>> chair borden: meeting of the san francisco municipal transportation board of directors. please call the roll. [ roll call ] we are anticipating the attendance of director yekutiel. director hinze is not expected today. we just admitted director yekutiel. he's present. you have a forum. >> chair borden: next item. >> clerk: announcement of prohibition producing devices during the meeting. we have no announcement. item 4, approval of minutes for the december 21, 2021 regular meeting. members of the public who wish

to make public comment on the minutes phone number to use is (888)808-6929 access code is 9961164. to address the board, dial 1, 0. >> chair borden: are there any additions to the minutes? i will open up to public comment. this is time for members of the public to comment on the approval of the december 21st regular meeting minute. that will approving the actual text in the minutes. moderators, any callers on the line? first speaker. >> caller: i'm sorry. can you hear me? >> chair borden: are you calling about the minutes from the december 21, 2021 meeting?

[ indiscernible ] >> chair borden: we go in numerical order. next speaker. >> caller: this is david pilpel. happy new year. minor edits to the minutes starting on page 3 after i spoke the next speaker is listed michael spizner. on page 4, at the top, the

comment of david alexander, it would read better david aleksander expressed concern over vocal minority opposition two slow lake street, rather than opposition of. also on that same page under item 9 public comment, it's optional. i think two lines members of the public may address the board -- i'm not sure if those are needed in the minutes. they are appropriate in the agenda. not sure they are needed in the minutes. on page 5 after barry toronto, i believe the speaker was marcelo fonseca for those speakers that were taxi drivers, i assumed that the taxi staff can verify their names and spelling.

many of them seem to be known people. on page 7, on my public comment, it would read better to discuss transportation funding and anticipates opposition sales tax measure and other measures from those unhappy with the sfmta. same concept but changing one word. i think that's it on the minutes. i think the minutes are great and thank you for listening. >> chair borden: thank you mr. pilpel. are there any any additional callers? with that, we'll close public comment. is there a motion? >> so moved. >> seconded. >> chair borden: please call the

roll. >> clerk: on the motion to approve the minutes. [roll call vote]. the minutes are approved. >> chair borden: next item. >> clerk: item 5, communications. >> chair borden: we are in the middle of the omicron variant. which means that due to covid-19, health emergency with this meeting being held virtually with all members and staff and public, this meeting is teleconference. our note for this meeting on our web page, we asked the public to participate remotely by writing on the board or leaving a voice mail message. if you have done that, we have received these comments. we appreciate that. we continue to urge members of the public to reach out to us. you can write us at m.t.a. board at sfmta.com.

if you attended the meetings or have not attended, you may be aware that technology is challenging. because we have multiple systems that connect with each other, there can be a problem when we lose the phone line. we will stop and pause the meeting to make sure it's reestablished. we will make sure members of the public is available to participate in this meeting. we ask for your patience when such issues do arise. i i want to thank everybody who is behind the scenes to make this meeting happen. turn it over to secretary silva to make her comments. >> clerk: this meeting is televised by sfgov tv. for those watching the live stream, there's a time lag between the actual meeting and what members of the public are seeing on sfgov tv. if you're watching and you wish to comment on an item, please call the phone line when the item is called. for members of the public who wish to make comment, the phone

number is (888)808-6929, access 9961164. to address the board, dial 1-0. make sure you're in a quiet location that you mute any tv or computers streaming the meeting. you will have two minutes to provide public comment. i will announce a 30 second warning and when time is up. item 6, introduction of new or unfinished business by board members. the election of the sfmta board chair and vice chair pursuant to your rules of order. at this time, i like to ask for nominations for the position of the chair. >> chair borden: director eaken? >> vice chair eaken: i like to nominate chair borden to continue as chair. i think she deserves that

privilege for all of the hours she has spent so gracefully presiding over the microsoft teams meeting. i will happily nominate her. >> chair borden: i accept the nomination. any additional nominations? seeing none. we'll have to open up to public comment before we vote on it. for members of the pub, this is the opportunity to comment on item number 6. introduction of new or unfinished business by board members which is election of sfmta board chair and vice chair. if you like to make a comment, you may do so at this time. with that, we'll close public comment. can you please call the roll. >> clerk: on motion to elect gwyneth borden as chair.

[roll call vote] thank you. that motion passes. moving on to the election of the vice chair. >> i nominate amanda to continue as vice chair. >> chair borden: director heminger like to second? are there any other nominees for vice chair? this is time the members of the public to comment on item number 6 election of the vice chair for sfmta board of directors.

if you like to make a comment, please 1, 0 to speak. are there any callers on the line? with that, we will close public comment. secretary silva, please call the roll. >> clerk: on motion to elect amanda eakened as a vice chair. [roll call vote] thank you. that motion passes. congratulations. >> chair borden: thank you all, everyone for your vote of confidence for another year. hoping this year will be better than last year. hopefully we will all return to meeting in public. i'm also very excited about numerous projects that should be coming online this year. i'm excited for welcoming people

back to muni and to enjoy all the new projects and activities that are going to make our city vibrant as we reopen and people return to office and omicron become distant future. are there any other -- director eaken did you want to make any comments? i see that director yekutiel has his hand up. >> director yekutiel: i wanted to say how glad i am to 7 on that the board under your leadership. it's been an honor. it's been mentioned. we served in this capacity in a time of extreme crises. that is where true leadership is shown. i want to commend fiver other

colleagues here in particular, chair borden. your steadfast, calm, leadership under these very high pressure times dealing with the once a century agency. i will take any other public of commission in san francisco for team sfmta. we've consistently shown professionalism, hard working, contributions. i'm very proud. may be who aren't as proud, i am particularly proud to serve on under your leadership. thank you for continuing to want to serve. >> chair borden: thank you. director eaken? >> vice chair eaken: i want to elevate one principle which is the idea of continuous improvement i'm very excited to. we have tried to make some

tweaks in terms of how we do business. hopefully make things flow smoothly this year. i want to really welcome additional thoughts, creative input just in terms of how we can make the board meetings better for you. we're working for you and with you to make this thoughtful. >> chair borden: thank you. directors, are there any other new unfinished business by board members? seeing none, i will open up to public comment one more time. since there was comment on new unfinished business by board members. are there any callers on the line for new and unfinished business by board members?

we will close public comment and next item. >> clerk: item 7, the director's report. >> chair borden: welcome back director tumlin. >> director tumlin: thank you. as usual, we continue to get lot of work done over late december and early january. i got a lot to cover. i want to stop for a moment and acknowledge that yesterday was the holiday which we celebrate dr. martin luther king jr. in -- february is black history month. access to public francis has tran -- transithas been a key f.

even if far back as 1863, here in san francisco senator brown -- charlotte brown sued the san francisco omnibus railroad company multiple times from rejecting her. she ultimately won her case against their racist policies from refusing to serve black people. california had at least legally desegregated transit in the late 19th century. in an essay that was published after his death, martin luther king jr. described public transit as a genuine civil rights issue. it determines whether any community connect us to jobs and other issues. having equitable transit policies is crucial to achieving

racial justice. here in san francisco, we haven't obtained that goal. we are commited to dis mantle systems that stood in the way of racial equity. i want to bring up a detector who can give you update on the impacts of the omicron surge. >> good afternoon. as the region is experiencing a surge in covid cases, the sfmta has been experiencing a record number of staff who are staying home from work or who are quarantining. within the last 10 days, since january 8th, we've had 173 staff members test positive for covid, 72 of whom are transit operators. that number doesn't include staff that is either awaiting a

test, staff who is quarantining because of a close contact or staff that is taking care of sick family members or covering unexpected child care requirements. this is really hit us across the agency. we have 13 facilities right now which are meeting cal osha's definition of an outbreak. i know an outbreak is a very scary word. i think thank virus movies for that. it means three or more employees at the same work site and shift testing positive. even if those cases have obvious other sources of cause. we are providing testing options as well as enhanced masking and

spacing at those locations. we're fortunate that our staff is vaccinated and because one of the things that osha is looking at is if any of our cases are resulting in hospitalizations or fatalities which we've been blessed to not have experienced recently. more than anything, i want to take this time to thank the employees for getting vaccinated and for continuing to be calm, be supportive of one another to be compassionate with each other and with our riding public. we are monitoring staffing levels on a daily basis and managing service impacts. right now, we're seeing about 10

to 15% of our transit service is not going out and we're doing our best to spread those impacts. twitter account is the best place to get live information. we're also using our realtime e-mail and text messaging. we strongly encourage the public to sign up for those features. appreciate everybody across the city who's sticking with us during this difficult time and expressing lot of gratitude for our department operations, staff and our human resources staff who are doing an unprecedented amount of contact tracing to keep everybody safe and support us through this difficult time. >> director tumlin: moving on.

i want to talk about our efforts in celebrating lunar new year. the sfmta recognizes that the lunar new year is one of the most important tradition chinese holidays. separated worldwide. this year lead up and throughout the month of february. sfmta is looking forward to supporting the mobility and security need of san francisco's api community. as we celebrate the year of the tiger. we're grateful to director lai who worked with us to develop an approach that addresses mobility and safety concerns raised by a.p.i. stakeholders. we are currently experiencing pretty significant service gaps system wide as a result of omicron. in order to minimize crowding and wait times on routes serving chinatown during this important time of the year, we will be providing supplemental service on the bay shore and on the 30

stockton between caltrain and north point. we expect this service increment will smooth out service gaps, rather than provide a lot of additional extra capacity. we will be running the extra service from january 25th to february 6th to correspond with the preparations for and most of the celebrations around the lunar new year holiday. in addition to that, we will be opening the golden gateway garage on weekends on a pilot basis beginning on january 29th and we'll be running throughout month of january as a test. the opening of the garage was recommended to us by community stakeholders and provide convenient access to the farmers market as well as overflow parking for chinatown. sfmta understands the importance of visibility as part of addressing safety for the a.p.i. community. we found success in using our fair inspector deployment

strategy pairing high incident lines with low incident lines. using this approach for the month of february will be focusing on both high and low incident lines to remain a.p.i. and chinatown roots for the whole month of february including one california, 8 and 9 and the 45. the agency is also going to be celebrating the a.p.i. community. we're looking forward to participating in the chinese new year parade on february to 19th. we'll using this as an opportunity to connect with the community and answer questions the public may have about the central subway projects, muni service restoration and other needs. in addition to a role in supporting the parade's traffic and transit reroutes the sfmta is sponsoring public service announcement ads via all of our social channels. reminding people of the event

and highlighting safety awareness. additionally, we will invite staff to ride in the parade which will be outfitted with commemorative banners. finally, we want to appreciate that director lai has created a bilingual new year's greeting for all of our staff as well as for our ongoing guidance to make sure our initiative next month are proactive and culturally appropriate. thank you so much director, lai. next up we have an update from our chief people officer, kimberly ackerman on staffing. are you available? >> jeff, i'm going to cut in to give kim a quick intro. kim is going to be sharing with you i think, probably the

biggest challenge our agency is facing as we think about all of our strategic goals and how we continue to meet the needs in san francisco. the hiring challenges that we're facing range from things that are small and are controlled to the great resignation that we're seeing nationally and worldwide. at the end of the day, the way our customers feel it that they don't have the bus when they expected to or the line is longer at the customer service center or the parking control officer coming out to clear their driveway is taking longer. there's no part of our agency that is not being impacted by this. there are no easy fixes to these

problems but, i'm so grateful that we have kim ackerman and a really innovative team that she put together to support her on these challenges. her and i are meeting formally, twice a week and informally almost every day to move this work forward. we wanted to get it in front of the board so that you all are tracking this closely and you can also be kind of at the forefront of information as it evolves. >> thank you so much. good afternoon everyone. as julie mentioned, we really appreciate this opportunity to give you all a hiring update and talk about our challenges that we have.

i want to talk about what those challenges are, vacancies, how covid has impacted all of us, how it impacted our attrition rates, nationally what is happening in labor force and how it impacts us. also our internal challenges. we want to end talking about our hiring initiatives in terms of i heard mentioned at the beginning about continuous improvement. that's important to us and the hr division to really talk about what are we going to do moving forward and how can we make it better. i want to put it in context. this slide has lot of data information.

we have 5999 active employees. that represents breakdown division by employees. 70% of our employees are transient employees and 19% are street. we have the smaller breakdowns. other categories all of the similar departments and hr which represents 1% of total employee population. another really important metric is the very top the hr employee ratio. even two or three years when i first started and came here, our employee ratio was one hr person to 92 employees. we are making a lot of progress. debt ratio is 1 to 72. we're working to fill our hr

depth. just future hiring, the number everyone wants to know is how many positions do we have to fill. currently there's 772 open positions and 280 operator positions that we have to fill for this year. so far this year in terms of the beginning of the fiscal year, this is about six months, we hired 349 employees. what's interesting is, if you look at the box below that number, it talks about percentage internal promotions. we continued to promote employees internally significantly. you can see from 19-20 and 20-21, we're at 40% employee rate. which is fantastic. it shows high level commitment to our employee and provide a

pathway for them. that's something we're proud of. average tenure is 11.4 years. we have 772 positions to fill. of those, we have 503 are being processed of the requisition in hr. we have currently 409 that are currently in recruitment process. sorry, 503 that has been sent to hr to be processed. our vacancy rate is at 15%. that is one challenge for us. the next challenge it has to do

with our operators. this slide i'm going to turn it over to julie to speak to you about our operator availability versus our is demand. >> the green line here, shows what we estimate as needing for operators based on our current service expansion plan. the blue line is our hiring rate with promotions and retirement included in it. you can see that we are keeping those two lines very close together through march. there will be a period where we're staffing up to be able to add the additional service in june. then you'll see where the green line actually extends over the blue line. which is not what we want to see

because that puts us back in a position of missing service. we are going to continue to monitor that. we're hoping that some of the short-term leave that has relatedly to covid surges comes down. we will also do some optimizing of the june proposal. our goal is to continue to have those lines be as close as possible. i wish we could have the blue line increase faster. that's already assuming classes of 42 starting in february. which is not something that we have previously been able to deliver. we started our first large class in january. we hoped it will be 40 students. we were able to recruit 31. that immediately signaled to kim's team that we needed to revisit how we did our operator

solicitation. we have a list that shows almost 200 people that have met all of the qualifications to join the sfmta but people are not choosing to take the job at this time. we think the biggest issue has to do with the fact that the too much time has passed for when people indicated they wanted to do the work. we're changing how we create that list and we can talk about it little more in the question and answer period. it allow there to be a much shorter time when people try to join the m.t.a. and we're able to bring them on. we're hoping we can continue to keep up with the pace of the blue line and if we run into issues we'll continue to keep this board informed.

>> thank you. next slide please. our second hiring challenge, it's been covid-19. i think when you look down on this slide, you look at the numbers. we're actually pretty fortunate in that we are mostly all of our employees are vaccinated and i'm proud to say we have the highest vaccination record of any transit system. it's pretty amazing. even the number here, the 74 is fairly low. because it hasn't impacted us in other ways as well. that is really our team ability to pivot and react to covid because we have set number of staffing and hiring teams have been required to pull hr work.

to pivot to respond to the city vaccination policy as well as all of the other things that we have implemented. we have hr teams that is involved calling close contacts and calling positive. we've been inputting data in the system for employees in terms of vaccination data. we really had to be able to pivot and react to that. which i'm proud of. that does impact our ability to perform other hr duties as well. we've had employees through hr staff had to work a lot of weekends and late nights as well as other members, etcetera. another challenge for us has been in terms of separation rates. our attrition has challenged us. right now, you can see that this chart to the left, which shows the separation, there are four categories. there's a volunteer,

involuntary, retirement and the death. the blue is shows fy 19-20. the gold color is 20 to-21. the pink color is 21-22. our numbers are still low. we're still six months in. retirement last year, we had 169. which is little bit higher than previous years. we have e13% of our employees eligible for retirement. that really has something to do with our demographics. we have a higher age population, which is pretty common in transit who are eligible for retirement. that can impact our hiring challenges. two other areas that impacts our

hiring challenges. is national workforce changes. everyone read about how the job market really changed due to covid. you have millennials, they're they are no looking for jobs for life. they're looking for different recruitments. hay, we offer remote working jobs. that's what people are looking for. they can live in texas but have a job that may be centered in california or out of sister -- somewhere else even in boston. it's really important in terms of national workforce. we had lot of internal challenges. again, i like that julie said there's some minor things. one is the civil service hiring

process. does it support the speed and volume required for a transit system. that's been a challenge for us. we're looking for ways that we can talk about continuous improvement and things that we can do and still work within the civil service process. to be a efficient hiring agency as well as to be able to respond in a quicker way. those are things we're continuing to do this year. julie mentioned with the transit operators that we have worked to see how we can really scrutinize that process, make it more efficient, speed it up as well as to be able to get those applicants when we need them. not a year ago -- couple of other things that i want to mention, we had about 13 months where we didn't have exams because of covid. the city has also transitioned to smart recruiters.

that helped our recruitment for three months. we have about 15 or 16 months that impacted our hiring and exams and ability to do so. couple of things that i want to mention high level, we have increased our hr staffing to be able to support transit. we've gone from eight now. as i mentioned, we've looked at

our operator hiring process. we will continue opivot to make sure we can respond to the agency's need. we will do that in many ways. we are continuing to have a recruiters on our staff. we want to build and expand on our apprenticeship program for our trade position. that's the area where we're really vulnerable. not only have we seen the

reduction in applications for those positions and candidates on the list. there's a challenge for us in terms of the number of employees who actually are retiring age age may potentially retire. it's really important that we invest and commit in this apprenticeship program. it's a way to build talent within those positions. we'll continue to look at other ways. we appreciate the support for incentives and expansion of hiring bonuses for particular positions. we look at where those incentive programs may be helpful in terms of recruitment for other difficult hard to fill

positions. we will continue to do things which we said we will do like reviewing our qualifications, making sure that we're reducing barriers for applicants. we are ensuring promotional opportunities. we'll continue to increase our outreach at job fairs and work with hr for continuous recruitment as well. that is it for my update. i appreciate this opportunity. we appreciate the opportunity to continue to be better and to move forward. >> director tumlin: we're not yet done. unless you want to pause for questions. >> chair borden: i think we'll pause. directors, do you have questions? i know i have a few.

one, people stay on the list for a long time. how long people on the list. when we come back to them, do we find out where they went? do they go to another city agency. >> great question. we started that list probably couple of years ago. we thought we had 700 candidates on it. what end up happening, the staff reached out to those candidates. they do it if via phone or mail to find out their interest. often times what we find out is that they're not responding because the time lapsed. they are no longer interested. other really important thing, they lost their credentials. they had learners permit. now it's lapsed. now they're not interested. we do our best to try to find

out detail so we can use that information to help us in the future moving forward. sometimes we don't get responses either. >> chair borden: do we know how long on average people are contacted? for some it's a few years. it depends how long the list is and how large the list are. with our operator list, we had one time, 700 candidates. it depends on how large they are. >> chair borden: it will be helpful to know for the 700 candidates, the first person on the list, did they get contacted the next day? i wanted to find out what that might be. if not, we should keep track of that. other two questions, you mentioned in involuntary. i wasn't sure what that meant? involuntary separations? >> thank you for asking.

voluntary -- involuntary would be anybody who wish to leave through a disciplinary termination or something. >> chair borden: it's not a forced retirement situation typically. [ indiscernible ] i see director lai and heminger have questions. >> director lai: thank you. thank you for giving this update. certainly been asking and wondering how we're doing with our hiring. lot of our agency bottlenecks essentially stem from our operator and staffing resource challenges in general. could you go over, again, measuring from last year? you were successful filling quite a few hundred positions. what was our gap or our deficit last year? i want to understand how well we

did last year in terms of hiring overall? >> you asking for how many we filled and how many vacancies we had? i don't have last year's data in front of me. if anything, i would say the vacancies from similar. number of positions we hired for last year was fairly low. we'll be on pace this year for the year before that. last year we were embroiled in covid. we didn't have the list. we didn't have any exams for 13 months. we had positions on budget hold. last year was really tough. >> director lai: obviously, i think from all accounts in hiring market right now, it's

quite competitive and it's difficult to actually hire generally across sectors now. is 15% vacancy, how far away would you consider being comfortable range of vacancy? >> it's not for us to be in single digit. that would be ideal. we have a long way to go. when you look at the 15%, it's a lot. that's a lot of positions for us. i think one of the things, too, promotions are great. it means we have to hire twice. if i have a position to fill and six people in hr who received promotions. now i have to go through the hiring process to back fill

their positions too. that's something that we have to keep in mind too. it does kind of overlap or unpack in terms of our ability to be able to really impact that vacancy number immediately. >> director lai: i think i heard it mentioned in your presentation, i know that director mentioned that also in our last operator training, we were able to get to 30 that we had actually could have trained additional operators. this is going to become like a compounded issue if we don't hire sufficiently now for the next couple of months. we're con trained in terms of bringing back additional service like restoring services in the entire agency. i heard you mention changing some of our practices with the list and that's fantastic. in your opinion, is there other things this we should be doing

like attract more -- what else can we do to make sure that we're filling every single seat that's available in our training classes? >> great question. thank you. what we're doing now is getting ready the examination for the operators. what we're doing, we posted another opening for our operators. we're sending those applicants a questionnaire and they would have to respond to. that's going to be -- that gives us the ability to be able to react quickly. we don't have to wait on the exam or the scores. we'll go by those particular questions and how they responded. that's going to help us in terms of filling the class quicker. we know that we lose a few in the class. one of the things that julie and i have been discussing, we're

going to overfill. let's say we need 42, if we can get 46, we're going to hire all 46. we know that we're going to lose some. that's important to make sure seats are filled. our goal is to be able to get more than the number even if it's plus 4 or 5. >> director lai: that's great. shooting for higher is appreciated in this situation. could you talk a little bit about our diversity goals in your hiring. i know we have full racial equity lens. for your purposes. i would like an understanding how we're doing with our gender and ethnic diversity on our hiring. how we'll focus on nap we discussed previously before,

there's still quite a strong gender and ethnic lack of diversity across our job types. particularly in operators, there's a huge gender gap even in our engineers team. could you talk about that. how did we do last year? are we moving closer to our goals? >> one of the things that would be beneficial too is to have -- [ indiscernible ] i no our officers -- i will say generally, one of the things we're doing is working really hard with orei to make sure we're achieving our objectives. in terms increasing our diversity and not because of ethnicity but in terms of gender, which is really

important. there are many classifications where you don't have that diversity. i can't say it's one thing, it's multiple things. one thing that the team is working hard is look at the m. q.s. do we have positions that factor some people out when we know they will be qualified? that sounds pretty easy but it's a tedious process. we are working on that. which i think is really helpful. the other thing that i mentioned in the presentation, which is going to help us is our outreach efforts. we have hired an outreach coordinator which is going to work with the orei.

i would say that yes, we definitely have some things in place that we'll move forward to help improve that. i think that's extremely important. >> director lai: thank you so much. i want to make one last comment. i'm quite concerned about our hiring where we stand in general. i'm sure rest of my colleagues here are also because primarily, i feel like often, our dialogue and response that we get on the service side of the conversation, we don't have enough operators. not just operators but staff and engineers to support our restoration. seems like, staff telling us it's not a money problem that we can't bring back service. it is about staffing. this is the one of the upstream

core issues that we have. i feel like we need to be attacking it with a longer urgency. if the constrain in the hr analyst like we don't have enough in the department to do this work, that seems to being like problem number one that we need to address. it's a little bit concerning to me that we're still seeing the expectation in terms of demand for staffing versus what we're projecting to have in 2022. i apologize i'm taking way too much time. i like to have more robust conversation around this. i wanted to put that out there.

thank you. >> chair borden: i would agree. we should make this a separate item next time and not under the director's report. >> director heminger: thank you. i wanted to first follow-up on the point that director lai just made. kim, you mentioned the pilot that we had approved in terms of an incentive structure to get people on board. it was a small specialized class. have we learned enough from that to know if we need to apply incentive approach or bonuses, etcetera, more broadly in the agency? >> thank you for asking that. we have one recently that we've offered a bonus and incentive to. it is a small classification group that we're working with.

i think more importantly, what we do know is that other transit systems are using incentives, bonuses, hiring bonuses, for operator positions to incentivize employees to look at their organization. i think that's really an important point. i think the other thing is, no incentive is going to work unless you can market it effectively. the other thing we're doing is to rebrand our presence in terms of improvement standpoint on our website. that will be important and we'll be able to communicate that. >> director heminger: that's a very important point you made. one other downside of having two dozen transit operators, which means we got lot of competition when we're trying to hire our folks. when we do come back, it will be helpful for you to show us what some of the other agencies are doing. i'm sure they are facing similar challenges.

it's a regional job pool. i think that will be good to see. the other question i think is lot more focused. you mentioned, kim, 74 staff are out of compliance with the vaccination policy. what has happened to them? >> great question. those employees who are not in compliance or they haven't been compliance or reasonable accommodation is denied, they are on administrative a pay as they go through their due process. depending on what union they have, they have to a hearing. they going through that due process. once due process is concluded, they are sent release letters. >> director heminger: can you give us a sense where those 74 folks are in that process? the deadline as i recall, few months ago.

>> november 1. we have about 40 or 45 that are right now actively in the grievance process. they are definitely going through those steps. >> director heminger: thank you very much. >> chair borden: there any other questions by directors? if not, we're going to open up to public comment. this is the time for members of the public who are on the line, we are in the middle of director's report. that's the item that we're on right now. we'll take a pause because ms. ackerman gave quite a lengthy report on our hiring. we'll take public comment on all the things that mentioned by julie and jeff and ms. ackerman in the director's report. we'll take a second public comment to address those items. if you're on the line and you like to comment what you just

heard, please press 1, 0. are there any callers on the line? is there an issue with the line by chance? >> clerk: it does appear muted. caroline, can you try to unmute yourself by pressing star 5 please? we do not hear david at this time. i see that you raised your hand. please try star 6.

>> caller: this is david pilpel. >> chair borden: can you hear us? mr. pilpel, can you hear us? seems like there's a problem. he cannot hear us >> clerk: i apologize, i suggest we take a quick recess. >> caller: can you hear me now? >> there's a problem about the phone line now if you're on the line. >> clerk: i suggest taking a quick recess to rebridge the phone line. >> chair borden: we'll take a 5 minute recess. it's 2:01.

>> chair borden: january 18th meeting is resuming. we are own item 7, which is director's report. we just are in the mill of -- middle of that item. we just completed a presentation from director ackerman about our hiring. if you have comments on those items now is your time to speak. please press 1, 0. first caller. >> caller: can you hear me now? >> chair borden: yes we can. >> caller: going to my notes. on this portion of item 7 the director's report. julie did not mention it in her

report, i assumed that the muni general signup is still effective this saturday, januar. i understand that there may be shortages with the number of operators and that may lead to not all service being out there. i want to confirm that the general signup is still going into effect this saturday. on the human resources hiring update, i'm requesting that you post the presentation that ms. ackerman gave as a pdf on the website for today's meeting. there was some interesting info in there. but the presentation is not currently on the website. it will be helpful to the public at least to me, to see the presentation as a pdf. as the budget process continues, i absolutely support keeping needed positions whether they are filled or vacant in the budget. i would strongly encourage the staff and i hope that jonathan

and friends are listening to delete vacant positions that are unneeded and are unlikely to be filled. there may be position substitutions, etcetera. right sizing the budget to those positions that continue to be needed general whether filled or vacant is useful and taking out those positions that are vacant won't be filled also reducing the amount of salary savings. i think it would be great. finally, p.u.c. staff, have also discussed civil service hiring challenges recently. if there are fixes that can be made to civil service or through d.h.r. coordinating those changes with other large departments will be great and it will be nice to hear about that the next time that's an update on human resources. >> chair borden: thank you.

next speaker please. next speaker please? hello? are there additional callers on the line? >> caller: hi, i got the notification that your line is unmuted. hopefully you can hear what i'm saying. >> chair borden: we can. >> caller: that's wonderful. i'm a long time cab driver. i will reserve my comment for item 9. under the director's report in general topic surviving omicron, i heard that as a aheading. i think that, cab drivers and

muni operators we're dealing with passengers that don't have masks still. i think as a cab driving has gotten slow, you don't want to turn down fare. i carry bunch of masks with me. if we can add 50 cents per mask charge to the passengers. that will be great. for the muni operators why not do that as well. that will be something that i think be appropriate. you can cut off my line. >> chair borden: next speaker please. seem like someone was

about to speak. i want to make sure. is there a speaker on the line trying to speak and may have gotten cut off? >> caller: can you hear me? >> chair borden: yes, we can. >> caller: good afternoon. we are really desperate. i don't see any benefit for us.

we are suffering badly. you see lot of people we are thinking foreclosing. we have no other income source to protect the medallion. you help us out and do something to protect. we've been working for many years. i know you value our service and city. i wish you can hire us hourly driver and we can drive and do something. >> chair borden: thank you very much. just reminder, we are on the director's report. what we're discussing from the director's report is vision zero update and human resources

hiring update. if you have specific comments to that, we have taxi, you can comment general public comment and also under the changes later that affects taxis related to transit operations. at this time, if you have a comment on the director's report, the items we've just addressed, you may press 1, 0. otherwise, we can hear from you later. are there additional callers on the line? >> caller: you indicated in your report that 98% of your staff is fully vaccinated. if this is the case, why is there such an unavailability of

drivers? i like to see the connection between that statistic and the actual availability of drivers in the workforce? thank you. >> chair borden: thank you. are there additional callers? >> caller: hello >> chair borden: are you hear to comment on the director's report? we're talking about the hiring update for sfmta staff and vision zero. did you have a comment on that specifically? if you want to comment on another item, look at the agenda, the items are numbered. you can comment on those items that are relevant to those numbers. >> caller: my question is about the taxi medallion.

>> chair borden: we're not discussing that item now. if you want to comment on that under general public comment. it's coming up shortly. we have rest of the director's report, c.a.c. report and general public comment, which is item 9. >> caller: hello. i'm here to share with you my disappointment with slow street process. >> chair borden: i'm sorry.

>> caller: this is about vision zero. thank you. vision zero identifies garry boulevard and california street and park presidio and three of dangerous street. your closure of lake street has negative impact. the accident rates on geary despite a decline in accident rates city wide has gone up. it has been more deadly. it taken 14 months to accumulate three deaths on this street. this is all during the closure of lake, which has pushed more traffic on to these three streets that are san francisco's

most dangerous. your slow street closure policy is directly and negatively impacting your vision zero policy. there's something wrong here. you done the traffic impact study from california street out, which means if you looking at it from the perspective of california street, traffic and incidents on lake gone down. lake is closed. if you look at the traffic from advantage the lake street, the street that are adjacent to it is negatively impacted. we're not seeing those reports. any intelligent person would understand this. it's not transparent. it's dishonest. you guys are negatively impacting our community with illegal street closures. you're negatively impacting our lives which are written out in

actual accidents and deaths from the same data through transbay. that's all i have to say. >> chair borden: thank you. we'll close public comment. if there's additional comment which we're discussing the director's report. if you have slow streets that should be under general public comment. are there any additional callers? we will close public comment and return to the rest of the director's report. >> director tumlin: thank you. i have five additional items from the director's report. next up is vision zero, on january 5th there was a fatality on geary at laguna. the 25 miles per hour senior zone signs were posted and visible. they have a work order to

restore lighting on laguna. we've also been making substantial progress on two of our major quick build projects for vision zero. one of those from south van ness. that work as well is under way. we're ready to get started on the central embarcadero quick build. it takes the two-way protected bike way that we have installed from folsom to mission and extend that northward from mission to broadway. we're expecting to start construction on that either on next month or in march.

we're also getting ready to begin construction on the next phase of the 16th street improvement project. as you know, back in 2016, the sfmta board approved substantial changes to 16th street from church all the way to embarcadero. that resulted in shifting the 22 fillmore line on to 16th street to better serve mission bay. the project includes transit only lanes in a variety of street tree, utility work and transit priority treatments along the entire length of the corridor along with pedestrian safety improvement. first phase which was between third street and patrero.

we'll be working closely with neighbors and merchants throughout the corridor. there's a tremendous amount of information available on the project as sfmta.com/16th street. we'll be hosting a preconstruction virtual meeting on february 16th. next topic is text before tow. which got media attention. it's the first program of its kind. we're grateful to director yekutiel for pressing us on this as well as to several members of various parts of our team who figured out how to make it work. you can receive a text message notification that their vehicle has been noticed for towing.

this allows people to get out and quickly move their car. it applies only to cars that are parked for over 72 hours that are blocking driveways that are in construction zones. they represents about 27% of all vehicles towed in 2020. it's not a guarantee that you'll have enough time to get your car out of the way. what it does, it gives you a heads up that the tow truck is on its way. if you can get there before the tow trucker arrives, all you end up with is the parking citation and you don't end up having car towed. something we want to avoid having cars towed is very expensive to the sfmta. we do not make any money off it. we want you to do is move your car out of the way. please do enroll. again, the website with all the details where you can sign up is

sfmta.com/textbeforetow. one word. next topic next sfmta board workshop. as you know, we're hosting two days of half day virtual workshops in february 1st and 2nd. focus on our budget. this is particularly interesting budget year as you know, our fortune has changed dramatically. we had been looking at significant layoffs just about a year ago and thanks to strong support from the federal government and better than expected performance by our pension fund and the city's general fund. we're now actually in the short-term, doing okay. that said, we have a massive structural deficit and we need your strategic help thinking through how much of one-time funding do we spend now. how much risk we're willing to take in getting to the ballot to

address our structural deficit as well as to get the necessary operating resources that we need to deliver the kind of transportation services that san francisco needs. we will be developing lots and lots of supportive material for this workshop. we're going to be putting them up the website as they become available. so you'll have time to review and so that the public will have time to review. we will expect good deal of pub -- public comment. finally, if secretary silva can bring up the slide on the muni art project. as you also know, every year, we tend to have a partnership between the sfmta, san francisco beautiful and the poetry society of america in order to promote art on our muni bus and buses. this year's theme is streets of san francisco. for the first time instead of featuring the work of five local poets, we're featuring the late

lawrence work. have invited local print artists to develop pictures that go along with the poems. muni art project that features local san francisco artists and poets. art work was unveiled city hall last tuesday. it's now advertise played all -- it's now displayed all over the buses. that's the end of my director's report. >> chair borden: thank you. are there any more questions or comments for the director? >> director lai: thank you chair borden. that was a lot. quickly on the text to tow. thank you so much to director yekutiel for leading in this effort and i'm glad that we're trying to find strategies to limit our own burdens that also

to provide a very good service to you. the community, just one suggestion, i did try that registration out and great that there is essentially the google translate which could allow for in language registration. the only request is if we can it's rating on this. because the conversation text message back is in english. there's no place in the registration where you can actually indicate that you would like to receive messages in another language. that would be a great feature to add. thank you for starting this effort. it would be already much appreciated by lot of the community members. >> director tumlin: thank you for that note. i will pass that along to staff. >> director yekutiel: you did mention the street van ness.

which is an opening for me to ask how we're doing getting on revenue service on time. last time i checked it was approaching march. i want to see if we're still on time with the b.r.t.? >> director tumlin: we've been builds with operation testing out on the street. we've been testing operations. tom mcguire may have the latest information about schedule start of revenue service as well as inviting our federal delegation to join us for a ribbon cutting. >> this is tom mcguire. we are aiming for a ribbon cutting in the march 2022 time frame. just couple of months away. the training is under way. >> director yekutiel: great. once the ribbon is out can, folks can board the buses and take it?

>> starting service in march, i think we can get back to you the detail what is the role and service will be like. that is currently our goal. >> director yekutiel: looking forward to taking it. i'm excited for the project to be done. i know lot of people are eyeing that strip of red tape. looking forward to all of it happening. i do want to say thank you to the -- there has been lot of attention with my name on this, the folks that did the work was the i.t. department and the sfmta sean mccormick and parking enforcement, massaging this with the parking control officers who will be on the front lines of this. dana hammonds on the budget side. it was a multidepartment effort. i want to thank veronica from your team for helping corral all the different folks who are involved in it.

thank you for the commendation and the commendation goes to the many staff that implemented it. thanks to sean and diana and victoria and all the folks in i.t. >> one of the strange unexpected effects of dealing with two years of pandemic is it has made it more common for us to do multi-agency and multi-division projects like this. the text before tow program probably couldn't have happened two years ago because we were not skilled making things happen. focus on the customer, focus on making us more efficient and working across the aisle. >> chair borden: are there any any additional -- director eaken? >> vice chair eaken: thank you so much. love the artwork.

one question on the staffing and the transit and misrun fronts. what are we doing just to over communicate about the missed runs? during the pandemic i think we shifted from realtime, like specific realtime arrival to saying, don't worry, there will be a bus within 10 minutes. we can't tell you exactly when. it's about every 10 mu minutes. now we're not able to provide that reassurance every case if we have that number of missed runs. how do we make that palatable. it's noticed. i want to understand how we're

communicating. people can tolerate a lot. they really appreciate that information. >> director tumlin: one thing we found countously is san franciscoian can tolerate significant amount of disruption. we've been trying to use our media channels. we're using our social media channels particularly our twitter feed very regularly every morning, i can certainly see where the lines that are going to be most impacted. when service is particularly bad, there are citywide text messages that go out. all of which you can sign up for

at the sfmta contact us page. i encourage all of you to use the text and e-mail distribution lists that we have that you can find at sfmta contact us. and to follow the twitter feed for live updates. >> chair borden: any other additional questions among directors? seeing none, we'll open public comment. this is public comment on the director's report only and the last five items it that were discussed. if you like to comment on the district report not on taxi issues, if there is no agenda item, item number 9 general

public comment is your time to address those issues that haven't been discussed here. with that, press 1, 0 if you're in the queue to speak to the director's report. >> caller: thank you. edward mason. regarding director's report for the budget situation. i think it will be appropriate to show the budgeted positions. we know how many active employees there are. how many employees are in workers compensation or disability and that would also provide how many vacant positions there are. regarding the hiring for recruitment of other transit agencies, and also we need to consider the trucking industry and also the demographics of the

population. b.t.a. has recruiting on their website and the yahoo! front page. they are advertising and recruiting. they have retention bonus and hiring bonus. santa cruz transit has cut their service on low ridership because of lack of employees. v.t.a. has mask dispensers on their buses. they are available. also, in years past, i heard presentations about hiring through city college. where there will be training certificates for the crafts.

i was led to believe that there was a movement of foot for operator qualifications through city college. none of this is coming back to be mentioned. there's a lot of holes in what i'm hearing. i think we need to fill those gaps in. thank you very much. >> chair borden: next speaker please. >> caller: good afternoon. this is barry toronto. happy new year, 2022. i know first meeting of the year. i want to apologize first. we did sent out an announcement to participate in general public comment. i thought our instructioners were clear. i'm sorry. i apologize for them. they got mixed up. in the meantime, i want to talk about what was covered in the

director's report about the text messaging. i think it's a wonderful idea. i wish it would cover more potential violations and tows and just the few that you have. some of them are difficult to do. at least you got to make sure you can include taxi cabs violations. the signs clearly state it. i appreciate you include it in that list. that you enforce the taxi zone violations. it's really hard. i'm getting lot of lip and lot of abuse language and behavior from the people when i call in and report a texascy -- taxi zone royal. they are not the nicest people in the world. last thing, about p.p.e. we shouldn't have to pay for them for our customers.

if they can't have a mask on, i don't take them. i will not die and get sick for the rest of my life and get this require. it's dangerous out there. now because of the expansion of the omicron variant and i appreciate it if we can go back to the m.t.a. providing some p.p.e.s. may be you can provide us with some masks to hand to passengers that don't have them. i don't make enough money these days. it's been a horrible last two weeks of working. it's causing me to not want to be in the city but work at the airport where they actually provide us with masks. may be the m.t.a. can be generous. >> chair borden: next speaker please. >> caller: hi. i'm a long-term taxi driver. under the heading of vision

zero, i believe there was a vision zero component of that report. i think wie all familiar -- we're all familiar with the crosswalk across city hall. it lights up. it has an electronic eye. it's a fantastic thing for vision zero. as far as i know, it's only ones in the city that works that way. as long time cab driver, there's one area of the city that could benefit from crosswalks just like that. it's fulton street. you got two lanes of travel in each direction. you can easily get like blocked by a car that's ahead of you to the left to the right. blocking if there's a pedestrian in the crosswalk. there are couple of crosswalks on fulton that have no traffic control device.

they are just crosswalk across live traffic. if we put light up crosswalks out there that lit up when a pedestrian crossed that threshold, i do think it would save lives. that's my comment on that. >> chair borden: thank you. next speaker please. >> caller: one concern i have is basically, m.t.a. is violating its own protocols. we supposed to sit 6-foot distance from each other on the bus. the buses are packed now. basically, they are filled to the gills. it's creating a health hazard.

i'm 82 years of age. i would prefer to sit on the bus. i'll stand in order to prevent any contraction of the covid. i'm fully vaccinated. i'm very vulnerable to catching this disease. muni has a responsibility of providing me adequate number of coaches. what they are doing is they are rotating buses. may be one day the one california will be difficult to catch. the next day, may be the 7 will be difficult to catch. it's a form of rolling blackout. basically, muni has a responsibility of fulfilling the health standards to prevent the contraction of covid. which is now in the bay area.

you really have to address this. this is your job. this is what you're paid for doing. the covid is a stress test for m.t.a. they are not doing very well. thank you. >> chair borden: next speaker please. >> caller: i'm on air? hello, can you hear me? >> chair borden: yes. [ indiscernible ]

>> caller: this is david pilpel again. two remaining items on the director's report. i appreciate the update on the 16th street project. i did go to that website in the meantime. it's got some useful background. it does not make reference to the meeting director tumlin discuss the on february 16th.

nor does it mention a project manager. it has e-mail address and phone number. it did suggest to me, though, that there really ought to be a monthly update either to this board, to the c.a.c. on the website somewhere on which plans, programs and projects have outreach or a survey under way. there's so many things going on at the m.t.a. all day long as we all know. it's tough to keep track of them. just running some kind of short consolidated report that says, hey, lake street we're doing

meetings, 16th street is coming up, the m.m.e., these things are happening now. this other stuff, we're not currently doing outreach on muni service 2022. just something so people know what's currently out there for outreach and surveys and what projects you actually want input on. finally on the budget workshops, the second workshop on february 2nd is not specifically on the website. it will be great to post the notice for those special meetings with links to where the information will be in advance if you want the public to dig into that prior to the meeting. >> chair borden: next speaker

please. is there additional callers on the director's report only? i will remind anyone in the queue, this is not the time to talk about taxis or slow streets. we're addressing the items in the director's report. if you want to speak about those items you can speak during the general public comment. if your comment specifically about the director's report and last five minutes, please go ahead and speak. otherwise please wait until your item is called. first speaker please.

>> caller: hello. my name is victoria. i'm speaking about vision zero. even though we're late to slow street. it is about vision zero. i will be interested in more information why slow lake street in any form advances the vision zero goal of the sfmta. lake was always a very safe street with no fatalities recorded as far as back as 2014. lake has become more dangerous with the implementation of the slow street signs. pedestrian, cyclist and cars are most disrespectful to the rules. crime has gone up. i will urge you to revisit making lake street a permanent slow street until more data and proper community outreach has been made. vision zero is the goal, lake

should be the place for you to spend your time and resources. thank you very much. >> chair borden: next speaker please. we'll close public comment and move on to our next item. >> clerk: item 8, citizens advisory council report. >> chair borden: i understand mr. chen is here. >> the c.a.c. what a meet -- had a meeting on thursday to discuss. we had one resolution with the evans quick build project. it's not on your agenda for this month. my understanding it will come to the board at the next meeting in

february. the c.a.c. passed resolution supporting the project and appreciate that its most safety. requesting future improvements around lighting and more c.a.c. improvements to pass the scope of the current quick build. >> chair borden: are there any questions? we'll open up to public comment. thank you mr. chen for your services. members of the public if you like to comment on the citizen's advisory council report. press 1, 0 to put yourself in the question. that is on what mr. chen just said. are there any callers or the line? >> caller: this is david pilpel.

nothing specific on the evans avenue project, it was reported at the c.a.c. meeting, i have not heard this confirmed, i assume that it's true. daniel murphy passed away. i was very sorry to hear about that. daniel was a founding member of the c.a.c. i knew him since the late 1980s from actually the sunset community democratic club. which was formed after the election of mayor art agnos. i was involved in rescue muni. i was instrumental passing proposition e which created m.t.a. he was a founding member of the c.a.c. he did lot of political consulting work in canada. canada has lost a great political consultant. we lost a great transit supporter and great supporter of

the m.t.a. he and i did not agree. when we disagreed, we did so respectfully. we understood that we both supported the m.t.a., muni t transit and looked at things differently which is great and fine. i was very, very sad to hear about that. i would encourage the board to adjourn today's meeting in his memory. thanks. >> chair borden: thank you for being a supporter. saying you're a supporter of the sfmta. [ laughter ] >> caller: the record will reflect [ laughter ] >> chair borden: are there any additional callers on the line? >> caller: hello. i have a general comment. >> chair borden: that's item number 9 is general public comment. we're on the c.a.c. report now.

>> caller: i thought you were passed the report. >> chair borden: we're on the tsens advisory council report. in like two minutes, we'll be on the general public comment. >> caller: okay. put me beginning of the queue for that. thank you. >> chair borden: i don't have control over that. put yourself in the queue. thank you. are there any additional callers on the line? we'll close public comment. mr. chen thank you very much for your service and always delivering the work of the c.a.c. and representing their thoughts. we very much value their input that we sometimes might not happen. i look forward to seeing at our next meeting. >> thank you. >> chair borden: please call into the record the next item.

>> clerk: item 9, general public comment. >> chair borden: for all members of the general public, this is your opportunity to comment on any item like taxi medallions, like slow streets, parking ticket, any time that's not currently agendized on our calendar for today. later, we'll be discussing other items including california street, legislative agenda and those are pretty much -- bryant 19 polk street and 43 and 44th shaughnessy. if you want to address the various buses the 19, 27 and 1, those items will be later on the agenda. if you like to talk about something that's not on the agenda, this is that time. when you're on the line, press 1, 0, that puts you in the

queue. first speaker please. >> caller: hello. i have a general comment to the m.t.a. board on the slow streets. open the streets. streets are for transportation. parks are for recreation. open the streets so that we have easy transportation. we have sidewalks in san francisco. sidewalks are for pedestrian transportation. streets are for vehicular transportation. open the streets so that we have well defined boundaries for best safety operation of pedestrian transportation from vehicular

transportation. remove slow streets barriers for better safety. streets are for transportation, san francisco is a destination for the whole bay area. open the streets so we have better transportation to world-class san francisco destination. open the streets for easy transportation to recreation. open the streets for a safer, pedestrian and vehicular transportation. open the streets for better transportation san francisco destination. >> chair borden: does that complete your comment? >> caller: yes, it does. thank you. >> chair borden: next speaker

please. >> caller: hello. takes a few seconds for the computer to talk to me before it releases my mute button. i'm calling about the medallion situation. my name is brent johnson. i'm the holder of medallion 1557. i'm calling just to say, we're still calling, hoping that something can be done about the situation. we haven't heard anything about any mans from the m.t.a. what the thoughts might be. there's a group of 10 medallion holders that are meeting with the m.t.a. there's been one meeting in that regard. we're hoping to hear what the thoughts are, what the thinking of and may be a timeline. it's lean now. there's no business since new

year's week. last week on wednesday night, i went to the airport and waited four hours until the last flight landed. one person came and got a cab off that flight all the rest of the cab the went home empty after paying the airport fee. total waste of 4 1/2 hours of my night for zero money. that's how it's been for other guys too. i'm not the only story there. the streets in san francisco with devoid of any business now with lot of businesses closed. lot of the bars and restaurants and concert venues are closed because of covid. it's the worst we've seen since the first couple of weeks of march 2020. we got to do something about the cab situation right now before more defaults on the loans. it's inevitable.

guys are talking about drastic measures that we don't want to think about or go to in this conversation. thank you for your time. everybody stay safe out there. >> chair borden: thank you. next speaker please. >> caller: hi, i'm a transit rider, pedestrian, cyclist in district 5 i want to thank the agency for moving forward with the 16th street improvement. i know it's part of the director's report. i couldn't get my comment in. i want to thank the agency for continuing to open streets across san francisco to people like me who don't have cars who enjoy getting around the city on foot or on my bike or on transit. i never felt more safe with the slow streets and other programs and the great walkway being open. i want to thank the agency for

continuing the outreach to make that long-term. >> chair borden: thank you. next speaker please. >> caller: i live in district 3. i wanted to make a quick comment in support of slow streets. you might hear some motorists on the line today talking about how opening the street to cars and that streets are for cars. i want to remind everyone that streets are public financing pu. streets existed before cars. streets are not just for transportation. we need to be doubling down on the slow streets program to make these corridors better and safe. this does not mean returning

slow streets over to those who can afford to own and operate motor vehicles. i wanted to leave a quick comment to support slow streets. >> chair borden: thank you. next speaker please. >> caller: hello, directors. i'm with the san francisco taxi workers alliance. you are all aware that the medallion program has been an failure. it's been 300 closures to date. victims are not just medallion purchases. the ripples of this disaster is strangling our region. that is money out of their pockets. many drivers --

[ indiscernible ] that hurts their medallion holders and cab drivers. you allowed one segment and it hasn't worked. there's been closures since the rules has been in effect. taxi service seem to keep this failed program going. that will be a big mistake. with all the uncertainty over continued competition with uberer and lyft, the impacts of the expand and consequences on cabs, prospects of financing of medallion purchases. true value of medallion is likely to be ridiculously too low. it's time to scrap this entirely. it will be costly but the cost can be spread out over a number of years.

buy back purchase of medallions. rid us of this curse once and for all. thank you. >> chair borden: thank you mr. gruber. next speaker >> caller: hi. this is barry toronto again. happy new year again. not such a happy new year for cab drivers. it's probably been the worst january ever driven. i drove last year at this time but it wasn't so bad. expectations were lower enat cost of operating the vehicle and also paying gas was lower. not this year. it's horrible. you can't count on the airport for making all your money as you heard from previous callers who actually has a purchase

medallion. i do not want to see him lose his medallion. you want a good driver on the road urk make sure he gets to keep his medallion. not on the backs of every drivers who can't work the airport. considering the airport has been very slow. i want to say that -- i want to thank chair borden for mentioning about the macy's parking earlier meeting. i'm hoping that the message was loud and clear why allow the cars to park for free in the taxi zone in geary next to macy's. ridiculous. look at south van ness, it's become a parking lot. i think it's a mistake because that way you keep the cars off mission street. which is a major bike route. regarding the taxi medallions, i do want to see more closures. with the way the business is and the fact that it's harder to get

through the streets of san francisco and it's more dangerous, you don't have to keep cab fans clear, it's not fun to drive in san francisco any more and serve the public. you're paying it harder and harder. i beg you to help us out with that. i want to thank the parking control staff at chase center. they have made it easier for us to serve that venue. >> chair borden: next speaker please. >> caller: hello, board of directors. this is dave calling. i'm a parent in district 1. i have two small kids who take transit and bike in san francisco. i want to thank director mcguire for attending the last

slow lake m.t.a. meeting last wednesday. it was great to have them be the container for that meeting. i want to call and critique for her unbecoming professional behavior of the supervisor. it's coming for slow lake. we've seen what happened on j.f.k., it's coming to slow lake. i want to thank m.t.a. for all their amazing work. thanks. >> caller: good afternoon. this is matthew sutter. thank you for the meeting last week. at least we're finally starting to communicate.

you guys have communicated, you guys know where we stand anyway. we looking forward to future meeting. i want to talk about is -- i spoke about having a representative for the foreclosed medallions. foreclosed medallions were closed during the pandemic. they need to be represented. also, you can see the language barrier in calling in when we not supposed to. number of drivers called in at the wrong time. can you imagine us reading the contract to buy a medallion? we believe what you guys sold us, if this medallion program fails, you would give us back our principle and issue us a medallion. it failed.

scrap the sales program. if you guys feel like it's still viable down the road, then go ahead and start up a new one. in the meantime, we have suffered. the amount of interest that we have paid on these medallions is astronomical. you guys got millions and millions of dollars in paid no tax, no interest, no nothing. you can no longer afford to keep these medallions afloat. it's obvious by the way business has gone and it's not covid. it's because of you guys never regulated uber and lyft. thank you. >> caller: this is herbert, my

concern is slow streets. california streets has become congested. it's difficult to drive on the street that was formally peaceful. had less traffic. may be the motto is that, i don't know. it doesn't make much sense to have slow streets. you can have other ways preventing accidents such as speed bumps and oater things. have you consulted with the police department about this? i think they know a thing or two about traffic. this is a crazy idea. it's about the equivalent having bicyclist having access to your home. they can ride down the halls in your apartments or houses. it's not a constructive idea. it's going to create more congestion basically the turn

streets into a recreational area is unrealistic. in respect to the taxi medallion. please restore them to the taxi drivers. you have other legitimate ways to raising money other than the backs of the taxi driver who are suffering a hardship every day. thank you. >> caller: my name is mohammed, i want to thank the gentlemen who spoke on behalf of taxi medallions. everyone knows except m.t.a. was

in charge of the medallion. you guys know medallion is no value now. the program failed for six years already. nobody is buying. that means that the program is failed and the dream is going to become a nightmare for every taxi driver who had a loan. we don't want to keep dreaming because the dream is killing us. most of the drivers are having lot of stress. we work at the airport and we tried to go downtown and see if there's any business. there's nothing. nobody wants to flag a taxi or call a taxi anymore. even at the airport we get the trips around the airport. raid chering has -- ridesharing has a flat rate.

people want to take no break. they want to take a taxi for $10 or $15. passengers around the airport, think that it's part of our tip. we just charge them. we end up going home with $100 minus gas and airport fees and insurance and stuff. we'll end up just losing instead of gaining money. stop the dream and don't wait it turns into a nightmare. >> caller: my name is lisa church. when you say next speaker, we

don't get a prompt to speak for another 10 seconds. i'm calling regards to couple of things. i wanted to really thank you all for bringing us the slow streets and open streets like j.f.k. and the great highway. i know this is new to the city. i hope they remain permanent. i recognized that all of you and staff and other city departments will have to go through a lot to get us there. i hope we can move these positive forward. i'm somebody who has periodic limited mobility. i walk with aid. when i do have that, i take muni, i haven't driven in a decade. those slow streets, j.f.k. and i'm able to walk on those without any concerns of cars. people are talking about we have sidewalks. they're not in the best shape. i really appreciate those new

features in the city. i will say that we keep hearing from lot of grupps -- groups they make it city inaccessible to people with issues. i wish people would stop using the word accessibility. there are many people who have assessability issues who are not able to drive but don't want to drive. please, stop using us as your token. last thing i want to say that isn't related to sfmta. i saw lot of videos about kid bike bus to school put on by kid safe san francisco. i hope muni will get together with groups like this and start putting together streets for our kids to be able to travel safely around the city in a healthier way. i would appreciate someone getting involved with that.

thank you very much. >> caller: my name is benjamin. i'm a longtime san francisco cab driver. i think calling on behalf of the medallion buyers, i did not buy one myself. the system is so off kilterred now. $250,000 for that medallion. imagine if an uber or lyft driver had to pay $250,000. how many of them will be out there working the city? there will be like one guy with a tesla. here we are. there's labor force that's almost entirely working class immigrant people of color that bought these, that have been

completely decimated. somehow, they're still out there driving after covid, after uber and lyft taking so much of the business. we need to scrap this sales program. you see in new york, payment assistance, debt assistance to the medallion buyer. we need the same thing here. there's a movement for that across the country now. it's time to get it done. thank you for your time. >> caller: hello. i'm with the taxi workers alliance. i'm calling to talk about the

proposed reform. even though we don't know details what's in the pipeline. i like to think about the viability of the reforms that we're going with. reducing, eliminating the medallion debt is crucial. but it's not enough. the idea that someone will pay $75,000 or $50,000 to buy a taxi medallion is simply obsolete in the ages of uber and lyft. think about your place in history, jury verdict in the trial may not be the same. you will do have the opportunity to cell that. you bare some responsibility for this crises. you made no effort to assert your right for jurisdiction over uber and lyft back in 2012. you sold medallions for years

when it was obvious it was devastating driver income. end result hundreds of immigrant who are mainly people of color are trapped in debt and loans and hundreds more had their loans foreclosed losing everything they paid in. someone else said, this is not just a taxi issue, it's a a racial justice issue and immigrant justice issue. i ask you in the spirit of martin luther king jr., to do the right thing which may not be the easiest or most popular thing to do. you know in your heart medallion sales program has failed. you bear some responsibility for its failure. low income marginalized workers are paying the price. we urge you to find way to end the program for good and make those who are suffering from it whole again. thank you.

>> caller: i wanted to comment on the slow streets. i really appreciate them. i encouraged me to get rid of my car. that way i can take public transit. overall, although, we do have roads and cars and stuff, have been the slow streets not only gives it me. but also a kid, the ability to learn how to cycle different environments. i really do appreciate them.

[ indiscernible ] >> caller: hello. [ indiscernible ] i want m.t.a., please you help with assistance. thank you and have great day.

>> chair borden: thank you. >> caller: we lost 95% of taxi business. how can we pay taxi medallion

payments? we suffered. is >> caller: i'm calling about the taxi medallion. the city was giving out this medallion for free, 30 plus

years. >> caller: i have a comment and not a question. i'm trying to say -- i wonder what the general public saying about the taxi drivers. let me give you a short story. i was a driver from 1990 to 2014. then 2014 i bought a medallion.

in 2021, march, my medallion loan was foreclosed. i cannot make the payments. nobody can hire me. look at me. i can go on and go on. i'm appealing to you today -- [ indiscernible ] >> caller: this is david pilpel. sorry. i had to run down the hall. on item 9, i have not spoken on

item 9. three items. there have been a few recent online open houses. you heard earlier from david alexander on the lake street slow streets open houses. one was fairly contentionous and other was pla. there were several hundred people apparently on that open house only some of the questions we gotten to and not all of them. i would encourage there be an additional one or more open houses on lake street. i don't think all the questions have been answered. it is highly controversial. there are people strongly in support of making it permanent and those strongly opposed and probably few people in the middle. i think it's important to get as much input as you can in a reasonable way on that proposal before it moves forward.

similarly, there were few meetings with the project. those were far less well attended. i ask number of questions and made some comments and gotten follow-up from staff. those are some examples of outreach on important projects. some of which have worked better than others. i did not make any public comments on the lake street project. i may have put a question in the chat. i did not speak. when you get to items 12-14, you can call them together, please allow two minutes per speaker per item. there really are different issues on the various lines. if you call them together and allow two minute on the entire set of proposals, i think that's insufficient and might provoke a brown act or sunshine complaint. i like the new agenda format. i think it's nice. little more fresh.

it's great. thanks for listening. >> chair borden: thank you, mr. pilpel. next speaker please. >> caller: hello. i'm a taxi driver since 2004. i purchased my medallion 2012. the last eight years before the pandemic, i paid for my payment on time. we don't have no problem to pay the payment. after the pandemic, they told us to stay home because the virus. of course, nobody go outside to

make money because everybody is locked out. the bank foreclosed my medallion. this kind of attitude, cannot do the -- this is really shameful to see. i'm done with this lady. she don't even come out and speak about taxi drivers about this situation. this is really shameful. please, if you guys -- we came here every week, every month, every year. we go outside, we do protest. nobody do anything for us. this is the last time we have to listen to our voice.

somebody responsible to return our money back. i know this is not your fault. i hope you hear me. that's what i can say. have a good day. >> chair borden: thank you. are there additional callers on the line? [please stand by]

and god will find you and god will reward you from the other way around, because you know that it is very difficult for us to suffer and to have the

medallion, every month that mortgage and you say with the bills and rent. and all of these things, it is very difficult. and we are really living in a beautiful country and a country of san francisco -- but, thank you. believe me we are always worried and we're not enjoying anything in our lives because this worry is making more trouble. i am really begging you please to help us out and to take us out of this [indiscernible] and thank you so much. that's all i need to say. i appreciate it. >> clerk: thank you. next speaker, please. >> caller: you have zero questions remaining. >> clerk: so with that we will close public comment and move on to our next agenda item. >> clerk: director, consent calendar. these items are routine and they'll be voted on by a single vote unless a member of the board or the public wishes to

consider a item separately. members of the public if you want to address the board, press 1, 0, to be added to the queue and when speaking identify which item number you are speaking to item 10.1, allotting funds and to draw warrants against such funds and the following claims against the sfmta, and the 21733 street property owner, and city to receive. and item 10.2, adopting a resolution of local support for the programming of $340,760 for the transbay terminal mobility hub, providing assurances that the sfmta will comply with metropolitan transportation commission policies, and that in the case of a regional transportation improvement program project, the project and the program are included in a

local congestion management plan, or are consistent with the capital improvement program adopted pursuant to mtc's funding agreement with the countywide transportation agency. and 10.3, adopting findings under the state emergency services act, ab361, 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 at a board meeting within 30 days. >> chair borden: directors, are there any items to take from the consent calendar? seeing none we open it up for public comment. for those on the line, those are items under our consent calendar, items 10.1, tin.2, and 10.3, just read by the board of director secretary. if you have a comment you may press 1, 0, to do so. moderator, are there any callers on the line?

>> you have one question remaining. >> chair borden: first speaker. >> caller: can you hear me now? >> chair borden: yes, mr. koppel. >> caller: so i have comments on 10.2, and 10.3, and can i just address those now? >> chair borden: yes. >> excellent, okay. so on 10.2, on page 6, let me go there, page 6 on the -- one moment -- there's a whereas that i had an issue with. right. on page 6, at the bottom, the last whereas there, there's a space missing between mtc and requires. i would add that. and also this is the first that

i've heard of this project, it is nowhere on the mta website. perhaps staff could talk today or to a future meeting about this project, what it is, what it means, potential liability for mta or the city or oversight. i have no idea who the mta project manager or staff contact is. and on that, if someone could please add me to the mailing list for mail notice for the forthcoming -- meet the determination with caltran. that's on 10.2. can i move on to 10.3? >> chair borden: yes. >> on 10.3, with the staff, i have no issue with the resolution but although the staff report in the agenda item refers to the findings under the state emergency services act, i believe that is incorrect, and that this is under ab361 which amended the brown act at california government code section 54953.

so in the future, assuming this may happen again in 30 days, i would make reference to the brown act, not the state emergency services act. and, finally, the other point that i was going to make a moment ago for what it's worth, i was going to share my three brief personal goals for 2022 that may relate to the mta's work and that is to in no particular order to attempt to be more accepting of myself, others and circumstances, to be more aware, and to be more intentional in my actions. so i thought they would share that with the world. thank you for listening. >> chair borden: thank you for that -- for those comments. moderator, are there additional callers on the line? >> you have zero questions remaining. >> chair borden: so with that we close public comment and we'll have -- since we're not -- this is a consent item so no

discussion amongst us but i do think that the filling out of the 10.2, what this is, the staff people in charge, just so that the members of the public can have some insight into this project where it lives on our website, you know, things like that. >> so [indiscernible] should be available to speak to that and if not, jason and jonathan will. >> chair borden: are you on the line? okay, go ahead. >> he's running down the hallway. but let me have joel goldberg talk about the scope. this was a grant from the metropolitan transportation commission. and jason will be our project manager. but my understanding is that we're just on the cusp of this, so we're just starting the project. and this grant helps to fund the

staff time and the website and the follow-up work associated with it. so, joel, if you would like to cover the coach the grant really quick. >> sure, thank you, jonathan, thank you, board members. so typically we don't take actions like this to the board and you have have expended grants on your behalf, but when we get it from the transportation commission, they are requesting and have been for a few years that we take a look at these and make sure that we're not overextending ourselves in any way. so the resolution itself talks about our willingness to provide local match, to deliver the project on time and if there are funding shortfalls that we will make up the balance. jonathan is right, this is this is a partnership project, and it's a modest $340,000 of federal fund. and the idea is that we would make that part of the city more

enjoyable, more accessible and with bicycle racks and seating and other pedestrian amenities, and it's a temporary project that would await redevelopment when that happens in 2025 or so, a lot of this project would simply go away. but in the meantime it's a way to improve a space for multimodal access at a fairly low cost for the next few years and so not a lot of money but we could respond formally for your next meeting. and we could certainly add the members of the public to the list, but if there's any other questions i am happy to answer at this time. >> chair borden: are you the person that can be reached out to for questions? >> the project manager, sure.

>> chair borden: and if you could add his name to the list to receive the ceqa and other documents that, will be great. >> very well. >> jason hyde did just get here, do you want to add anything, jason, to what joel just said? >> hi, everyone, hi members of the board. and members ever the public. jason hyde, i'm the project manager. what i think what jonathan and joel said is a lot of the information that we have at this point and we're very early on in the process. this funding would allow us to do the planning, design, and implementation of the mobility hub. we have not yet undergone the analysis, but we will be sure to keep mr. koppel in the loop for that and, yes, at this point we do not have a project website but we will definitely be putting one together. i would be happy to share updates on the project at a future point when it's a bit

more flushed out with the board >> chair borden: great, well, thank you for that and we appreciate your work on this and it sounds exciting. it seems to me that this is so much better these days downtown i have noticed the improvements so thanks for the work on that. directors, are there -- is there a motion? >> so moved. >> seconded. >> clerk: the motion to approve the consent calendar [roll call vote] the consent calendar is approved. >> chair borden: that moves us to our regular item. >> clerk: item 11 approving the sfmta legislative program. >> chair borden: hello, ms. broken. welcome. >> just a second.

thank you. now we have the golden lights in the afternoon. let me get my shared screen feature and it's really nice to see you all. one moment here, let me pull up the presentation. there we go. all right, give it a little time here. >> chair borden: we can see the screen. >> you can? it's already loaded? cool. it is not loaded on mine. so you can see the full presentation? >> chair borden: well, we can see the first slide. >> okay. okay. so good afternoon, i'm kate broken, and joined my colleague, who is our local government affairs manager. today we are going to present a brief overview of 2021 legislative action and there was a lot of success last year, and

the proposed 2022 legistative program, which was shared with sfmta citizens' advisory committee a couple weeks ago on january 6th. we had an opportunity to have a robust discussion with the cac, which was appreciated. this program serves as our work plan for the year ahead, with the board of supervisors, as well as state and federal legislatures. as you all know, it is not intended to anticipate every possible issue, but serves as a guide for engagement in the months ahead. so starting with the brief look back at the first year of the current two-year state legislative session, covid relief and vision zero were the primary focus, guided by san francisco's vision zero action strategies, transformative policy agenda, we focused on both automated speed enforcement. with support from san francisco citizens who i will tell you that showed up really well at

our hearings, even though they were virtual -- we had a lot of strong representation -- advocacy groups such as walk s.f. and the bicycle coalition and the families first streets and other cities in california, we were successful in passing legislation, granting cities flexibility on speed limit settings, ab43 by laura friedman. san francisco is the first city to take advantage of this new law. last week rolling out the first seven corridors where speed limits will be reduced. i noticed that this has been widely covered in the media, the chronicle today ran a story and i think that san francisco's experience with this is going to be the template for other cities in california. challenges remained for our efforts to advance speed enforcement, despite years, i would say, of incredibly dedicated effort by assembly member chu on ab150.

and the enactment of authority for all transit agencies in california to use transit lane only enforcement. san francisco has this authority, first a pilot basis in 2007 and then eventually made permanent in 2015. and while we've had the authority for transit-only lane enforcement the key operation for san francisco from this bill is the ability to cite for parking violations at any transit stops and not just to red lanes. what this means is that we can strategically deploy toll technology or transit-only lane enforcement technology throughout the system when particular problem locations are identified with the goal of ensuring that our riders can safely board vehicles without having to walk around a car or step into traffic lanes. also last year, san francisco leading the way, we'd already been moving forward under our authority with shared spaces, but ab777 gave the permanent

authority to adopt programs in terms of shared spaces which is really a silver lining of covid there were several bills that were vetoed that were on folk's radar. one was the idaho stop which allows bicyclists to treat stop signs as yield signs, as well as a bill by assembly member ting to decriminalize jaywalking. i called these out because i think they reveal the tension and the dynamic between safety, equity, and the debate that's happening around vision zero and efforts to keep our streets safe in an equitable manner. we also have had some success on grant applications with funds awarded to the fulton street project, but the bottom line is that as you all know that the session was so unprecedented due to covid, remote hearings, virtual meetings, and those dynamics will obviously continue into the second year.

in 2021, federal outcomes were unprecedented due to covid. highlights are covid relief and the reauthorization of transportation programs, combined with the dramatic increase in overall infrastructure investment. the covid relief packages that were passed by congress resulted in over a billion dollars in federal relief to support muni alone as well as funding for other operators throughout the region. and as it's been alluded to and in other comments earlier in this meeting, it is really hard to imagine what would have happened to public transportation in this region without this lifeline to sustain transit operation. passage of the infrastructure investment and jobs act means, one, that we have a multiyear federal transportation program which makes funding more predictable. and, two, significantly higher funding levels to support investments. as an example of this, the overall transit formula funding to the bay area will increase by

an estimated $1 billion over the next five years, going from $2.3 billion to $3.4 billion. while this won't solve everyone's needs there's never ultimately enough to address the state of repair needs but it means that we'll all do better of getting our needs met. in addition, there are new programs, including those that we advocated for, like the safe streets for all. $5 billion nationwide, for a vision zero and safe street investments. this really does provide a greater opportunity for vision zero, both in california and nationwide. and now that the infrastructure investment and jobs act has passed, the work to develop the program, some of which are brand new, and determine the distribution of the funds begin, and we will be doing that in coordination with the city, regional and state partners. looking to year two, meetings

and hearings will continue to be virtual and notably, san francisco, as you know, currently has just two of its usual three straight legislators pending the outcome of the legislation to fill a former assembly member david chu's seat. the initial focus if i thought about the landscape and what we're looking at this year in year two, will be on transportation funding and the state budget. the governor released his proposed budget last monday and there will be both local and regional engagement to support funds coming back to the region and for key projects for san francisco. a side note, we work with our capital planning and grant team to identify those priority projects, consistent with the cip that has been adopted by the board, to give you a sense of where we find those projects to fit against fund sources and that's really how we do that work. on vision zero work will continue to be a priority. i can tell you that we will see a reintroduction of the camera legislation, building on the

work of ab550 by assembly member chu last year. and there's a commitment to reintroduce the legislation, and assembly member ting will be a co-sponsor. and we've been at this for a long time and you asked the question, like, what has changed. i think that the landscape has changed, although slowly, but with assembly woman friedman as the chair of the committee, we do have an opportunity with her leadership to pass additional bills in addition to ab43. i would also say that despite the resignation of secretary of transportation david kim, the acting secretary alyssa canoe was the chair, the state transportation agency chair, of the zero traffic fatalities task force. so the knowledge base and understanding around vision zero priorities has really grown, and i think that we have, you know, reasons to remain optimistic,

although there are certainly a lot of work to do, given that the dynamics around the use of automated enforcement in the context of vision zero continues to be debated with stakeholders, you know, considering equity, safety and alternatives to enforcement. and in terms of public transit we anticipate the transit integration. this builds on the work undertaken by mtc and the transit agencies over the past several years, focused on fair coordination and schedule coordination and more. there are active efforts continuing at mtc with transit operators now, with the transit network management project, but it is also likely that there will be some type of state legislation proposed which is informed by the work of groups such as seamless bay area. so we will actively also work to support the efforts to remove -- this is also in streamlining of the project delivery for our public transportation and more -- fb288, which was a bill

that was sponsored by senator scott wiener, which provides really ceqa exemptions for bike and ped and a variety of projects. the bulk of this exemption expires in 2023. and so for us to be able to continue to use this streamlining for our quick build projects and for transit prioritization projects, we need to have the funds that are removed or at least extended. so we will be working actively with senator wiener's office and the bay area council and others who are working to advance that legislation. and on emerging mobility, we expect there to be legislation with data and privacy and how cities are able to regulate the shared services on the streets and we expect to see legislation on the topic this year. and then on sustainability, we will continue to focus on electrification of the transit fleet pursuant to state regulations, and look for

funding opportunities as we move to ensure the agency's commitment to zero emission fleet. federal side is going to be focused on funding, primarily, we have the policy work in terms of the legislation behind us, but there is a lot of opportunity to shape the federal programs and seek federal funding through the discretionary grant programs. i would see that is going to be the main focus at the federal level. programs such as bus and bus facilities, the raise grant program, this past year we have submitted the howard street streetscape project which was not picked. and there was an award under the raise grant, but we're going to look for the best project to line up for the raise grant program in the coming year. and then also tracking efforts around legislation or regulation that relates to autonomous vehicles, which has been a topic at the federal level over the past year. so, thank you. there's a lot to cover, a lot of

content, and with that i am now going to turn it over to my fantastic colleague, our local government affairs manager. >> thank you, kate, and good afternoon, madam chair borden, directors, director tumlin. and thank you for having me and making time for us this afternoon. what i would like to do is to just give you a brief overview of some of the higher profile items that we covered last year and those which we anticipate covering this year in 2022. before i go too much further i want to make sure that i acknowledge the efforts of my esteemed colleague janet martinson, who is our local government affairs community liaison, who is responsible for so much of the heavy lifting of the legislative efforts that you will see here in these slides that we'll be going over.

so to follow director breen's lead to give an overview, there's no way that we could cover all of the legislation in the limited time that we have this afternoon, of all of the efforts that went through the board of supervisors, or got involved in some way or another and got some attention from the -- from the county transportation authority. but in some capacity or another, we d discussed vision zero. if you will recall, there were a number of hearings that we're always having with the -- with the t.a., the transportation authority. there was a hearing called, the what lies beneath hearing that happened. there were a number of responses to the covid pandemic in

changing our transit programming and our response plan to the pandemic. there was a lot of discussion and action about our customer information system that we are all eagerly awaiting, including the approval of the system itself, the cost of the system. and there was discussion at the t.a. about our better market street, the direction that we would be moving forward with that project. and there was lots of discussion on the merging mobility and innovation, particularly as regards to our scooter permit program expanding. that program and making sure that we are providing services in a way that we can regulate accordingly. and then there was lots of contracts that -- any contract that is over 10 years or $10 million goes towards the board

of supervisors for approval. that include -- or the t.a.. and that included the purchase of 30, 32-foot buses. that was a fun one that was to replace the oldest buses in the fleet right now. and of course there was the legislative efforts and the modifications with the central subway and, of course, lots of ongoing prop k requests that make their way through the transportation authority regularly. if we could advance to the next slide. so with the -- with this program, this is just like i had said earlier, what we're anticipating to address. this is, again, in no way inclusive of all of our efforts i can think of two off the top of my head that we're currently working through right now, including an equity hearing that

director chan called for. she wants to hear about our equity and inclusion plan. there is some legislation right now about the cable car museum, a parking contract -- there's lots of little things. but these are the things that i think that are going to get the most attention and require i think -- or warrant your focus. and so as -- as we discussed earlier there were a lot of conversations about shared street close and streets. i'm sorry, shared spaces and slow streets, and particularly around j.f.k. drive and the great highway. we anticipate making the transit improvements permanent in the way of our -- the temporary emergency transit-only lanes that will probably become permanent transit-only lanes and it would be our hope. we would expect that would get some conversation at the t.a. at least. and there has been some movement

afoot last year, and i expect more around our -- our yard modernization program -- projects, including the project that got some attention last year and i expect that will probably come up again as well as with the other projects that we're hoping to move forward in the way of our yards. and vision zero, as director breen had mentioned, we anticipate more conversation around that. we already had a hearing last week, if you didn't hear about it, it was a terrific hearing that was delivered by our esteemed colleague john knox white and jamie parks over at the youth and young adults and families board of the supervisors, and i expect that there will be more on that as we try to meet our goals there. there is a resolution afoot from the san francisco board of supervisors to urge the mta to open up bus zones that are

currently not marked as bus zones at some of our bus stops across the city. that is an interest that the supervisors have expressed. we will undoubtedly need to talk about more emerging mobility, and scooter share and whatnot. there is currently an effort afoot to -- to adopt sidewalk riding technology to be more vigilant and to have more enforcement over those offenses and so we've got some changes there that i'm sure that -- they have already warranted attention. there was some -- a hearing called for by supervisor peskin last year around that. and then probably most excitingly, and probably the things that are going to take up the most amount of our time is the anticipated ballot measures, the general obligation bond that

is currently moving through legislation right now. and the prop k expenditure plan, reauthorization that we'll be working closely with on the ta. and then, of course, we're hoping that we can get a possible local revenue measure that would fill in the gaps that the bond and our currently anticipated revenues aren't going to be filling in on their own. and, of course, there would be any contract, like i said earlier, above $10 million or will last longer than 10 years, will come before this board as well. so i could say more about many of these things and i'm happy to respond to any questions that you may have. i think that i'll give it back over to director breen, who might be able to field any questions that you might have. but thank you all again for your service. and i know firsthand what it's like to make all of the sacrifices that you do on a regular basis. and i am so proud to be in service with you all in this

work. thank you. >> chair borden: thank you to you and kate and janet for your hard work and making sure that we're taking care of and we get the bills passed we need, and the money, and that you represent the agency so well and our advocacy. i was a member of the hearing with the congressman talking about all that he has learned. so i just want to thank you all for your strength, which helps us to lead the way. so with that director eaken? >> vice-chair eaken: absolutely, i echo chair borden's thanks and it really is kind of astonishing the number of things that you are able to track and lead on. that brings me to my first question is that there's almost -- it reads almost as everything under the sun that might possibly touch anything that mta cares about is part of our legislative program. and just know -- and i was pleased to hear you, director breen, say that we did have kind

of priorities last year -- vision zero and covid relief. that's my question for this year, i couldn't get a read as we went through the staff report documents on -- and, again, we need to keep it broad, but at the same time we want to be strategic with our allocation of limited resources and what we really want to drive and lead on, as opposed to monitor. so if you could speak about our top priorities and knowing that we need to be judicious in our resource allocation. >> thank you for that. and thank you for the supportive words. and resource allocation is super real for us. what i see in the landscape for this year is funding, and implementation or the infrastructure investment act and we see already a working group and we're plugging into that with our staff. making sure that we have the opportunity to influence how the state is trying to position itself to bring that money in.

iija. and also in the governor's budget with the amazing -- the darkest of times we see this amazing budget surplus, and working to figure out how we can best position san francisco, you know, for our priority projects, but also the region for -- for having its fair share come back. and so i see transportation funding, frankly, as number one i think that also at the local level when they were talking about the ballot measures and director tumlin has been talking for the last couple of years about our structural deficit. so finding ways to be really clear about what our priorities are for transportation funding. and then the second priority that i see, you know, thinking state level is really again vision zero. i feel like, you know, we've got a coalition. we're working really actively with our created alliance, the california city transportation initiative, the seven, maybe eight, depending on san diego's point of view on any given day. you know, and in california who

we have been working with for four years now around vision zero priorities. that alliance gives us the ability to really lean in together, not alone. and so those two topics are the ones that i see, you know, just looking at the details of the program, most dominating our work. now if -- i mean, we don't have the luxury to not participate in things if there is legislation on transit integration, right? so we need to make sure that, again, working with our colleagues at the other transit agencies what are the implications of a measure -- my understanding is that they don't have an author yet, but they definitely are looking for an author. and so that combined with the work that is happening at the regional level, not in the pure legislative arena but at the legislative level, how are we showing up and engaging in conversations around transit

network management and what does that look like for the mta. those are things, director, where we need to direct our energy and have affirmative engagement as opposed to just defense -- those are the categories that come to the top of mind for me. we're not sponsoring any bills and last year we were sponsor of ab550. >> vice-chair eaken: great, that's a really helpful response. i just have two more quick questions. one is, saw regional transitintegration on the list , can you speak to our part in that. >> i am going to ask -- director tumlin may have thoughts and the director too, but if my colleague monique webster could set the table on the conversation that is going on at the regional level right now, that would be super helpful.

and let me see if she is on here. >> yeah, good afternoon. can you hear me? >> yeah. >> okay, great, thanks. yeah, so coming out of the work that you have been hearing about with the blue ribbon transit transformation task force that was formed by mtc last year, there was a transit transformation action plan that came out of that, that was -- that was finalized last -- last fall. and part of that is a business case analysis of regional transit integration in the bay area. and, i'm sorry -- regional transit network management in the bay area. and so we are participating in that work, and director tumlin sits on the advisory committee for that -- for that effort. and that will be finalized some

time this coming summer. >> vice-chair eaken: what specifically our legislative priorities will be, or yet to be determined, as a result of that process? >> yeah, that's right, yeah. >> vice-chair eaken: that's helpful. and then my last question i'm really glad to see that, obviously, the implementation of the infrastructure funding is a big priority that you outlined in the staff report. my understanding is that a really significant majority of all of those funds will come to the state by formula. and that -- and that the eligible uses for a lot of those funds have quite a range. they could be used for road and highway funding and they could be flexed for transit. so clearly we would go -- i would hope that we'll be competitive for the transit and

biking and walking and uses that would naturally align with our goals of cutting pollution and emissions. i'm curious how we envision at engaging at the state level in terms of those formula dollars that have a little bit more flexibility, and a less certain outcome, in terms of how those funds get prioritied and if we have an agenda around that. >> that's a timely question and i probably spoke over it quickly. but this is primarily focused on the fhwa side of the house, right, the funds that do flow to the state for the highway program. on the transit side, the great majority of those funds flow to the region and are divvied up between the groups. and with the active transportation dollars and other program funds, we are plugging in to that working group to

figure out just how the state is going to set up a process and where we can see our best advantage for that. once we know that process, i think that's where we -- we begin to start matching projects and priorities against those new funding programs. and the additional fund sources so i would say that we're right there, and we're right at that beginning point of figuring out what that looks like. and i would say that electrification is an example. jonathan dropped me a note and it's a good reminder that electrification is woven through a lot of our priorities. and there's so much money that has been put into the infrastructure bill and in the governor's budget, focusing on electrification. and so, again, it's figuring out what is that door that we can go through in order to be more successful in advancing our projects. >> vice-chair eaken: okay, great, thank you, chair borden. >> chair borden: thank you. director heminger. >> director heminger: thank you, chair. hello, kate, how are you?

>> okay, good. >> director heminger: let me ask you a question about the governor. he was in town last week bragging on how much money he would hand out to transit, good for him. and i think that it was probably a little bit of a tell sign that he held his press conference at a caltran station because they have a project under construction that needs money. and it got me to thinking about what is our project like that? you know, we've obviously got two projects that are nearing the end of construction, and so really don't need the kind of money that the governor is handing out. i thought on one hand about the -- the train control system, which is going to be, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars, 10-year major effort. and i guess that i just wanted to know from you -- do we have a list or do we just sort of

strike where the iron is hot and take advantage of the opportunities? because i think that it would be good for all of us to sort of be pulling in the same direction. and especially when big descriptionary opportunities come through like this. >> absolutely. and, of course, a great question. with regard -- let me first say in regards to caltrain, they are us and we are them, right, they are us and we are them. so we have a definite invested effort to see that electrification project come over the line and to be funded. and, you know, last year in the context of budget negotiations, it was sort of the scrum of who is going to support which project. from a san francisco point of view it was clear that we had a stake in supporting the caltrain success in terms of electrification. and so, yes, it is their time. they do have that big gap that they need to fill. but to your specific question about our priorities, we do have a set of priorities that we have

developed, and you are absolutely right, that is train control and the facility modernization, but train control is one that we are packaging up for the next round of tircp, the transit and intercity rail capital program. the money from the governor's project that will infuse the tircp is where we see an opportunity for the train control and the subway renewal potentially. and with electrification. and so before i forget -- i was being distracted here -- but one of the other projects that we have lined up specifically for a budget ask that is, you know, tangible -- we have a fact shee. and so kirkland is one of the first steps in the dominoes that we need to achieve for electrification at the fleet. so we have kirkland. we were advancing kirkland last year. we intend to package it again as a stand-alone project. it isn't a great fit, frankly,

for tircp. and the way that the tircp program is written right now and the criteria just don't benefit san francisco that much or benefit our projects that well. so there is us trying to pursue kirkland outside of tircp. and there's also an effort to possibly change tircp, look for some additional flexibility in the tircp program, but trailer fill, something that gives us a better opportunity to advance the kinds of projects that san francisco wants to see funded. and i'm going to stop there and just ask if my colleague jonathan brewers would like to add anything else. they have been awesome partners with us on sort of figuring out what is that -- if we throw projects through the salmon run, what comes out on top and what is our best chance for success? >> thank you. and i think that kate had the answer exactly right. i think that our focus, post

central subway and post muni forward where we did advocate for the significant federal support for those programs, is, you know, what i texted kate -- like transformational state of repair. that's what we have heard in the community survey and what the public wants us to focus on. however, as kate said, we're not only fixing that major infrastructure but modernizing through our subway program, and what we're doing with our facilities, with joint development opportunities and raising revenues and electrification. and the train control system, which not only replaces the system as it is, but also expands it to the surface and adds reliability to the overall system. so that has been key for us. kate since we entered the last legislation, and we continued to advance that list of projects.

that said, there's always a push/pull because we're san francisco and so we're a regional and a state hub about having the local san francisco priorities like we have and then having, like, a tjpa and a project in san francisco. like, kate saying that being a major partner on caltrain and on the electrification of that project. and partnership projects with bart that might be occurring in san francisco. so kate does excellent work, trying to navigate that kind of regional and state-wide priority list of projects that happen to be in san francisco against the priorities that we have at the mta. >> director heminger: well, again, i would just say that it would be helpful -- i would expect for the whole board to have maybe a better sense than we do now of how those priorities are developed and what they, in fact, as of today are. and where are the most real vabt

places to seek funding. i don't know if that is a proper subject for our workshop coming up in a few days or not, but there's a lot of judgment calls with these discretionary opportunities. and as you mentioned, jonathan, we have that big trans-bay terminal project, phase two, that needs more money than -- than anybody. so it would be helpful to have that conversation and also to have that knowledge about what we've decided to support together and how we're going to go about doing it. >> if i could just add one other thing -- i think that, you know, yes -- and things -- projects like connect sf which have been a very robust project to

identify priorities and if figure out where those investments should be -- when the day comes, which we are upon now, for finding dollars for those projects. so aligning the projects with the groundwork that has been laid is what i think we need to do. and i don't know the answer to the question whether it's a workshop item where you can at a glance see the lay of the land -- that sounds like a good idea. i think that we want to talk about the best way to be responsive on that question. so that is more transparent for you. and so that you feel like we're all, as you say, speaking from the same sheet of music that we are advocating. >> and my immediate answer is that we can't report on that specifically until we discuss the process that essentially develops the list. i would suggest that we not do it at the board workshop because that's going to be situational, and we want to essentially get what you just gave us director

heminger, as direction back, but i will schedule that for the february board meeting next month to go over specifically. because i think that it is relevant because we have the conversation about the five-year cip, because often to make ourselves shovel ready for those big asks, we do invest our own money and guidance from the board and understanding what we have on the list is helpful in the budget process. so we can follow-up specifically on that ask at the february board meeting. >> director heminger: good, thank you, madam chair. >> chair borden: thank you. member yekutiel. >> director yekutiel: i want to indicate just a tinge of nerves that we may not be taking full advantage of the opportunity that we find ourselves in. specifically as it relates to what maybe our ambitions are in 2022. you know, congresswoman spear is retiring, conventional wisdom is

congresswoman pelosi and lee won't be in congress a whole lot longer and we're in a moment now that we have $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill and a new transportation secretary. i'm just worried that, like -- this might be like the best time that we'll have in a long time to make some big, ambitious, financial and political asks probably federally, because this is a moment where the question is being asked what do you need as it relates to infrastructure and transportation. and i guess that, you know, steve already asked this -- if you could ask for anything, what would you ask for. and i guess that the 2022 priorities all seem very important, but i feel like we could reach for the stars even more. things like, you know -- well, yeah -- so let me give you the opportunity to respond to that. >> sure. so i would say that we have a

pending $250 million request in, which we hope to see the results soon for operations support, for covid relief. that is, you know, pending with the secretary's office. that would be a much-needed final round of covid relief. and, you know, we did kind of shoot for the stars on that ask that was a really large operating ask. last year, you know, with finestein and others we did submit the earmark, and the earmarks seem to have gone by the wayside and, you know, we see the waning of "build back better," i don't think that we'll see anything there. so the question is, you know, of the priority projects that we want to advance, how can we position ourselves to be most successful -- whether it's the discretionary grant programs at the federal level working with the mayor's office and the speaker's office, like, getting their guidance on where we think that from a handicapping point

of view that we have the best chance for success. i think that you're absolutely right. this may be -- i don't want to make predictions -- but it is a bit of a milestone moment, you know. >> director yekutiel: right. >> so there is a lot of awareness around that and just trying to take the best advantage of that. i appreciate that you're calling it out. >> director yekutiel: yeah. awkward thing to say, because you don't want to say it's the future but you also don't have to be a political insider to realize -- all you have to do is to read the news and realize that influence in d.c. and the interest of d.c. in investing in transit, you know, that might not be de jure in a year from now, so i want to make sure that we're doing everything that we can to take advantage of this moment. >> i appreciate that. >> director yekutiel: so just a clarifying follow-up, so $250 million currently evaluated by the department of transportation for covid relief? >> yes. so there was a final call, a

final emergency relief opportunity for covid relief, and it was -- i think that nationally i would to say that it was $2 billion was the target and we submitted something that was basically a 10% ask for the total. and it was all well documented and very well justified. and, you know, we've been asking, are we getting any smoke signals but we haven't heard anything yet. if any of you have heard anything, send it our way. >> director yekutiel: i'll have specific questions and i wonder if these are things that are in your -- they didn't make it here, but if you're thinking of making an ask for these. one is just the state of our streets. so just figuring out if we could beef up improvements to the actual physicality of our streets for our buses and all of the folks that use our streets. sometimes moving around san francisco, i feel a little dismayed at just, like -- just the asphalt, frankly. like the streets are kind of a

mess. and i'm wondering if we could use this moment to get more money to repave our roads, frankly. >> hmm. i -- i am not sure about the answer to that. >> jonathan? >> so while -- i agree with you, director yekutiel, that is important for the city, that's often been the mayor's office and the department of public works who have been working year after year to increase the -- the pavement conditions or of the city, pci, and we have as a city have been increasing it. and it fits the goals that we have intended. it is a very sensitive subject between the department of public works and the mta about how much impact our vehicles have on pavement and whether or not the mta should be paying for that. so we typically try to stay away at least in our lane off that topic and public works has been

actively advocating to increase the local streets and road funds, both to the federal government and the state. >> director yekutiel: but besides that, there's satisfaction from the city level on the state of our streets? >> i believe that the pci score that we set for ourselves, seven or eight years ago in a 10-year capital plan that we had hit it >> director yekutiel: all right, all right, i'll leave that there. and the second is -- i saw you mentioned petrero bus yard modernization as a priority. what about some of our other, you know, i had the privilege of touring our other facilities that really do need a little love as well, the presidio bus yard, over a hundred years old. and our headquarters at 100 south van ness is not the most up to snuff. and the cable car barn has modernization needs. why are those other things not in there? >> so kate keeps looking at me. so, yes, those were on the list,

believe it or not, and we did get a state grant that is paying for the initial planning work on the presidio yard. i just got the first round concepts and the cost estimates so that's one. we put in a crazy ask to the federal government for the cable car barn. i think that is one of the things that we have advocated is a national treasurer and the federal government should be very supportive in us doing the work that we require on cable car. i think that was even in the press a couple of months ago. and on van ness, i will give an update and it's something that director heminger has been asking for quite a bit and hopefully on the february meeting on what we're doing at all of our facilities. and one of the discussions is long term, where is the headquarters and what to do with the mta and i will answer that question. >> director yekutiel: great, lovely. and my last thing that may be controversial is, you know, there -- this is to director heminger's question on, like,

you know, what is our caltrain moment. and there has been conversation about potentially grounding the 101 over division and connecting in soma neighborhoods as a pie in the sky idea that could have a massive effect on the city. i'm wondering if that is even something that we're thinking about as we make legislative and budgetary ideas and requests to the federal government? >> so that -- we wouldn't start with that. i mean, by that -- i mean that there's a process by which planning and the city family and everybody, you know, figures out where does that land. once that decision is made, then we can become more transactional around that. and, you know, if there's others on this call who want to speak to that project, they're welcome to speak to that. but, you know, there's other projects that people want to see advanced too, like extending central subway to fisherman's wharf, for example. or the geary subway.

so there's all of these tradeoffs that you well know, i know, and figuring out how to -- to prioritize san francisco -- yeah, i'll stop there. >> director yekutiel: great, thank you. i'll just say this -- all of those are great and, obviously, at least from my perspective, our number one priority, we're a transit system and our number one priority should be making sure that we're doing best job of getting folks around our city, using all of the various modes that we provide for people. so i did mention the streets in 101 and, you know, our bus yards, but i see here very clearly that our top priority as displayed in your work is our transit system. and that's as it should be in my opinion. thank you. >> thank you. >> chair borden: great. thank you. director lai. >> director lai: thank you, chair. thank you.

i think that my colleagues already asked a lot of the really smart questions. i have two things to ask. one is -- and i'm not sure if this goes to ms. breen's area or maybe another area, but could staff please remind us if we do not get the geo-bond approved this year, how much in federal dollars might we be risking? (please stand by)

>> director lai: my second question, out of our -- this is on our federal legislative priorities. are there specific funding opportunities that we've already identified that could adjust our essentially -- i don't know what

we're calling it, like the southside seawall. >> generally, the issue of resiliency of our system, that's where the mayor's office has been working to bring the sort of that need of across the sort of city infrastructure whether it's the embarcadero, whether it's the subway and facilities. there are dollars now targeted towards this need. towards resiliency. there was more transportation in the build back better act. there are dollars targeted in the governor's budget as well as

infrastructure investment act. jonathan, did you have insights on that? >> we're working on that right now with the port. over the next six months, our planning subdivision and tim dougherty is working with the m.t.a. the port is working with the army corps of engineers to determine what that resiliency zone will be. there's no doubt director lai, that will impact the m.t.a.'s infrastructure and transportation infrastructure. we as a city, we're working the port, the port representing the city. worry -- we're hoping to partner with the army corps to access hundreds of millions of dollars in investment. we're kind of going through this regulatory process with the army corps now. we'll know a lot more in the next 6 to 8 months as we scope out the impacts. we're working with the port.

>> director lai: i'm glad to hear that we are moving forward with a coordination. that's one of those bigger, scarier problems facing the survival our city. it's not about our own infrastructure. if we don't take care of that area, there's going to be swath of community that will basically be under water. we had little reminder of that just this weekend with the tsunami warning. this is very timely if there's anything that our agency can do legislative ability to help advancing, we should be focusing on that this next year. thank you. >> chair borden: are there any other comments from directors at this time? seeing none, we'll open up to public comment. this is time for members of the public to comment on our legislative agenda, which was

just discussed ms. breen and mr. you have comments or thoughts that you like to weigh in, press 1, 0 to put yourself in line for the queue. are there any callers on the line? >> caller: good afternoon. good evening. i really appreciate ms. breen's presentation. she did a great job and answered great questions. just a few concerns that were brought up last year that i think you need to push more. it will be hypocrite to get legislation to help limit the number of cars on the road by asking legislature to allow the city to regulate the t.n.c.,

otherwise known as uber and lyft by limiting number of vehicles. requiring them to go through inspections at the airport if they're going to work the airport like the taxi cabs. you cannot work the airport unless you got an inspection sticker from the airport. i think it's important to push for some ability for the sfmta and the city to do some type of regulation of the t.n.c.s. i'm glad that director yekutiel brought repair of the streets. look at 24th street between 20th and 24th street -- excuse me, castro street, i beg you to go take a look. how it's destroying the 24 bus.

take a look. remember, the potholes and the lousy job of paving the street are putting plates on it is also putting less life into the vehicles and muni buses. requiring you to probably replace the tires for frequently or make it harder for them to travel the streets. people with bad backs or terrible spines or similar type of health defects will not continue olike this. i think you brought up a good point. i encourage more money to getting these streets repaved after they've been torn up many times.

>> caller: this is herbert. in all these legislative priorities, where do motorists benefit from this? the transportation has to have the equity of benefiting all parties because transportation is a public service. where does seniors and the disable benefit from these legislative priorities? also, why not add more buts to the fleet? this is a growing population with growing need. that should be part of the legislative priority. basically, these priorities are stacked towards groups with their own particular interest

and don't benefit the public as a whole. that is one of the basic problems of m.t.a. it's reflected in legislative priorities. that is what members of the board of supervisors are complaining about too. this is gone on for too long. it's going on for two decades. basically, it's going to be catastrophic. especially if there's a worse catastrophe than this pandemic. thank you. >> chair borden: is there a caller on the line? i can hear you.

hello? next line. your line is unmuted. next speaker. >> caller: hi, there. i'm with san francisco transit riders. i want you to continue moving forward -- [ indiscernible ]

>> chair borden: are there additional calls on the line? >> caller: this is david pilpel. on item 11, the legislative program, there's a technical thing on page 6 in the -- it's

still on page 6. on the bottom in the prop k paragraph in december 2021. comma is in the wrong spot. i'm assuming that the legislative program that starts at page 5 will be included as an attachment to the resolution incorporated here by reference i guess as fully set forth. that's a technical change. i would consider adding issues involving public meetings, public records and public pensions or acknowledge that there are sort of these general issues that come before the state legislature. for example in the area of public records there's a provision about retention of

radio transmission recordings for one year that's different from other recordings. i would consider adding a section of regional priority what m.t.a. interest are in the next year with regard to entities like bart and caltrains and abag. i support the proposed 2022 legislative program other than the ceqa reform language. i believe that the program that staff put together is

comprehensive and concise. >> caller: i like to support the sfmta working with public works to may be set a different pavement condition index for street repair for transit and bike lanes in particular. then, i would like to support in terms of legislative agenda, any more efforts to allow san francisco to improve safety at the state level. thank you. >> chair borden: with that, we'll close public comment.

are there additional questions, comments? is there a motion? >> are we motioning to approve the priorities? >> chair borden: yes. did i hear a motion from you director eaken? do i hear a second? >> second. >> chair borden: this is your last chance to give input on the agenda. >> can we get an update wherever the chair and vice chair is appropriate may be in the next few months? >> yes. i would respond to that. >> it will be nice to get an update. >> we start doing legislative updates last session where we were sharing that with the

board. staff transition mode trying to figure out how to do that and everything else. no matter what, we'll find a way to get you an update. let me ask clearly, update on where we're at with the provisions of the program or a more specific update just through the legislative cycle? what would meet the need of your request? >> i will speak for myself here, may be from i recall hearing, some of the larger aspects of our 2022 legislative desires. it will be nice to know decisions will be made to hear

about them. does that make sense? >> to me, yes. >> director yekutiel: cool. >> chair borden: director heminger? >> director heminger: on the same subject i thought that jonathan indicated he can come back to us with a briefing on how we set these priorities for competitive grant funding and what sort of in the hopper and what's next up and so on. with that understanding, i certainly would support the motion. i do think we need more insight in the how we put the thing together. >> chair borden: if there are no further comments, secretary silva, please call the roll. >> clerk: on the motion. [roll call vote]

the motion passes. >> chair borden: next item. item 12, 13 and 14. i know we'll have them called together, please. >> clerk: thank you. item 12, amending transportation code division 2, section 601 on segment to the one california transit line between presidio avenue and front street. items a-v and making environmental review finding. item 13, amending transportation code division 2 section 601 and 602 along the 19 polk and 27

bryant transit lines on seventh street between town send and mission street. to add a revised preexisting area in the transportation code. approving parking and traffic modifications including the transit only lanes and making environmental review finding. item 14, amending transportation code division 2, section 601 and 602 along the 43 masonic and 44 o'shaughnessy transit line.

>> chair borden: we'll have -- >> michael rose will kick us off today. >> chair borden: perfect, thank you. >> good afternoon, directors. i'm michael rhodes. i'm the transit priority team lead in the transit division. i lay the temporary emergency transit lanes or tetl program. i'm here to provide update on the tetl program. the sfmta board approved tetl projects across the city on a temporary basis in 2020 and

2021. we prioritized where to install tetl including ridership, serving muni service, equity strategy lines and technical feasibility. the tetls helped reduce delays improved liability and reduced crowding and they minimized the amount of time that riders are in close proximity to each other during the pandemic. the lanes helped preserve the savings we saw early in the pandemic even as traffic has returned in many areas in the city. as approved, these lanes will be removed within 120 days after the city covid emergency orders is lifted. unless there's a process to make the lanes permanent. the core component of the tetl program has been the evaluation. the evaluation for the tetl corridors have included for

example, monitoring of transit travel times, traffic congestion data, passenger experience via surveys, operator feedback, community surveys in general, virtual community meetings, outreach to community-based organization and among other methods. the evaluations results are the key factor for us as staff in deciding whether to propose making individual lanes permanent or not. we've seen pretty great results from the program including preserving much of the time saving we saw during the early shelter-in-place days. even as traffic returned on mission, geary and the t third which the sfmta approved on a permanent basis last year. this means very real benefits for the people who rely on our transit system who have an easier time finding a seat on the bus if they need one or deciding whether to go shopping in the neighborhood that's little more accessible now by muni. the tetl program has led to the

fastest network in san francisco's history. the benefits have been widespread. 40% of current transit riders are benefiting from tetls and 100% of the tetls we installed benefit routes that equity strategy neighborhoods, neighborhoods with higher percentage of people of color and lower income households. we brought three tetl corridors to the board for approval. now we're bringing the final group of transit lanes on local streets for permanent approval. >> thank you, michael. good afternoon directors. i'm the project manager for the 19 polk and 43 and 44 tetls. the three corridors are circled on this map.

those are transit lanes on seventh and eighth street that is used by 19 polk and bus trouts. i have of few slides here describing each four corridors. i will start with seventh and eighth streets. they are used by the 19 polk as well as the 27th bryant following its january 2021 rerouting. seventh and eighth are a one way complex carrying northbound traffic and eighth street carrying southbound traffic. on those streets, the lane closest to the right-hand curve would convert to a temporary transit lane. throughout each of our projects,

we gathered feedback from community members including on our evaluation methods. the lanes help preserve mobility along corridor and improve bus travel time compared to pre-covid. we also monitor congestion throughout the project and saw there were no changes greater than 2 miles per hour on average on 7th, 8th or surrounding streets. that's the gist of the project. if it did help keep transit customers from getting stuck in congestion. we received from request for clarification about which turning movements from driveways were permitted with the new striping. which we're able to resolve with the property owners. as i mentioned before, our

vaccine show -- evaluation shows it helps to keep traffic increase. we know that's important because the project is no in the neighborhood where large number of residents get around via walking, transit and biking. we heard 89% of operators indicated that the project has made their jobs easier which is the high oh level of operator support that we've even in the tetl program. on the community survey, we saw that over 60% of respondents support the making the lanes permanent. that varies depending on the modes people use on the corridor. the next project is 44

o'shaughnessy improvement. this project is different from the other tet -- tetls. it's a key bottleneck rather than continue with transit lanes. the transit lanes you see here function as short busy sections. those are presidio avenue southbound, masonic avenue southbound from oak, wood side avenue, eastbound item 3 and bosworth westbound, that's number 4. these are supplemented by other improvements like keep clear zone at forest hill station to help buses access the loading area easier. that's number 5.

extending the peak hour left turn restrictions to help keep bus being slowedly traffic congestion waiting for vehicles to turn left. we're proposing to make nearly all items term today with the --permanent today with the exception of number 3. number five, keep clear zone is something that we do plan to keep. it doesn't require board action. you won't see that in today's legislation. as i mentioned for the 19, we have gathered a summary of these data collected via community survey, virtual meeting and other communication, venues including 311. this table shows feedback we

received. we heard from community members and saw during our site visit that many drivers weren't complying with the extended hours for the no left turn signs on masonic. we completed additional installation of signs last month to make restrictions clear. we heard concerns about congestion here. the while didn't cause traffic congestion in the corridor to change, it did help protect transit customers from additional delays as traffic returned. we'll continue to monitor transit travel times and make additional signal time along the masonic to keep traffic moving. we heard requests for the 43 service to be restored to the presidio which helped form decisions to make that service restoration as part of the 2022 muni service network. our evaluation shows that the project helped keep transit riders time from growing along

with the traffic volumes. we heard support from majority operators. also similar to the other community surveys conducted for the tetl program, we saw the support for the project varies depending on which mode people usually use. however, overall, 60% of all respondents supported making the project permanent. finally, third tetl project is the one california tetl project. for today's presentation, i'm filling in for my colleague who is the project manager for the one california. i'm joined by several key member of the project staff who will help me cover this item today. one california project covers the portion of the route between

downtown and presidio avenue and it's a combination of new full-time transit lanes in it central and western portions of the project area and primarily extensions of the hours of existing part-time transit lanes east of the dors. these maps illustrates emergency transit lanes between may andjuly of this year. now the bottom section of the map is complex. it does make things look like lot more changing than there is. i'll go through the colors just to give a quick overview. red indicates the locations where new lanes were added. the orange indicates part-time lanes where projects added hours and blue line indicates locations that already has transit lanes in effect and hourers were not changed. the green circles indicate

additions to the project that we're seeking permanent approval of. the red indicates one subtraction. the details on why we're recommending these changes will be on a later slide. in addition to the transit improvements, we're proposing rescinding a traffic lane towaway zone on three blocks on sacramento street. i will note, the pre-condition and proposed what actually exist now as a temporary lane. as i mentioned, for all the tetl projects, we compiled the key metrics to determine the effectiveness. one of the most important objective was to preserve travel time saving. we found that this corridor has

been providing customers with faster travel times as compared to pre-covid. support for keeping the lanes among all respondent was 40%. the team looked at changes in the peak period speeds found minimal traffic with any speed decreases with less than one miles an hour than before the project was implemented. unique to this project, the one california tetl includes several locations where the transit lanes functions as a towaway transit lanes. this position appears great

difficulty with transit lanes compliant. we think there's an opportunity to focus on improving transit lane compliant. there are four recommendations. the first is in chinatown and striking a balance between request to preserve and improve the transit service that people rely on. for merchants to retain parking spaces and hours. rescinding the afternoon transit lane hours on one block between powell and stockton.

about 70% of the buses don't ice the lane as a result. at the same time, rescinding this part of the lane makes available for some additional afternoon cars to respond to stakeholder feedback from chinatown merchants. on the second slide, rescinding the southside general traffic peak hour on sacramento between stockton and montgomery. this actually addresses existing conditions prior to the pandemic where on these blocks during the afternoon hours, there is no parking allowed on eeither side of the street. the north side is a transit lane. because the traffic level don't need the travel lane, we're

recommending rescinding the southside travel lane and decrease the potential corridor. we're also recommending adding two new blocks of a.m. and p.m. transit lanes on klay street and nob hill. since the temporary project need to be quick build and reversible, those blocks were admitted. now based on positive evaluation results, plus the reality that continuous lanes are more legible, we are now recommending including them. prior implementing the lanes, staff will follow administrative process to consider removing and replacing the trees at least 1

to 1 if not 2 to 1 if not consistent with city policy. finally, the last recommendation is to continue to evaluation of project performance particularly on clay streets in the afternoon. where we did not see much improvement. we expect additional commute travel return to the financial district. these lanes will provide additional benefits. this segment on nob hill will be additional changes to transit lanes if warranted. final part of today's legislation is unrelated to the tetl program it's combined with the legislation to help with administrative streamlining. there are several segments of transit lanes that have been approved or installed over the past decade that aren't correctly reflected in it

transportation code. this item proposes to amend the transportation code to reflect these existing lanes accurately. the exception will be folsom street lane which is approved but not installed transit lane. to summarize the legislation before you today, staff is recommending the board make temporary transit improvements on the 19, 27, 43, 44 and 1 routes permanent as shown here in the calendar item. staff also recommend corrections to the transportation code to accurately reflect existing transit lanes installed or improved over the last decade. with that, i'll turn it over to michael who will preview some of the upcoming transit priority work.