it's not a friendly one. i quit shopping there because of all the shoplifting crime. it's a difficult street to cross there. i strongly support option 2 and i know that there are far more than 300 people who could write

letters about this. i asked only a few people and they all wrote letters. we depend on the j. it's part of our neighborhood. it's a nice ride through dolores park and it goes to the excelsior and farther. please bring it back. >> chair borden: any additional callers? >> caller: good afternoon. i'm edward mason. lifelong noe valley resident and muni patron for over 65 years.

i support the j church option 2, service restoration into the subway. moratorium on the unknown streetscape construction cost is appropriate. the staff presentation on november 28, 2018 and june 26, 2019 and other dates to the c.a.c. indicated surface and subway train control to reduce portal delays, sequencing of surface trains and to avoid gaps in bunches. the potential delivery date then was 2023. m.t.a. now states the new atcf will struggle to justify restricting the j entry into the subway. i think the board of directors should question this and dive into the issues of the atcs that

was promise to us. that would be a speedy service and reduction in the current delays that are experienced. look at the atcs and be very vigilant on the wavy staff report is interpreted. thank you. >> chair borden: are there any additional calls on the line to address the c.a.c. report? [ indiscernible ] [ indiscernible ]

>> chair borden: thank you. next speaker please. >> caller: hello, this is bob, i'm president of save muni. we like to add our voice to supporting the j line going downtown. currently, we understand there are 18 trains that are in the subway every hour. according to the m.t.a., they can handle 30. it looks as though the j could be 10 minute headway with six

more trains going downtown and that would only be 24. it will be well within the capabilities of the system. we would urge you to heed the community's request and have the j go downtown to embarcadero. thank you. >> chair borden: just reminder, if you want to speak on item number 12, we'll make a decision. please wait until item number 12. right now it's the time to weigh in on item number 8, which is the resolution or the report from citizens' advisory council. are there any additional callers? with that, we'll close public comment. i want to thank you for your presentation. there's a lot of public input on

your process. thank you. please call the next item. >> clerk: item number 9, general public comment. >> chair borden: just as a rhymer, our closed session is being continued to the 12/21 meeting. if you wanted to comment on the closed session, you may do so now. this is general public comment. if you want to talk about the j, 48 or any other items. it's an opportunity to address the board on matters that are not on this agenda but are important to be addressed. if you have a matter that's not only the agenda but in subject matter jurisdiction of sfmta, this is your time to comment.

if you like to be placed in the queue, press 1, 0. we will allow you to speak. are there any callers on the line? >> caller: this is bob. president of save muni. i like to raise an issue that i don't believe has been considered by this board. it is trash cans at major muni stops. other day, i was traveling on the number 38. i got off at fillmore and this is obviously in the westbound direction. this is a major bus stop. there's to trash can there. the ground round is littered. i think that at least somebody from staff should go and take a look at all the major transit

stops in the system and assure there is a trash can there for people to put their garbage in. thank you very much. >> chair borden: thank you. next speaker please. >> caller: hi. i need to give a shot out to james lee. james lee is a fantastic employee and official of the m.t.a., parking enforcement division. he can perform miracles. he is your best employee ever. he was able to get the petty cabs to start occupying in droves our staging area at chase center. he confirmed we're allowed to

use it transit lane in union square in the evenings. the police have blocked off the streets. unfortunately, it's going to be about a battle. james lee has confirmed it. i'm hoping with the support of your staff, we can get this rectified. it's an a.d.a. issue. i'm concerned about the harassment and abuse i'm getting from the cops over there.

i meant to talk about the article in the paper about shared spaces. i'm hoping that you can go over those regulations and understand why. double parking is gotten ridiculous in certain areas where there are almost whole street is covered with shared spaces. it makes it difficult to pick up and drop off, especially when it involves disabled people. thank you very much. happy holidays. >> caller: i like to comment on item 10.4 and 5. is that the right time? >> chair borden: we'll have separate public comment when we get to that item. we're on item 9 now. next speaker please.

>> caller: hi, i'm resident of d3. i want to say, one thick -- thing now, just about 15 months from now, san francisco is going to celebrate, observe let's say, the 50th anniversary of our transit first policy. i hope that our current sfmta staff and this board will work together to guide us to place where look and feel to our streets make it that we aggressively believe in this policy. i'm a 30-year resident. my family has been here since may be late 1800s. i want to see more improvement. i know you do. i hope we can work towards that. that's all for this topic. thank you. >> chair borden: thank you. next speaker please.

>> caller: are we still -- we're not on item 12 yet? >> chair borden: no, item 9. general public comment about items that are not on today's agenda. >> caller: all right. i'll continue to wait. thanks. >> chair borden: thank you. next speaker please. >> caller: hello. i'm bernard. i wish to note that the transportation element is part of the state's mandated code. you cannot have transportation separated from -- [ indiscernible ]

[dog barking] >> chair borden: next speaker please. >> caller: this is david pilpel. i believe you referenced the item 13 closed session that's been pulled and that comment on that is appropriate now, is that correct?

>> chair borden: correct. >> caller: i'm not familiar about the two cases that were referenced in item 13. one of them seems to include the unfortunate loss to the community of gus's community market, gus was a friend of the family and a friend to many in san francisco. his loss is still felt. i have no idea what m.t.a.'s role was and why m.t.a. will be compensating his family. if that's appropriate, so be it. i hope there will not be further incidents like that. i believe that there have been safety improvements around the produce market to prevent sort of action that resulted in his untimely demise. next, besides robin rice, i believe that others are retiring, including the m.t.a. at the end of this year.

i wish them well. in reference to one of the consent calendar items. i think i heard that steve lee is retiring, which is a huge loss in terms of contracts. there may be others. perhaps recognition for a long time employees who are requiring will be in order. finally, i believe this is the final regular meeting of the -- wait a minute, is there a meeting on the 21st? >> chair borden: yes, we're meeting on the 21st. >> caller: muni birthday is on december 28th. 109th anniversary is this year. i hope that the people's railway keep running for at least 109 years. >> chair borden: thank you

mr. pilpel. we'll close public comment and move on to our next item. >> clerk: that places on item 10, consent calendar. these items are considered to be routine and will be voted on by a single vote unless a member of the board or public considers an item separately. member of the public if you wish to address the board on a consent item, press 1, 0. when speaking please identify which item number you are speaking to. 10.1, approving parking and traffic modifications. 10.2, approving traffic modification as set forth in item 8 on the agenda to reduce the speed limit from 25 miles per hour to 20 miles per hour. on portions of seventh street in the city. 10.3, amending division 2 section 302 to reduce the trial

courthouse construction fee for parking violations as a result of city bond on the civic center courthouse on april 1, 2021. item 10.4, authorizing director to issue request for proposal. for the operation and management of 16 parking garages and lots each contract having a term of five years with option to extend the contract term for up to additional two years with an amount not to exceed $180 million for each contract.

each contract as a term of five years with options to extend up to additional four years. an amount not to exceed $180 million for each contract. item 10.6, authorizing the director to issue a request for proposal number sfmta for parking meter coin and data collection services. it rank proposal and negotiate a contract for coin collection and related services with highest ranked proposer for a timber of -- term of five years. item 10.7 adopting findings under the state emergency services act to allow remote meetings during the covid-19 emergency. continuing remote meetings for the next 30 days and directing the board secretary to agendize

a similar resolution. that concludes the consent calendar. >> director yekutiel: i have questions about coin collection. >> chair borden: we'll sever item 10.6. any other items that directors would like to have severed? seeing none, we'll move to public comment. this is a time for members of the public to comment on any of the items under the 10 points with the exception -- we will be having a separate conversation on that should there be additional questions. with that, are there callers on the line? first speaker please. >> caller: good afternoon chair borden. i'm walk san francisco vision zero organizering.

10.2, i want take the opportunity to express our gratitude for the sfmta team moving quickly to implement this authority. the severe injury report continues to show number onecause of crashes. these commercial corridors should be calm safe places for walking and gathering. we know we can't stop there. we are asking sfmta board to request the additional 35 identified locations to be brought forward by approval. i look forward to sfmta work on the plan on the high networks.

we need full tool kit on our most dangerous streets from traffic signals to traffics. we look forward to supporting these efforts next year. thank you. >> chair borden: next speaker please. >> caller: good afternoon. there will be a request from the board to table item 10.5. so we can get a chance to communicate our concerns with sfmta. we have submitted our concern in a letter as a group to the

board. we have been in business managing parking garages for years. this never been an issue when we were bidding garages individually. because of the consolidated in two groups, companies will never be able to bid. the only option that we have for us as a small minority owned and woman owned business is by being the subcontractor or joint venture. this is a very big decision. because this is only option that we have, we don't see that.

the percentage has gone down. this is very important decision for many years to come. it's a very legitimate concern. we want to not rush into approving this r.f.p. we want to ask to sit down with the director and staff see how we can remedy this. we're going to be affected by this r.f.p. >> caller: this is david pilpel again. i have several items here i have comments on 10.2, 10.3, 10.4 and

10.5 and 10.6. on 10.2 if ab43 is effective january 1, 2022, isn't it premature to approve this now and should it be continued and considered at your first meeting after january 1st? that's policy or legal question. on 10.3, the trial courthouse construction fee reduction. i wanted to take a moment to appreciate rudy who after his service as general manager of the public utilities commission which then included muni as a significant part of the operation -- he served as general manager from 1983 to

1986. following that he served as chief administrative officer from 1987 to 1996. during that time, the new courthouse at 400 mcallister was developed in this fee was and implemented in 1992. there wasn't whole lot of support to make it happen. rudy made it happen and he came back as member and chair of public transportation commission. rudy had a long history with muni and m.t.a. this will end the $1.50 fee surcharge. on to 10.4 and 10.5. for that matter, i think the comments similarly apply to 10.6. although, they are proposed to all five-year agreements, and

another case with the four-year option, i would hope that staff is looking at and you can ask if the ultimate plan is to bring this work in-house. it seems to me like the administrative burdens of managing a contract compared to the benefits of contracting out this work are not -- the balance isn't there anymore. i would ultimately like to see the parking facility operation management along with the parking meter coin and data collection work to be done in-house by m.t.a. and city staff. best way to reduce the opportunities for issues with contracting is to reduce the amount of outside contracting where it makes sense to do so. we should look to not

contracting out this work in the future. if you need to do it for this round, so be it. you can engage in a bit of policy level discussion about it. that's been talked about from time to time with this board. thank you very much for listening. >> chair borden: thank you. are there additional callers? >> caller: good afternoon. i'll be speaking on item 10.4. my name is patty rodriguez. i'm concerned about the proposed outline sfmta 2021-64. as the only latina -- [ indiscernible ] the reduction of participation is concerning.

i ask that off street parking bring in parking manager l.b.e.s to the table to ensure participation and be combined with equity and small business in mind. >> chair borden: thank you. next speaker please. >> caller: good afternoon. my name is rachael clyde. i'm on san francisco staff bicycle coalition. i want to comment on 10.2. the s.f. bicycle coalition support assembly bill 43. it will make these busy streets safer for pedestrians, people on bicycles, businesses and everyone else using the space.

we strongly support -- we encourage the city to follow these recommendations and not implement these changes through traffic enforcement. we want to thank ryan reaves on sfmta staff and sfmta board for approving these changes. >> chair borden: thank you. are there additional callers? with that, we will close public comment. perhaps, staff could dig into 10.6. i do also would like staff to spend some time talking about our l.b.e. portion of our contracts that we're putting out proposal for the parking garages. we can start with the 10.6?

i was going to have staff give us brief overview of the item. [ indiscernible ] >> i can provide a summary why we want to contract this work out. we believe this work has been contracted out. it's handled by a certified contractor. i prefer not to have m.t.a. employees out on the street handling that cash directly.

>> good afternoon. i'm a project manager assigned to the coin and data collection r.f.p. this is the service to collect our parking meters. some of the data associated with the conditions with the parklets, the shared spaces. as far as bringing services in house, we have already brought some of the service in-house. this has to do with the coin counting.

we've looking at coin collection. it's not something that is feasible. we'll continue to provide the service and if possible future date evaluate bringing collection in-house. >> chair borden: director yekutiel, did you have a question? >> director yekutiel: i did. thank you. i guess i'm going to ask the question that needs to be asked, have we considered not taking coins at all? looks like coin revenue going from 60% at the beginning of this contract to 12%. i'm not a crystal ball holder. my expectation over the next five years, it will probably go even lower. if we're spending $4.5 million a year on this contract, i wonder if the juices were to squeeze -- if other cities don't accept coins and where they are moving?

>> that's a great question director yekutiel. as we see more and more customers moving towards credit cards and pay by phone payments. absolutely. we prefer not to be handling coins. it creates more liability than benefit. however, we heard loud and clear from the public that the ability to pay with coin is an equity issue. there's people who don't have bank accounts. for now, during this period of time as we enter this next generation of parking meters, we do believe that -- the reason we bought parking meters we need to maintain that coin paymentability. i envision that if we had this conversation ten years from now, we'll be talking about not

having one. >> the city has a policy that all san franciscans have access to all city services. many san franciscans unfortunately are not able to secure a bank account or any kind of debit or credit card. we have been hopeful that the california integrated travel project would dramatically expand the product for all californians. we have been either to partner with other city agencies to make sure that everyone here has access to all variety of financial services. whether it's online purchases or parking meters or dial by phone, payment mechanisms. [ indiscernible ]

once we can get access to low payment for everyone, we'll be ready to have a conversation about moving more and more of our small payments into mobile card basis. >> director yekutiel: i understand the equity component of this. i want to make sure that we're set up for the future. not locking ourselves into a 10-year contract paying millions dollars a year to collect coins. it becomes extremely easy for all folks to make mobile payments or payments that don't involve coins. i know lot of other countries that are rapidly disseminating technology that don't involve physical money. i don't want us to get locked into something for too long and

spending lot of money and being required to have the fees and stuff. it turn out that it is no longer an equity issue at some point in the future. sounds like we all have that top of mind. i want to make sure we're not locking ourselves with this contract that we might want to walk away from in a few years. it is a 10-year contract? >> the difference between fixed fee and per hour labor fee -- it will be -- [ indiscernible ] >> director yekutiel: are we paying the same amount for coin collection as we were doing when it was 60% of revenue? i hope it's a loss less. >> for smaller set of services that no longer include counting, we want to get a competitive bid

for narrower band of services. potentially it does -- >> this is the 5-year contract. there's a determination for convenience that's part of our agreement. >> director yekutiel: let's remember this conversation and see if coins are still a thing. if they're not, let's not pay for it. thank you. >> chair borden: thank you director yekutiel. i think the biggest challenge that i find as you can't actually put a coin in the most of the meters in the city. i don't know that -- is that something when they collect the coins they're able to fix? half the time you have a meter

in the city, you can't put a coin into it. what are we doing about that? >> i can speak to that, chair borden. we had a rash of meter jamming. [please stand by]

>> on our last solicitation, we did see an l.b.e. joint participation. there is the potential this could occur on this new solicitation. the language regarding bonuses is contained in the attachment which is part of the r.s.p. documents and is standard city language. with respect to subcontracting, the ordinance requires that we set goals based on scope of work, budget, and l.b.e. availability. and in this contract, we identify parking garage management, security and janitorial services, and opportunities for subcontracting. based upon the scope of the work for the two parking garage groups, the budget and availability of l.b.e.s pencilleded out to 12% of contracting participation. now, we do recognize these goals are lower than they've been in prior solicitation and this is largely due to the fact

that we move to a technology based system and less labor is required over all the contracts which is then resulted in l.b.e. subcontracting goal. however, in order to preserve opportunities for our l.b.e. parking garage management firms and to balance the loss of opportunity, we have also included 22 scoring criteria to encourage potential proposers to include outside the l.b.e. goals and specifically the proposer up to a total of 15 points to allow parking garage to leverage their participation on this contract. i reached out to the director of the city's contract monitoring division and

discussed our approach to this contract and he did express agreement with our approach and has agreed that he would participate with me in a workshop for our l.b.e. clients who are interested in participating on this contract so they can understand how to leverage the opportunities that we've identified and in particular, given the challenges in effect that we have changed our approach to these parking garage contracts and the industry also has changed. if during that process, and also during the solicitation process, we hear from firms or from the industry, and discover new information that we can certainly adjust our l.b.e. contracting goals in addition to the addendum so that we don't delay the issuance.

>> i noticed you said we identify specific areas that we can subcontract l.b.e.s. is that necessary? if they could do more, would that be possible or would that be limited to the janitorial services we talked about? >> so those are the services we've identified and the budget and scope were the setting of a goal. there's enough work there that we can do that. that's a pretty significant portion of the contract. >> okay. but they could potentially have -- they could do other work as part of the contract too or no? they're only limited to that area. i guess i wasn't clear on that. >> actually, there are also other opportunities. as a joint venture, parking garage management could do over management of the contract in

addition to participating in those areas that can do parking garage management and then, but the subcontracting opportunities would remain for l.b.e.s. so obviously the goal, the subcontracting goals are really the least amount of participation that we'll see. there's the potential for more participation. and in particularly here, we have the extra points in the selection process to encourage prime contractors to choose l.b.e. parking garage firms. >> and can we just see what that results in and when the r.f.p.s come in, we were able to see a significant amount of participation and allocation of the work. i hope we can get an update on that after we've had some bids in. and i know director hinsey had

a question on 10.2. >> great. i just had a question on public comment to make sure we were okay with proving this as an action item. so from the staff report, it sounded like we were okay, but i just wanted to clarify. >> sure, thank you, director hinze. the staff report and resolution in front of you are not effective until january 1st, 2022, and that is when ab43 goes into effect. so we did work with staff and made sure that we were consistent with the state law. >> okay. perfect. that was it.

thank you. >> thank you. >> chairman: great. so with that, are there any additional questions or a motion to approve the total calendar of our consent calendar. >> director: i wanted to move on 10.6. >> chairman: we only have to do it if people want to vote separately on it. >> director: go ahead, director yekutiel. >> director: i'd like to approve the consent calendar including coin collection for the next five years. >> chairman: secretary, can you please call the roll. >> secretary: on the motion to approve the consent calendar, [roll call]

the consent calendar is approved. thank you. >> chairman: and that brings us to our regular calendar. please call the very first item. >> secretary: your item number 11 urging the board of supervisors for the $400 million transportation improvement muni reliability and street safety general obligation bond on the june 2022 ballot. >> chairman: great. i can see the presentation. >> thank you. good afternoon, chair borden and directors. acting chief financial officer. with luck, third time's a charm and i'm here to present to you for action today our 2022 muni reliability and safety bond. this will be a quick presentation and following up on some questions that we had at our last board meeting. again, the focus of our 2022 geo bond is continued

improvement on our transportation and transit system across san francisco. a key focus on reliability of the system both by fixing key infrastructure that we have in the system including investment control system and the safety of the transportation system through traffic signals, ped and meter corridor improvements throughout san francisco. just to update the board on where we are process wise, the m.t.a. board provided direction to us the staff amongst three options for the general obligation bond. that was option three which shifted some of the dollars from the transit component of the bond to the streets component pretty much matching what we had in the 2014 general obligation bond. today, we are asking you to adopt a resolution that would urge the mayor and board of supervisors to put this bond on the ballot in 2022.

next monday, consistent with the administrative code, the geo bond will move forward to the city's capital planning committee. the proposed bond is the first bond in the current ten-year capital plan that was adopted by the mayor and board of supervisors this past april. and immediately after, the day after to stay on schedule to make the ballot, we are hoping that mayor breed introduces this bond to the board of supervisors. it will go through committees and for board of supervisors' consideration in january and february to meet the deadline to get on the june 2022 ballot. so just again, for you and the public, there are new funding sources and capital funding sources that we will talk about starting at your board workshop in february. this funding source is specific. the general obligation bond and so kind of the elements that we consider for projects related

to the g.o. bond about the length of time that it took to spend the prior general obligation bond. we have identified potential, not necessarily the exact projects and project types that could receive bond funds and we do believe that we can spend a significant component of that bond in the first three years. a large amount of those projects unlike last time have already gone through planning and are ready to move on to construction and largely the staff resources to deliver those projects are already in place meaning we can spend the bond rapidly and follow through on commitments to the voters. second, g.o. bonds need to be spend on heavy capital assets. this is where we'll come back and build that concrete

pedestrian throughout the city. and lastly, a key consideration is we have a number of funding sources that we use in capital. more than 60 independent funding sources based on year, type, and funding organizations. those funds are often designated to very specific purposes. we will again talk about that during our 5-year c.i.p. development. so the g.o. bond as it is one of our more flexible services outside of the asset requirement, we try to use these dollars to really fill gaps where we can't get state or federal or even use a significant component of our local sales taxes to complete the project. following up on request from the board from the prior meeting, just a quick update on h.r.3684 which was the infrastructure bill that president biden signed into law. we are anticipating increases

and m.t.c. has prepared an initial analysis of our funds. so section 5307 which largely goes to the bus replacement program here in san francisco. so when we need to replace our muni fleet, the 5307 source is what is programmed to us. we do anticipate that that will go up about 31%. the 5337, sex 5337 of the bill is for fixed guideway and that's our track and overhead. that is anticipated to go up over the next 5 years about 18%. while these are going up, we still have a significant gap in these areas. so this, of course, will help and support closing some of our state of good repair needs and these funds are designated for these purposes.

on the competitive brand side, on the worst significant increases, some of the normal programs that the m.t.a. competes for, the lists that you see at the bottom are national grants so you'll see the first grant which we did apply for. it's supposed to go up 75%. a normal grant for us can be in the 15, maybe $18 million range. a 70% increase. might see grants going up to the $25 million range. the amount a state can receive is part of the total program is capped and this is one of the most competitive nationwide grants in the nation for transportation.

second, we indicate these dollars for signal projects. so as an example in the past, we've gotten grants for south van ness on signal replacement on that particular street in san francisco. that's going to go up 34%. so maybe we would get awards maybe in the $10 million to $11 million per project based on competitiveness. the bus and bus facilities grant is something that pays for bus expenses or bus facilities. we recently want. a normal grant with the funding that's available is in the $3 million to $4 million grant. the low and no emissions program has to do with electric buses. you will see we have a 1400% replacement or increase with

regards to that program. i will say within the region, our electric vehicles and our buses typically are a higher cost than the average m.t.c. bus price. so as we look to implement our bus electrify indication program. authority will be delegated to the states or will it be a national grant out of the u.s. d.o t.'s secretary's office and we intend on competing for these dollars for street improvement projects. that said, when we presented to

you this summer. we had already anticipated and calculated. we had $40 million per year. so while this is excellent news, it does not change or close any of our gaps. so the numbers that we showed you with regard to the multi-billion dollars gaps in the 30 year and 10-year models already assumed these initial dollars would be in place. that said, here's the final general obligation bond program. you can see the large change there with largely in the train control line item. there's also the reliability line item. i actually made an error. in the last presentation, we were offering about $4 million. so that was there. went from $22 million to $26 million.

we do believe with regard to project eligibility which is part of the legislation and the bond report. i know i believe director heminger had asked and we do believe the project that would be funded around train control especially as we look to the surface would be eligible for both of those pots of money and, of course, the $10 million is most important as we want to use it to leverage federal and state dollars for the train control project. so i wanted to keep it quick. this has been quite a meeting for you already. i'm happy to take any questions you have. >> chairman: thank you. >> director lai. >> director: great. thank you, chair. just a quick question around the train control cost. . so the federal fund mechanism that you're looking at, does it have like a proportions match

-- i guess, let me restate that. my question is the $10 million enough for us to optimize on our leveraging of other sources? >> the $10 million will be leveraging our components. so we'll probably use our sales tax component of that and this general obligation bond. local match against federal programs of this type is typically 20%. >> director: great. thank you. >> chairman: does that conclude your questions? director heminger. >> director: thank you, chair. i want to thank the staff and flexibility in working with us to do little chutes and ladders with the numbers here. so i know that's the main item here and i did though want to raise another issue that was included in one of your charts

on the parking tax and, jeff, i know that you have been in conversation with our city attorney about i don't know how to describe it, but parking tax, residential parking, city wide fee. that whole constellation of issues and i think the last time you checked, you were in the frank exchange of use phase. are we seeing a path towards something that we could really give some serious consideration to from a legal perspective? >> unfortunately, not yet. deputy city attorney. [ indiscernible ] >> thank you, director tumlin. we do understand the importance of the s.f.m.t.a. on these

questions, but we are waiting for two cases currently at the supreme court to make their way through to a decision. one of them has been scheduled for argument and that is progress that we're still several months away from understanding the outcome of those cases. >> and so we'll have outcomes when? >> on one of the cases, you know, once they have oral argument, i guess they have 90 days, so possibly six months from now. the other case is the rm3 case which has not been fully briefed. >> say no more about that one. i know it too well. in the meantime, jeff, i think i suggested to you maybe off line that meeting with our new city attorney about this. he is very interested in these subjects and a bit of a risk taker which is i think probably what we need if we're going to

get something like this headed down the tracks. >> a new city attorney david chiu and i have already spoken about potential opportunities for collaboration as well as strategic risk taking which the city attorney's office has a very long history of. >> director: thank you, madam chair. >> chairman: thank you. are there any other questions from other directors at this time? seeing none. we will open it up to public comment. so this is time for members of the public who would like to comment on our general obligation bond measure which we will vote on. making the recommendation to the board of supervisors to put it on the ballot. so if you'd like to comment, press 1-0 to add yourself to the queue. this is only about the obligation transportation bond.

moderator, are there any callers on the line? >> you have four questions remaining. >> caller: hello, chairman, and directors. we want to thank for adequately funding the desperatelied street safety improvements. and we allocate funding to these improvements that we know can bring down severe and fatal crashes that still happen far too often on san francisco streets. we really need projects like this, like the investments in traffic signals that will allow us to replace some of the city's 60-year-old traffic signals like accessible ped signals and are urgently needed in neighborhoods like the tenderloin whether they attempt to put in pedestrian scramble because the pedestrians are too old to accommodate for

hardware. we know muni can only meet its full potential without fear of dangerous intersections and while we know the bond is just one part of the financing puzzle, you know, it's strategically created allocations that can better compete for and leverage the state and federal funding that may be available so our local dollars can go much further. thank you. >> chairman: thank you. next speaker, please. >> you have three questions remaining. >> chairman: next speaker. >> caller: this is herbert winer. now, there have been countless bond measures that have gone nowhere with no noticeable improvement in muni or m.t.a. and you've been in debt for the last three decades. always you come asking for more money and frankly, i'm going to

vote 'no' as i have in the past and i encourage everyone to vote 'no' on these bond issues. thousand, you get a generous amount of money from the general funds and you get money from other sources and it just doesn't add up. it doesn't make sense. we're pouring money down the rat hole. so i strongly advise people to vote against the bond issue. i don't pretend to keep up with jonathan fewer catacombs of financial accountability. i'm just flatly going to vote 'no' and i'm not going to buy a bond issue. thank you. >> chairman: thank you. next speaker, please. >> you have three questions remaining. >> chairman: next speaker. >> caller: hi there. we support the current 2022g.o.

bond proposal. it represents the investment in our interest to infrastructure as well as conducting safety improvements. it attracts more riders and means fewer cars on the road. we look forward to helping get this bond passed in june 2022. thank you. >> chairman: thank you. next speaker, please. >> you have two questions remaining. >> chairman: next speaker. >> caller: hi. i'm speaking on behalf of spur. we strongly support the g.o. bond measures proposed by staff. spur has long advocated for service and operations challenges and while we know that everyone is excited about the new federal and state dollars that are available for transportation, we also know those will mostly get directed through capital projects or awarded on competitive basis and it won't direct the money

towards maintenance needs which is what muni needs. and make it more competitive for future federal dollars. these investments will address the reliability and efficiency that everyone wants. it will help address muni's operating deficit and the dollars will help fund improvements to our streets especially in our underserved neighborhoods. so thank you for moving forward on this and urging the board of supervisors to support the g.o. bond. we think this is an important first step towards creating a more equitable, reliable transportation system. >> chairman: thank you. next speaker, please. >> you have one question remaining. >> chairman: next speaker. >> caller: yes. this is bob from seed muni. i have a question that i wanted to ask. of course, i don't know if the details of the bond issue have

been revealed or the specific language, are but i'm wondering is any of the money from this bond issue going to be used to cover the deficits that are going to be incurred by opening the central subway. in other words, is the central subway slated to receive money from this bond issue either on the capital side to make up for the overruns or on the operating side to make up for the significant amount of money this is going to cost the city? >> chairman: we can have staff address that after this, but this is not a question and answer session. this is an opportunity for public comment. >> caller: could we get -- would we get a response? >> chairman: yes.

we will. >> caller: all right. thank you. >> chairman: thank you. moderator, are there additional callers on the line? >> you have 0 questions remaining. >> chairman: with that, we'll close public comment and maybe we can answer the question about the bond issuance and the moneys and how that all is set up. >> sure. the general obligation bond can only be used for capital improvements. the majority of improvements are in pre-existing good repair facilities and infrastructure with small components of muni forward. none of the dollars will go to the central subway and/or any operating costs related to the central subway. >> chairman: thank you. directors, are there any additional questions or is there a motion? >> director: i'll so move. >> director: second. >> chairman: great. please call the roll. >> secretary: on the motion,

[roll call] thank you. the motion passes. >> chairman: and can you please call our next item, please. >> secretary: this places you on item number twelve. approving the title six service equity analysis for the proposed municipal railway route. to transit service proposed for winter 2022. that will not result or -- burden on low income communities under title 6. that would return the j church to the subway evenings only and

and improving the parking and traffic modifications as listed in the agenda including modifications to make permanent transfer improvements for the j church on church street between 15th street and duboce avenue and including the closing the southbound curb lane of church street between market and 15th streets in accordance with the california vehicle code section 21101f. >> chairman: great. >> thank you. i'm glad it was your job and not my job to get that all out. >> chairman: everything okay over there? >> yeah. can you guys see the presentation? >> chairman: now we can.

>> great. as the action item indicated, i have a lot of information to cover with you all today. i'm going to do my best to go through it quickly and really emphasize or focus on where we've received public comments and concerns but i'm happy during the discussion to answer any questions you have on any of the routes. i'm very proud of where we are today with the service. our ridership is back at about the 50% level. the weakest ridership being downtown where the downtown subway stations for example were still seeing only about 15% to 20% ridership. so that really speaks to actually how strong the rest of the system is performing and how much people are traveling between neighborhoods to our

commercial districts and to destinations throughout san francisco. that pattern is also reinforced by the weekend ridership which is closer to 60% as well as seven or eight routes on the weekend are at 80% or higher of their pre-covid ridership. we also have restored coverage by the start of school. we now have most san franciscos within a short walk of a transit stop and we have built all of this service back slowly using our agencies values. and really first and foremost focusing on the equity needs in san francisco. that started in april of 2020. we knew we could not deliver all of the service that we were currently delivering pre-covid and the very first thing we did was map the job sectors that

couldn't work from home. things like manufacturing, distribution, hospital work, and what we found was a very strong overlap between our muni equity in neighborhoods and those job sectors. and that is why when we created the covid priority network which was just 17 routes, it very much focused on prioritizing the neighborhoods that didn't have the luxury to shelter in place and needed to go out in a very scary time. much like our own staff to deliver important services to san francisco. we also worked very hard to respond to the feedback of community leaders after those 17 routes, two of the small routes that we added back were the m bus and the 12 pacific

shuttle in chinatown and that was specifically related to things we were hearing about seniors and other residents there not being able to get to basic access. as you know, we created new routes with strong input from the community. the 153rd being the greatest example of that. we also brought in the full force of our technology department and introduced equity mapping. we know for example a route like the 15 t-third offers four fold access to jobs in a 30-minute travel range and nine fold access to jobs in a 45-minute transit range. what i'm here to talk to you

about today is where do we go next and how do we continue to focus on our agency's values, continuing to support equity as well as our ongoing need to address climate crisis. the service that we plan to restore is made possible because of we've been hiring operators, mechanics, everybody that we need to deliver this work. and so in many ways, the winter service proposals is how we're allocating that next increment of staffing. that being said, we are not where we wanted to be in terms of operator hiring. and there's a variety of reasons for that. the first and i think the most significant that we have about

41 operators that are currently in the separation process because of the vaccine requirements. that's about the equivalent of 15 weeks of training. we also had fewer winter classes and smaller winter classes than we had anticipated. so the november class was canceled and instead of increasing the class size, the december start class is only going to be 21 students. and that's because we needed our trainers to also train our existing operators who have an opportunity during a general setup which will go into effect in january to move to different divisions, to go from a 40' bus to a 60' bus or from a motor coach to a trolley. it's an important opportunity. some of our most effective

managers, our managers that took advantage of that opportunity and learned a lot of different modes as they promoted through the agency. but it is resource intensive. we are going to be starting 35 to 40-person classes in january. so the training push is upon us, but we are not going to have a 10% increase in operators by the end of february which we had originally planned for. so what i'm proposing today and looking forward to more discussion on this is that we implement the changes i'm going to describe today in two parts. there's many changes that are relatively low resource that we could implement in early march and then as we continue to hire and train, we would be able to implement the full proposals in

june. as i shared with you in september, we went through an extensive community process looking at three different ways to approach the next phase of service restoration and that generated thousands of pieces of public input. we had an extensive survey, but we also had an opportunity to go to dozens of community meetings. we took calls, we received feedback. the we got really good information to help shape the recommendations that we're sharing with you today. based on all of that input, we developed a set of staff recommendations especially in areas where we saw a lot of synergy in the public feedback

and there's a couple places like the j church which you heard a lot of comments on earlier in this meeting where we're bringing the board choices with the staff recommendation to allow opportunity where the staff feedback may or may not align with the community feedback. the recommendations are not purely the familiar proposal or the frequent proposal, but pieces of each that responded to what we heard in the initial round of community feedback including a really strong desire to restore key pre-pandemic connections, preserving and restoring access through hilly areas. for example, in the tenderloin, on the hay street hill and in ashbury heights. we heard a lot from seniors and

people with disabilities particularly where we had clusters of senior housing on 5th street and sutter. and then we also heard an interest in increasing frequency particularly where we are starting to see crowding like the geary corridor. the recommendations are outlined in detail in your packet. i'm going to go over them briefly. we are recommending to restore in full the 8ax and bx and the 43 masonic. we are also recommending restoring portions of several routes and i'm going to run you through just quick maps because i think it's a little easier to understand those. the first is the 2 clement.

we are recommending restoring the 2 clement from downtown to presidio to california. the landmark there is the jewish community center. this is in response to feedback about senior housing on sutter, access to the hospitals as well as services provided by the j.c.c. in addition to downtown access and access to japantown. we are not recommending that the 2 clement be restored west of presidio where it runs either in overlap with the 1 california or on clement street with the 38 and the 1 california a block away in either direction. the second recommendation is for the 21 haynes. we are recommending that the 21 hayes be restored from its outer terminal at st. mary's

hospital to the downtown civic center. their customers have very freevent both surface and subway connectivity opportunities. this would allow folks going to the commercial corridor or going to the hospital or going to residents along the hay street hill, to have that basic access, but would maximize resources by not going on the downtown stretch. the 8 ax and bx were not in the initial recommendations that i shared at the policy advisory group we are currently operating 5 minutes on the bay

shore. but for folks that are coming from visitation valley and the outer mission, they're missing that quick ride during commute periods that they had, that the 8bx provided and that's because the 8bx gets on the freeway sooner at arlita and bay shore and skips the san bruno segment. so that's a recommendation that we are recommending. it operates in the peak period, in the peak direction similar to what we had pre-covid. for the 10 and the 12 line, we are recommending against the modifications. we are recommending that we restore the 10-line into the financial district.

this would provide direct downtown access for folks living in patrera hill and shell place square and along the townsend corridor, but we are recommending it terminate rather than picking up the pacific portion of the 12. the pacific portion of the 12 would still have the 7.5-minute service it had pre-covid, but with this pattern, we be able to provide as much stronger connectivity through the south end of market which has been requesting a frequent 12 line that operated the length of the soma corridor. there would be a long line that ran from basically jackson and filmore covering a portion of what the 3 jackson does and

terminating where the route currently does at caesar chavez and there would be a short line that ran from basically pacific along van ness through show place square along south and market also harrison and terminated at the 16th street bart station. this proposal has been well received because of the connectivity it provides and because of the connections it makes to both food access as well as our regional transit service. in the southwest neighborhood, we are recommending that the 23 be extended back to its traditional route along float avenue. when we implemented the august changes, we redirected it to west portal in order to really

stretch resources. we're also recommending based on community feedback, the 57 be returned to west portal and terminate at the subway station. and that we continue for liability reasons to keep the 57 and the 58 as two separate routes. but the 58 would be restored to brotherhood way and would no longer go to the west lake shopping mall. this southwest neighborhood would also benefit from the 28 rapid which provides increased service on 19th avenue as well as connections to the balboa park b.a.r.t. station and then in january, we will also be adding increased morning service on the 29 and the 48 which are routes that are currently spilling over with kids during morning pick-up

time and need more service to prevent pass-ups. on north point, the service traditionally has been provided by the 47. during covid, the 49 has been making that segment. we are instead recommending that the 28 route which currently ends at van ness and north point be extended to north point and howell. the benefit of this is it's a little more efficient because the 28th does not operate as frequently as the 49, but will also be a huge benefit to tourists who are often trying to get from one tourist destination which is the wharf to the golden gate bridge and this will provide a one seat ride for folks making that change. we're also recommending

restoration as i discussed of the 43 to its traditional terminal near the marina safeway. during covid, we created temporary and recently made permanent transit lanes on 7th and 8th street. in order to really maximize the benefit of those lanes, we moved the 27 bryant and is a long city wide cross town route to 7th and 8th. it is our recommendation that we continue to keep the 27 on 7th and 8th. it is really has improved reliability and is excelling in that area. we did hear in community concerns about gap in service on fifth street. so we're recommending that the 31 which previously went downtown and now makes connections at 5th and market

be extended along 5th street past the senior housing to the cal train station. combined with the 12 and as well as the 28, these routes work together to replace the 47 providing really strong access to the hall of justice via the 27, the 19, as well as the 12 line. we're also recommending some frequency changes. more frequency on the 5. more frequency on portions of the 12. we talked a little bit about the 29 and the 48. we also are recommending that these proposals with the 30 short and the 38 rapid increase in frequency and that the 49 maintain its current 6-minute

frequency which is about 25% more than what we had pre-covid. and then finally, we are recommending that the 58 line go from a 20-minute headway to a 30-minute head way to accommodate some of the other changes in the southwest corridor. we also will be reintroducing articulated buses on the 5 rapid as well as restoring the 66 and the 52 to their pre-covid routes. so then diving in to where we have that and continue to hear community concerns, i wanted to talk first about the proposal for the 38 and 45. the 48 used to try to do two things. it providing neighborhood connections and a relative grid

route for connections between west portal, noe valley, the mission, sf general and the dog patch and it also provided some neighborhood circulation to the hilliest part of noe valley. during covid, we started running the 48 more directly up and down 24th street previously covered. this change has created a more direct and quicker 48 line. it's saving about 6 minutes in each direction and only adding negligible to the 45 line. prefer the 48 connections if

you were going to 48 street into noe valley or the mission because the 48 served them more directly. we have also who live on either 21st street or the 35 who live on clipper street who do not previously have a buffer on their street and are concerned about safety issues. we've also heard concerns about not accessing the douglas to castro portion of the 24th street commercial corridor. working with stakeholders on the 35 line we can address the safety concerns including

potential adding a four-way stop at that location. for clipper street, we have looked at possible reroute which would put us on douglas and diamond rather than the current routing. that does require that the intersection be regraded at 25th and douglas because it's a little bit too steep of a grade break for the bus, but that will also have a benefit to autos traveling in the area so although it can't be done immediately, it is the staff recommendation that we pursue the douglas route change which is option three.

that also addresses the feedback on having the 48 on the western portion of the commercial corridor between castro and douglas. and then the last area that i wanted to talk about is the subway and the j church recommendation. i think it's important because this is a lot of different factors to take a detaileded look at it. prior to covid, subway reliability was our agency's biggest problem. that does require short and long-term fixes including reducing the number of routes in the subway. having fewer trains, but having longer trains so we can remove fewer people without congestion also to get the subway system,

it also requires making transformative improvements on surface segments. we have done that and in places like the inner sunset, but over the next two yearses, we're going to be looking at a much more extensive program to improve and basically implement community forward treatments on our surface rail and updating the train control system: during covid, we tested the things that we were able to do in the near term and that included removing two routes from the subway.

the construction begins in january and we're going to be for construction purposes motorizing for the next 18 to 24 months. today, we're really looking at the j, but we will be looking at west portal in the future. the subway is operating better than i've seen it in my ten years at sfmta. in particular, the subway travel times have improved by about seven minutes. only about a minute of that is coming from passenger boarding time. so there's about 50% ridership on the rail system. we absolutely are seeing quicker boarding. it's only shaving off about five seconds at each of our stops. most of the travel time savings is coming from the fewer trains on the subway.

we're also seeing benefits from the slow zone repair work that we did over covid as well as the fact that we've just seen fewer breakdowns. that can be attributed to the reliability of the new trains and the investment that we made on the infrastructure. [please stand by]

>> in addition to the travel time savings, we are seeing a significant reduction in the variability in travel time. what i mean by that is people -- we're seeing for a fewer bad days. if on a good day, for example, pre-covid somebody can get where they were going in 18 minutes,

in a bad day it might take more than 30 minutes. for people that don't have flexibility on when they show up, they need to plan for the bad days. having not only quicker time but more consistent times, really is how the travel time adds up for our riding customers. we've also been looking carefully at how the ridership is restoring along the corridor. although we are hearing a lot of complaints on the j church pilot, the ridership is coming back on about the same pace as the metro system as a whole. what we did for this analysis is we looked at all of the trips pre-covid that were not just

starting and ending in the subway. pre-covid we had about 16,000 riders on the j church. about 3000 of those were people getting on the embarcadero and montgomery and powell and getting off by church station. they are just taking the first train they see. of the 12,700 surface trips that we had, about half of them have restored. our ridership on the j was about 6700. that's on pace with the overall system. we are seeing very high ridership restoration on the kt. the rest of the corridors are

about 55%. the flagged that the transfer can be challenging particularly for people with mobility disabilities. they also raised safety concerns. some of which are being addressed like things like the pavement replacement, which is probably under way and some have to do with the waiting environment at church.

one of the benefits of the pilot is it did allow us to really learn and make adjustments as we went. we did see some improvements that i wanted to cover as well.

by removing the j from the subway, we did see a reliability improvement. the headway reliability looks at gaps in service improved from 75% to 90%. the three options, you heard quite a bit of discussion about this in the c.a.c. that we're bringing you for consideration. the first is to do what we're doing right now.

which is 10 minute service. it runs on the surface from balboa park to church and debose. the second option is operating 15 minute headway. it will run from balboa to embarcadero station. the third option is an attempt to address some of the feedback that we heard while still preserving the subway benefits for the tens of thousands of folks on the rest of the rail system. that will be to have surface rail line from church and duboce. in the conservatory extending en

the evening extending the j church. one because the transfer is not as good in the evening because the j is not coming as often and the other routes are not coming as often. also because we did hear particular evening safety concerns at church and market. then the third piece of this proposal would be for folks who really transferring is not an option. we will provide 30 minute bus that will go from noe valley to downtown about every 30 minutes. we looked at extending the bus all the way to balboa park and certainly an option that we have. because there are so many other quick options for getting downtown from that neighborhood we don't think that the bus will be very well utilized through that stretch.

i know that it is new for the muni system to have rail lines with a transfer. i do want to point out that we have lots of routes throughout the city where people transfer to the subway. for example, the 24 at castro, we have hundreds of people that get off the 24 and get on to the subway at castro to head downtown. regardless of which option the m.t.a. board selects, we are recommending that we make improvements to the intersection of church and market. i think they are best seen in this photo, it will be including making many of the quick build

items permanent including a permanent wheelchair accessible ramp added at the island and church and duboce. new southbound transit area that provide crossing distance on the south side of the corridor. southbound island the 14th street will be replaced with pedestrian curb extension. the northbound through traffic and southbound local access only will be permitted. we are recommending that we put in automatic track switch which would improve the crossover and prevent the drivers from having to get out of the vehicle when they cross over at church and duboce. we have a goal of having two elevators at all of our stations for redundancy. our highest priority right now is at castro. that project is in the design phase.

we would also recommend looking at the feasibility of second elevator so you would have have an elevator at this southbound stop instead of in addition to the one across the street. the benefit of doing the j church as a pilot is it did allow us to make a lot of changes and improvements as we went. this could be a place making

exercise. we want to draw from lot of the lessons and design benefits that we have on irving street.

which triggered our maker service change requirements. today's legislation as christine outlined is to approve the title vi analysis to approve the parking and traffic modifications associated with these proposals as well as to approve the parking traffic modifications for the j church project at market and church street.

we also plan to continue hiring not just operators but all of the staff it takes to deliver expanded service. if we're able to address our long-term budget issues. we see the next opportunity for service expansion in the fall of 2022.

there's routes are very strong ridership activity. the 22 fillmore we're seeing lot of activity. weekend ridership is more than 100% of pre-covid ridership. there's also some routes that we did not fully restore as part of the winter or not at their traditional frequencies. there's a lot to unpack here as we think about and continue a

model continuous service restoration. i want to share with the board that because there are many areas where we are providing more service than we did pre-pandemic, which i think is appropriate given that it's a living and evolving system and travel patterns are different than they were pre-covid. we will fleed to continue to look for ways to stretch and grow our pie if we're going to continue to look at further restoration along with areas where we know or interested in growth. with that, thank you so much for your time. i will stop sharing and available to answer any questions that you have. >> chair borden: thank you for that.

>> i do want to thank all of the staff who did the planning work here and the outreach and the operations people who have really worked hard to make sure that they can deliver on these services. today, i hear the hard stuff as well as hear where we got it right. none of this could have been done without their work. i'm just really grateful for it. >> chair borden: thank you to you and the entire team for being so nimble and rethinking things as was needed throughout the pandemic. it's been really critical and people are getting to where they need to go. that's just everything. so thank you for your dedication and your entire team for their tireless efforts. with that, our first question is

from director lai. >> director lai: thank you. thank you so much for your tireless work on all of this. i know you gone through so many iteration of service planning. obviously balancing the entire city's needs under limited resources is challenging to say the least. other feedback that i heard from the community, obviously little disappointing that our initial intended service restoration in the winter is now bumped to basically q2. of course, we could not have predicted the exact staffing impacts from the vaccine mandates and when we first started looking at this 10%

service increase, vaccine mandates have not been in place yet. just really appreciate your flexibility and innovation and thinking about right now where we are in this point in time the resources that we have and what you're currently proposing and essentially staggering the service so we can actually get back on as much of the restoration as we can as early as we can. even if the second part of it is little bit delayed more into q2. we'll giving out vote on the service changes. you are intending to come back to us, i think, next hearing with how the two will be

implemented? >> thank you for that clarification, we are just now getting enough precision in terms of the impacts of the vaccine requirement and where we're going to be with operator staffing, to be able to say we need to do this in two parts. staff need a couple more weeks to look at the best way to do that. it would be very helpful if you all feel strongly about things that you like to see in the first batch to share that today. we'll bring our overall recommended approach for input december 21st. >> director lai: thank you for that clarification. with that indication, i will ask

question in particular to the ax and bx. which i staunchly advocating for us to restore as soon as possible. it is one of those lines that clearly aligns with our equity values services, the community like an outer mission and chinatown that that depends on it. my question there, obviously, i think that it would be -- behoove us to target our first restoration with lines that make the most impact without taking up a ton of resources.

>> director lai: i'm trying to stay in the chronological order find your presentation. next question is about the 48. doofer a concept of cost the grading? >> we think it's on the order of

$150,000. >> director lai: great is that work something that we could fit into our current pipeline of various projects that we already have? >> i believe it is. we frequently ask public works, which has ongoing contracts to do this type of thing to support us. we have a number of existing routes where the buses scrape. we try to build off the pavement to be smoother. this will be similar. >> director lai: could you quickly just explain -- i think i heard you say, we are not -- staff is not proposing changes to the 35 route. could you cover what the reasons would that we're not proposing to change the route? >> the reason that we're not proposing to change the route is that we didn't see conditions at

the intersection of concern to be significantly different than the intersection, one block over. we thought it was better to try to address the concern with a traffic improvement rather than move the problem potentially. >> director lai: i know you mentioned that intersection the 21st and eureka intersection, we will study design solutions and stop signs. is staff intending to study the daylighting the corner for higher visibility? >> yes. thank you. we'll be looking at both of those treatments.

>> the title vi analysis doesn't get down quite to that microlevel of detail. it's looking more specifically at where we're making investments and where we're eliminating service. that change is still within our quarter mile service standard.

it wouldn't be from the perspective of title vi considered a route removal. we do know that there may be some folks along grandview, although it's a relatively small number of riders. we do have our paratransit system as a safety net. is the 30 train capacity is --

it's a number that we came to by doing a simulation model of the subway. we have technically savvy intern that helped us build the model using subway data. it doesn't necessarily capture challenges of our system. we're not entirely in the subway. however trains ride in the surface, whether they are well spaced or whether they are close together, this assumed it was only in the subway. we had perfect reliability. what that study looked at was where we started to see a lot of congestion when we had that kind

of perfect spacing and it was at about the 30 vehicle mark. >> director lai: i'm hearing from you, it's based on modeling. however, it's approximate? >> yes. >> director lai: i think i heard you state clearly, thank you for putting it all in perspective like all of the considerations and variables that went into studying the tunnel. i heard you say that the j is about 50% or half responsible for the tunnel congestion. meaning that the other path is really not attributal to the j entering the tunnel? >> i've been hesitant to put a percentage on it. i do think that having fewer trains and longer trains is the

largest contributing factor. when things go wrong, they are less likely to go really wrong. which is what we were seeing day in and day out pre-covid. >> director lai: i heard you mention, significant part of the prior congestion and slow down that we see in the tunnel is related to essentially the old trains or some of the improvements that you worked on during the pandemic. those positive factors hasn't been permanently realized.

>> lot of the subway infrastructure is less reliable overtime. not more reliable. we were able to buy ourselves some time. i guess that's how i would put it during the closure. >> director lai: you and your team has been doing such an amazing job.

the fact that you've been able to create some net permanent improvements over the system is already big success. thank you, chair. thank you. we'll move on to director heminger. >> director heminger: thank you, madam claire. i got quite a bit to say about the j church. i think we'll hear quite few people say what they think about the j church first. i'm happy to wait on that. i did want to make one overall comment on the whole exercise sort of lament what i called a