>> chair borden: meeting of the sfmta board of directors. >> clerk: this meeting is being held in hybrid format with a meeting occurring in-person at city hall room 400 broadcast live on sfgov tv and by phone. we welcome the public participation during public comment period today. public comment will be taken both in-person and remotely by call in for each action or discussion item. the board will take comment first by those attending. and then those calling in remotely. the phone number is (415)655-0001. meeting i.d.. when prompting dial star 3 to enter the speaker line. speakers will have two minutes to provide comment. please speak clearly and ensure you're in a quiet locations and turn off any tvs or computers around you. the city policies along with

federal and state local law prohibits discriminatory comments during the meeting. item 2, roll call. [ roll call ] you have a quorum. for the record, i note that director hinze is attending this meeting remotely. directors are reminded they must appear on camera. because director hinze is attending remotely, all votes will be taken by roll call. item 3, announcement of prop hicks of san francisco devices. the ringing and use of cell phones electronic devices are prohibited. the chair may order the removal of any person responsible for

the ringing or use of a cell phone or other similar sound producing devices. places item 4. approval of minutes for the april 12, 2022 special meeting and the april 19, 2022 regular meeting. >> i move to approve. >> chair borden: any additions? we'll open up to public comment. this is your time if you're a member of the public if you like to comment specifically on the minutes of our april 12th or 19th meeting. i don't see anyone in the room. >> clerk: there are no callers on the line. >> motion to approve the minutes. >> second. >> chair borden: please call the call. [roll call vote]

the minutes are approved. >> chair borden: please call the next item. >> clerk: item 5, communications. >> chair borden: i don't think we have any communications. >> clerk: item 6, introduction of new or unfinished business by board members. >> chair borden: i don't see anyone. >> clerk: director hinze has her hand raised. >> director hinze: one is the school year is coming to a close, at some point in the summer, if we could get some kind of update on how the school year went from m.t.a. perspective and sort of what kinds of things we can do better as we move forward with that program safety and transit planning. if folks are interested in that. we haven't talked about better

market street. i wonder if there are updates on that. i know that particular -- with director yekutiel and recovery of the downtown area? lastly, i'm sure this will be covered is on kind of the future of slow streets at some point this summer -- with the news around j.f.k. probably good time to take a look at those future of slow streets. those are items to consider. >> chair borden: director

yekutiel? >> director yekutiel: director mcguire and i participated in a very large walking group tour of the market zone last week. that was the area around the whole produce market down in it bay view as well as a bunch of p.d.r. with the police department, the fire department, public works, p.u.c., the supervisors offices, lot of small business owners and real estate owners to highlight the state of the streets down in that part of the city. lot of them are pretty neglected. there's some areas without walkable sidewalks, crime, very poor street conditions. there's some streets called unaccepted streets. something like that. streets that no one seems to be taken control over. they were unacceptable. we went on that tour. i know there's going to be a follow-up. i'm glad i was able to put some attention on the part of the city we don't talk about.

>> chair borden: any other comments? we'll open up to public comment. this is an opportunity for members of the public who like to comment on the director's comments that were just made. comments it director yekutiel and director hinze. now is the time to do so. we'll go to online comments. any online commenters about new and unfinished business by board members? >> clerk: i see no callers. >> chair borden: we'll close public comment. next item. >> clerk: item 7, the director eats report. >> director tumlin: thank you. i would like to call annette williams who's the manager of our professional services taxi, access and mobility services division who will be presenting a special recognition to our paratransit van riders. >> thank you for having me. annette williams manager of professional services.

i'm here on behalf of m.t.a. to congratulate and lift up our workers who have been working in paratransit through the pandemic. who has been there for taur customers, providing exemplary services to seniors and people with disabilities. i wanted to start recognizing paratransit van drivers. i want them to please come forward. i wanted to especially point out that not only do they continue to provide exemplary service to our customers, our paratransit customers but also during the pandemic, they provided services to the public health department for people who were positive and needed to get to sheltered

housing and also many other types of work. i wanted to also acknowledge that we have three taxi drivers that we want to honor today who unfortunately can't be here. that's joey brown, mohammed and wardel waters. the three of them have been instrumental providing accessible van and part of our e.t.c. program. another thing is that it takes more than the people on the front line. it's also all of those people behind the scenes. today we wanted to recognize the call center and dispatch staff and kimberly watts is here to recognize them. [ indiscernible ] they have dispatched trips, taken reservations, provided information to clients about safety measures and they've kept everyone safe during the pandemic. i want to recognize the administrative staff.

who kept the operation running, handling finance and administration as well as distributing p.p.e., advising employees about best practices and info about vaccinations and testing sites. we also wanted to recognize the maintenance staff. they continue to ensure that vehicles in good working condition and performed all the increased cleaning during the pandemic. last but not least, i want to recognize the paratransit staff, the administration staff that handles eligibility, kept the office the paratransit offices open the dire pandemic so that customers who needed to pay in cash needed to see somebody in person can still do that during the pandemic and played a key

role in development and administration of our essential trip card program in the taxi program that was put in place to serve seniors and people with disabilities when our muni services were cut back. on behalf of the staff, i thank them. we want to honor these people who really went above and beyond in all of their colleagues who did as well. i really appreciate the board doing that today. thank you. [ applause ] >> chair borden: i like to sincerely thank you.

you're the front line critical essential workers. you put yourself in harm's way throughout this pandemic. we could not be more proud and thankful for your service. thank you so much for everything you do. i know that our paratransit customers are especially happy. i have so much admiration for the work that do you. i hope you know that you make a real difference in the lives of san franciscans every single day. [ applause ] >> just in case you wanted to hear from mark soto the general manager -- we like to hear a little bit. come on mark. put you on the spot. we really appreciate the management. they done such a good job partnering with us during this pandemic. >> i wanted to say thank you on. we are proud to be partnered

with you. we appreciate the opportunity to serve san francisco. >> thank you so much. >> director tumlin: moving on. we do have vision zero report for the last two week. on sunday there was a scooter rider who was struck in a hit-and-run at taylor and turk streets. the collision is still under investigation with sfpd. we have a variety of h.r. updates. i believe that our director kim ackerman will give you a more full update. we had some remarkable hiring success. h.r. has been hosting a variety of events to try to attract new

workforce including south van ness and participating in the city wide career fair that's sunday. so far they've been able to get 254 candidates to sign up at in the house events as well as whole bunch of others at the sunday event. we reengaged the city drive program, really critical pre-apprenticeship program for attracting new operators. we do this in collaboration with the office of economic development and nonprofit spaces s.f. which is a family support organization as well as mission hiring hall who serve moderate to low income job seekers and the city program helps applicants becoming qualified in their application including the dealing with issues like commercial driver's license. the city drive partners attended all of these events in april and as a result, we were able to

register 134 applicants for the two week program. that will then make them ready to come to the sfmta with their full credentials for becoming operators. also i want to report that between march 1st and april 22nd, we're able to hire 69 new transit operators and in that roughly same time period, we hired an additional another 94 staff. this is a huge uptick in the amount of hiring that we've been able to do. in part staffing up in h.r. and lot of the streamline work to make sure that we can follow all the rules, hold ourselves accountable, put equity first and make things work smoothly. as i'm sure all of you heard, the board of supervisors also voted last week by vote of 7-4

to permanently keep cars off of the mile and a half stretch of j.f.k. as well as roadway changes in order to create a permanent car-free pass from the panhandle to ocean beach. this project was controversial. however, it was very popular. about 70% survey respondents supporting it across all geographies in san francisco and most demographics. it was strongly supported by mayor breed. our work was possible in part because of two recent legislative changes that include senate bill 288 which offers stream lining in the ceqa process for projects that don't increase vehicle miles traveled and focused on making walking and biking and transit easier. the second piece of legislation was assembly bill 773 which legalized slow streets

throughout california. also made it easier to make changes on roadways and support better walking and biking conditions. the decision that occurred last week very importantly unlocks a whole set of other opportunities. the legislation that went to the board of supervisors includes dozens of additional accessibility improvements, focused on making sure that every single destination is accessible to people in wheelchairs and with other issues as well as making sure that all the institutions in the park can get their deliveries done and their weddings taken care of and all of that other functionality that comes with an urban campus. this week, recreation and parks department is moving forward very quickly on paving a new a.d.a. only parking lot right there at the front door of the

academy, the. japanese teagarden. today the sfmta crews have been out striping some new changes in order to make sure that it is safe and easy for the dejong museum to get the loading taken care of. since they can only get their loading access from j.f.k. we're moving forward on changes to the concourse garage. we're recommending that the sfmta take over management of the garage so that we can have rational pricing, free accessibility to people with disabilities and variety of other changes that make front door pick-up and dropoff for the institutions available within the garage for free as well as for free on the concourse itself. we'll be collaborating with rec and park including steady ongoing improvements that we've committed to for the park

shuttle and the establishment of the disability access coordinator position for golden gate park that we'll be hiring if our budget gets approve. that will be one of the first positions that get created. beyond the long list of accessibility improvements that we've committed to to the mayor and board of supervisors, we're starting work on some other improvements such as improving the connection between j.f.k. and the panhandle. which is little confusing and scary for pretty much all modes of transportation. we're looking at creating a bikeway on oak street that is the mere version of the one we created so that the faster moving it bikes no longer have to use the pedestrian path on the panhandle. we can reduce the bike and pedestrian conflicts in the

panhandle. next little update is our muni ridership recovery campaign. will be doing a two-month long campaign to start to rebuild trust with our riders. now that we finally recovered from the omicron surge, our main lines are operating faster more frequent and more reliably than they did pre-covid. the muni campaign will highlight how the transportation system has evolved during the pandemic. particularly focused on the routes like the 22 fillmore and the 38 geary and the 9 and 8 that have enjoyed significant investment in reliability as well as our investments in transit only lanes all over the city. we'll be using all the media techniques and there will be a

website at sfmta.com/munimove view. where you can go for more information. small business week is this week. for those who missed it, there's a small business fair here downstairs at city hall. we'll also be supporting small business week including highlighting all of the things that we've been doing with our major construction projects to make sure that we're minimizing negative impacts on small businesses. just earlier today, i was out with the team where we talked about what we have learned from the first phase of the construction project how we're going to apply that on the second phase. the project involves not just redoing the streets, it involved major utility replacement underground. underground utility replacement projects run by pg&e and p.u.c.

is super disruptive. we can communicate effectively with small businesses so they know what's going on. we can work to minimize negative impacts on parking. we can make sure that if we have to temporarily move small businesses shared space or parklet, we will commit to moving it back in place or rebuilding it so that the burden of the construction project is not placed only small businesses. we're also very proud of our collaboration with oewd as well as for small business working groups on many projects to make sure there's a strong forum for communication that goes twoway as well as collaboration so that we can minimize impacts to make sure there are no surprises. one thing that we find is that

san franciscans are tolerant of urban disruption but only if they are informed about what's going on and we're truthful about the reality of the impacts. we're excited that beta breakers is back. that is sunday may 15th. i hope all of you at some point in your san francisco lives have joined in beta breakers. it's a fantastic event. it is also one that is very disruptive to our streets. we'll be using the usual set of techniques for making sure that both transit and traffic can flow relatively smoothly around those events. please do not drive to beta breakers. take transit. finally, we do want to recognize that this month, marks asian and pacific islander heritage month.

we will also be doing a variety of internal informational events for staff, externally we'll be having staff decorating one of our cable cars for the month in collaboration with our transit division and office of racial equity and belonging. we'll be doing a roundtable and variety of other internal efforts. we'll also be rolling out our hate is a virus public service campaign. that will be happening on our vehicles later this year. this was inspired by the hate is a virus social media movement that highlighted asian-american and pacific islander violence sparked by the pandemic. something that continues to be a significant ongoing concern, particularly for asian-americans but also for us as a transit agency. we need to make sure that everyone feels safe and welcome on muni. that campaign links to a lot of

free bystander intervention training as well as provides tents for what folks can do in order to protect themselves and help achieve solidarity among our riders. this is in addition what we talked about at our last budget that includes the current additional transit ambassadors that we are hiring from your approval late last year as well as the additional 22 transit ambassadors that are included in next year's budget. in addition to that, the $750,000 that set aside for the gender equity program that will be moving on very shortly. that is all i have from my report. thank you so much. >> chair borden: director heminger? >> director heminger: jeff, i want to congratulate you on your leadership about j.f.k. it's not always the best idea to volunteer to help somebody out

who's in the middle of a barroom brawl. you did effectively that with the recreation the part department. the partnership that you established will be the start of of beautiful friendship. there's a lot that our two agencies and departments need to do. just given the prominent profile of golden gate park and the city, there's still plenty of work to do. i was out walking on j.f.k. yesterday. i noticed a couple of things. one of them is, we got a lot of four-hour parking signs we need to take down. you mentioned couple of instances of improvements like the parking lot behind the band shell. it sort of struck me walking around there yesterday that we've got is an auto road that

is used by all kinds of other users now. in fact, what we have out there now is sort of a super wide bike and pedestrian path. we don't have the road marked that way. it's marked for accommodating auto traffic. i wonder if this is an opportunity to sort of scrape all of that off the pavement and treat this like a bike pedestrian lane. one of the issuings i'm sure you're aware of, potential conflicts between bikes and pedestrians. especially with the electric bikes, they got pretty good head of steam on them and making sure we don't have conflicts, little kids out there who decide to stop their tricycle all of a sudden and cause a five-car pile-up. i hope that's something you're thinking about and that can be another way of partnering with the recreation park department so we get the most ought of the decision the board made.

we're also fortunate that there are models that we can learn from. eastern golden gate park is a lot like a college campus. whether it's uc santa barbara, berkeley or stanford. there's also places that we can do to like vancouver, british

columbia that's done a great job promoting civility in spaces like golden gate park. one of the problems we face here in san francisco is our transportation system is designed to reward aggression. in a place like golden gate park, it must always be a respite from our normal urban busy lives. that means prioritizing everyone particularly the people who have the greatest vulnerability. we don't want to take part of high entry network and high speed cut through for car traffic and turn it into a high speed cut through for bike traffic. we want to make sure that everyone is respecting the rights and the joy of every other user of golden gate park. >> chair borden: director lai? >> director lai: i'll start by tagging on to director

heminger's comments. my family did witness recent collision on j.f.k. between one of those motorized electric bikes and a cargo bike with kids in it. that was kind of scary. i think one of the things that's been on my mind just generally how we're regulating differentiating between regular electric bike versus electric bikes that are closer to a motorcycle and how we would treat our shared spaces. do we even as an agency have the ability to regulate the degree of electrification of these bikes? >> director tumlin: i want to emphasize that we don't have management responsibility for the streets of golden gate park. those streets are under the jurisdiction of recreation and parks. it's why the partnership between our two agencies is important. recreation and parks department

doesn't have transportation engineering expertise. we can support them there. there's some ability to regulate based upon the bicycle type. just like in our normal streets, the biggest issue is speed. in order to keep golden gate park safe, we need to make sure that speeds are kept low. people who have the greatest vulnerabilities maybe are provided with a space where there aren't things that are jeopardizing their peacefulness. this is all the work that we need to get moving on quickly, now that it's a basic framework decision has been completed. we're fortunate that there are plenty of other places around the world that are far ahead of us and have solved most of these problems already. >> director lai: continuing along the lines j.f.k.

conversation. this is about the garage. you mentioned it will be coming towards us rather soon. i wondering if you can go over what the technical steps, legal stuff that need to happen before the authority can be turned over to us. i think there needs to be b.l.s. action. is there a agreement that have to be struck? can you talk about the structure? >> director tumlin: we're still investigating all of that. i rather come back to you with a full set of options about speculating about what the legal path will be. it is complicated. we know that it is doable. >> director lai: should we expect that the management of it will be more similar to essentially m.t.a. being advisors to the garage while the garage still owned by somebody else and not by our agency?

>> director tumlin: from ownership perspective, that doesn't matter. we manage, for example, the muni square garage which is owned by the recreation and parks department. there are many different structures that we can engage in. we can act either just like contractor or -- there's many different approaches. the point would be, we'll be able to use our expertise in effective garage management in order to improve accessibility, reduce the price substantially so that the garage rather than sitting almost entirely empty weekdays, can start to be mostly filled in order to make sure that there is much better and more affordable access to the entirety of the eastern part of golden gate park for people who need to drive. >> director lai: that sounds great. i want to make sure we're not taking ownership of the

structure. >> director tumlin: i have no interest taking on anyone else's debt. >> director lai: i want to ask you about the hiring. it was great to hear that we had such success. sounds like we maybe even -- we were able to attract more than what we previously assumed. i'm wondering what this means for the service restoration. are we looking at a more optimistic projection? >> director tumlin: in terms of service restoration, this puts us back on track. omicron wiped us off track because everything slowed down and we weren't able to do the hiring and training that we hoped. we are now perfectly back on track again which is very good news. the director of transit will be providing an update later about

what we expect in terms of the next round of service restoration. >> director lai: thank you. >> chair borden: i will move to director hinze. >> director hinze: i wanted to tag on to director lai's question about the hiring. this may be more of technical question for director ackerman. you did mention at the beginning of your report, i think there was a 250 number in there somewhere. it was a number wasn't the city number. do we know what classifications of the jobs? >> director tumlin: we do. the biggest set of hiring now is transit operators because that is who we need in order to restore transit service. we are hiring effectively every single job category in the agency. we have 1000 vacancies. they are everywhere

every single team is overworked. that has been part of our challenge figuring out what do we need to move forward that's most urgently. >> director hinze: not all operators but the bulk of them. we are getting some movement in other classifications in the agency? >> director tumlin: in the six weeks from march 1st to mid-april, we hired 69 transit operators and 94 other people. >> director hinze: thank you. i want to compliment everyone who represented the agency on a weekend at the career fair. i heard some folks that people really showed out for that.

i want to tag on to my colleague's comments around j.f.k. and commend the staff for their technical work and really analyzing the streets and figuring out sort of the best path forward in terms of plan that we could give to the board of supervisors that's sustainable and successful for folks. i know people in the disability community will be holding the agency accountable for some of the disability commitment. thank you, chair. >> director tumlin: we do expect to be held accountable. i am very grateful for the work

from the mayor's office of disability and as well as the hundreds of advocates that we spoke to through this process. we are firmly committed to assisting the recreation and parks department and following through on all of their accessibility commitments so that every part of the park is accessible. >> director hinze: thank you. >> chair borden: director eaken. >> vice chair eaken: couple of point bees. on the hiring piece, director tumlin, i wanted to ask how are we maximizing opportunities to advance and make real opportunities for existing staff? i know it's not always possible. it feels like that goes to morale and institutional knowledge, more seemless on boarding. just good all around. >> director tumlin: one of the upsides to having a thousand vacancies in your organization,

many of those vacancies are supervisors and managers. what this has created is tremendous upward career path opportunities for our existing staff. as a public agency, we don't promote people necessarily. we do s allow them to compete for higher ranked jobs. people who have a deep understanding of san francisco and the sfmta and how we work compete exceedingly well for those supervisorial and management job. director ackerman did provide me with the statistics about the fact that the vast majority of our supervisor and manager jobs are being taken by people who are already at the agency. certainly when i'm out there in the field talking to our people, our workforce is very well aware that there are advancement opportunities right now at

sfmta. >> vice chair eaken: thank you for that. on the j.f.k. update, i will strongly endorse the need to create a safe connection between the panhandle and j.f.k. if -- i see people make so many questionable decisions. you're kind of like looking at the car. it's just a really big mess and the contrast between what we've create the on j.f.k. and that intersection is strong. any timeline on those improvements? >> director tumlin: part of it will depend on the fate of our general obligation bond in june. i do know that the recreation and parks department is pursuing some grant funding for that. we also want to resolve the similar gap that exist from mlk to lincoln to great highway to

connect park. >> vice chair eaken: i love the muni move view campaign. is there anything the board can do to support that campaign? >> director tumlin: continue doing what you do. i'm grateful for how you're involved in your communities. continue listening to community members what are their concerns and what is making them hesitant to ride transit and what can we

do in order to help bring people back to transit and promote transit. >> vice chair eaken: then finally, just taking a like at that taylor and turk intersection on google map, we noticed we put in the right turn or red treatment. that's part of tenderloin changes we immediate. there's a series of daylighting and changes that we've made. i'm curious, you said it's still under investigation. any time you have to share those reports with us, i would appreciate any reflections you have on if we only done this, if we had this. what we learn as much as we possibly learn from these, i feel our best practices are already in place. i wonder how you make sense of this tragedy. >> director tumlin: one of the frustrations with the vision zero report, we report to you immediately which is often in advance of the san francisco police department issuing their

public findings. it is inappropriate for us to talk about what we believe happened in advance of confirmation of that. because there can be liability issues not just for us but for the people involved in the crash. we do our work -- our internal staff work in advance for us to talk about what has happened. oftentimes, what happened was a result of somebody doing something they shouldn't been doing. there's not an engineering solution for aside from bringing the speeds down to something closer to 10 or 15 miles an hour. so much traffic safety work is about speed. in part because of the design tolerance of the human body is the running speed, which is

about 12 miles an hour. our bodies are designed to withstand a crash at about that speed. as speed increases the force of impact varies by velocity. i don't want to give you the long vision zero lecture. one thing we may want to do is less frequently do a vision zero retrospective. >> chair borden: i have a question. with the most recent variant,

there's a huge uptick in cases how we continuing contingency planning? i'm concerned about the muni campaign. i'm also worried about the variant and people not being able to work and us missing runs runs. >> director tumlin: all we do is continue to follow the data and very carefully adhere to whatever guidance we're getting from the san francisco department of public health. we have closely followed whatever the department of public health told us to do. that has been successful in making sure that our workforce, covid transmission rate has stayed lower than the regional average in part because our people have followed the rules. that our workforce is nearly 100% vaccinated. if there is another surge, we

will getting new instructions from d.p.h. we'll follow them. that may result in service mx. we've been through this before. we know exactly what to do now. one of the things that the pandemic has taught us is our place of deep resilience and how to make adjustments in realtime. we will continue to adjust based upon the conditions. >> chair borden: at this time we'll open up to public comment. members of the public either in the room or online who like to comment on any of the items that director tumlin discussed and the questions from board members, now is the time to do so. if you're in the room, please go to the microphone or line up. we'll call people online after we get through people in the room. >> i'm mark rueberg, san

francisco taxi worker alliance. i want to comment on the j.f.k. decision. taxi worker alliance we thought was modest and sensible request for modification. that was to give taxis access to the music concourse and the museums through 8th avenue. we think this is actually all the more important now that access to the park and to that area of the park, it has been limited. it's very difficult mostly impractical for taxis to serve that area of the park if they have to go around by way of fulton, which are very often very congested streets. it means there's going to be

less service in the park. that serve is all the more important. the 44 bus uses the same route we will be asking for. taxi uses is not a swarm of taxis or flood of taxis. it will be an occasional thing will taxi will enter through 8th avenue and turn right and have access to the museums.

>> chair borden: next speaker come on up. >> good afternoon. concerning the report, i'm looking forward to the car free golden gate park. i can walk down the j.f.k. and these other paths without having worried about cars that go much faster than me. we got to do something about striping and signing it. there are people who pedal their bikes fast and scooters and skateboards and electric bikes which i enjoy and mention head of steam power bike. that's a new one on me. i have to look that up. i'm looking forward to enjoying this. i think that golden gate park should be for everybody.

not just people who have automobiles. i like to hear more about this hate is a virus campaign. it's very important work. i hope it would include me. i'm different. i want fully to be included on the system. i think it shouldn't be about us specific subset of people. it should be a way to create a safer more welcoming system for everyone. i am looking forward to more people working for muni. i think the city and county of san francisco is a good place to work. can't say i ever worked in -- for the federal government yes. not for the city. we want to get and keep people in this work because i want the

muni to be there for me. been riding it for over a decade. let's keep going with the work. thank you. >> chair borden: thank you. any additional members of the public who are in the room who like to speak? seeing none, we'll move to those online. >> clerk: we do have 12 callers in the queue. first caller. >> caller: good afternoon commissioners. now that j.f.k. car free, it's time to deal with fulton street. the commissioners who live in the richmond go to fulton street sunday afternoon see how crowded it is. time for a transit lane only. that seems to be the people i talk to from from ocean beach would help solve that problem.

i'm glad to hear mr. tumlin say that m.t.a. is going to take over the management of the garage. i think that's good. you can drive in the garage for 15 minutes without paying a fee or maybe when you're on walking j.f.k. go down and see that garage. it's very depressing. i couldn't find the a.d.a. places. i hope when m.t.a. takes over, they'll put lights in there and make it not so depressing. i went in there on a weekday, --

[ indiscernible ] there's less cars in there than five fingers on my hand. i'm looking forward m.t.a. taking over the garage making it more friendly and accessible. >> caller: hello. this is a question for the taxi department. the main question is, our medallion, the price will be dropped because we cannot provide medallion price.

with the overhead, lot of it getting higher.

i want to know who is going to take over the [ indiscernible ] >> chair borden: i want to note to the caller, the item about medallion is not on the agenda. we're not able to answer questions that are unrelated to what was already discussed. >> caller: hello. good afternoon. first people calling in today, this is item number 7. not number 9 is the one you want

to address commission on other issues. first shout out three ramp taxi drivers who got honored today by annette -- annette williams and her staff. the next related to all the cab drivers should be honored especially those who worked during day accept the paratransit debit card. we also have to deal with portable wheelchairs as well as walkers and the people shopping and belongings. we should all be honored. our cost have gone up why we have been shouting six months to allow the passenger to tip us more on the app -- not on the app, tip us more through the debit card. it's not happening. i'm paying $10 to $15 or more in

gas. it's ridiculous that the m.t.a. is so heartless in this area. j.f.k. drive, i'm echoing what mark said. going to the garage is not an answer. we won't do it unless you make us employees. the park supposed to be for everyone. including seniors and people with mobility issues. that's not what's happening now. last but not least, these scooters. turk and taylor is an intersection. it takes reckless scooter walking on the sidewalk and ignoring the lights for this to happen. please more enforce. of the scooter users. >> chair borden: next speaker please.

>> caller: i wanted to add my voice to the call from senior disability action in favor of extending the mask mandate on muni. we've all seen how crowded some of the buses have gotten. transit is an essential public service and vulnerable people shouldn't feel forced to choose. we need to include everyone. i ask you to follow the lead of bart and public health authorities both federal and state level and i strongly recommend that on transit. thank you. >> chair borden: next speaker please. >> caller: i call in support for the parking zone in the mission

bay. [ indiscernible ] >> chair borden: this is not the right item for that. that's item number 9. right now we're talking about the director's report. >> caller: sorry about that.

>> chair borden: note to rest of the callers, right now we're on item number 7. which is director's report with special recognition, we talked about hiring activities, we talked about the muni moving we talked about vision zero. if you want to address those items now is the time. otherwise please call in and under item number 9 or press one under item 9. we can address any issue under the jurisdiction of this body that's not on today's agenda. >> caller: good afternoon. thank you for having me. i am speaking to the director's report which was quite difficult to listen to. san francisco m.t.a. vision is a city of diverse and vibrant neighborhoods connected by

space, reliable, affordable, transportation for all. allowing mask requirements to end on muni and s.f. paratransit is creating less space and less reliable transportation for riders and workers. as immunocompromised person who is treated with treatments, i consulted with my doctors about riding on muni after the mac requirement is removed. i told him it was extremely risk risky and should be avoided. my 4-year-old child is starting to associate with bus on the street. it is heart breaking. public transportation is an essential service unlike other indoor activities that are optional. therefore, it's your duty to ensure safety is paramount. the reality is masks helps protects everyone against the spread of this airborne

infection. not requiring this measure takes transmission of covid-19 infections easier. more cases means more incidents of long covid and more preventible deaths. mask requirements can create a safer more reliable transit system. you have the authority to realign by restoring mask requirements. >> chair borden: next speaker please. >> caller: hello. i'm an organizer disability

action. i'm calling to respond to the director's report. it was very difficult to hear a report that essentially went on as if we're not living in a pandemic still until the issue of masking was brought up at the end. i wonder where ridership is down and why thousands of jobs is empty when the safety of riders and drivers is ignored and imperilled by the sfmta director and board. our members are senior and people of disabilities all ages who no longer feel safe riding muni in san francisco. these are people who lived their whole lives for our city and can no longer get to rallies, to public meetings, to events, to doctors appointments to grocery shop to run errands because of the policies that sfmta had put in place no longer requiring masks. it's unconscionable.

director tumlin say the sfmta has been following the data. i wonder how that's consistent with san francisco having highest test positivity rate in the state of california right now. if you're following the data, you will be raring masks for everyone, drivers and riders alike on muni buses, subways and paratransit. people with disabilities are able to get to dialysis appointments. it's disgusting that you guys are priority responding to the mayor pressure instead of responding to the needs of your drivers and riders. there was a recent outbreak of sfmta headquarters. considering that, how on earth you will be able to run a functioning muni system without requiring masks. please reconsider. thank you.

>> chair borden: next speaker. >> caller: please follow bart and reinstate mask mandates. if we don't, our hospitals are going to get overwhelmed and even the funerals will get overrun. i have autism and it gives me a very weak immune system. i'm immunocompromised too. not enough vitamin d as well. >> chair borden: does that conclude your comment? >> caller: yes. >> chair borden: next speaker please. >> caller: hi, i'm calling in senior disability action.

eye -- i urge you to bring mask mandate back to the muni. we're still in the middle of the pandemic. it's not acceptable that you might catch covid because you took a bus trip with no mask mandate. it's extremely small ask to keep our communities safe. please keep riders and operators safe. please bring back the mask mandate. thank you. >> caller: good afternoon. i'm a muni operator. i would like to suggest that the muni move campaign should consider highlighting the 44 o'shaughnessy route that connects to the golden gate park and museums and new j.f.k.

promenade. i like to take a moment to encourage the introduction of the mask mandate. i'm currently over covid. it is keeping me from serving public as a transit operator. i think that mask mandates can prevent this in the future. thank you. >> chair borden: thank you. next speaker please. we can hear your repeat -- please go to the next line please. please mute. that will be helpful.

>> caller: can you hear me now? >> chair borden: there's a slight delay between the tv and us speaking. >> caller: thank you m.t.a. board members. my name is alissa. i just heard in the director's report that d.p.h. feels the pandemic is ebbing while media places san francisco in the red zone. i retired from teaching last june after 50 years. i waited 75 years to be a grandma. it's a precious role. my grandson is a 1-year-old, too young for a vaccine. my husband is 77, disabled with multiple health conditions. riding on muni with unmasked passengers puts me and my family

at great risk. during the mask mandates i found other passengers to be diligent about masking. i never saw muni operators or station personnel need to act in a policing role. passengers did the right thing. please follow the board bart and reinstating the mask mandate and keeping us safe. thank you. >> caller: hi. i heard the director mention that if there's another surge. well, i don't know if you're aware, we're in another surge. community transmission is currently high positivity is higher now than it was at the height of the delta surge. this is all coming from the c.d.c. website. i e-mailed my rep. i'm not making this up. i twitter and tag everything that i can.

no one seem to be listening that covid is still present. everyone is at risk for long covid no matter how healthy and vaxed you are. if you're getting bad information from the public health department, somebody really needs to do something serious about that. this is serious. this is not over. please take this seriously. thank you. >> chair borden: next speaker. >> caller: good afternoon m.t.a. board. thank you for it meeting. i'm totally in favor of the no cars in golden gate park. but at the same time, we have to realize that we do have to have

a limited access to take the paratransit customers. i'm happy there are representatives there from the paratransit accessibility team. it is not that big of a ask for to you allow us to use the transit lane along with the muni bus. we're not going to the park in droves. also, elderly and handicap, they have a long day with their grandkids in the park. they can't walk out to the fulton and lincoln. we need to have couple of spots for taxi so they can easily get out of the park. do you really care about the public of san francisco and the handicap and the elderly, you must make that change. it's okay to add something to your decision and make an improvement. we are here voicing our opinion because it's real. it needs to happen.

it's just absurd you guys won't allow us to drop off somebody in their 80s on a hot day in front of the museum. we beg of you guys please add in a limited access for us. we're not circling the park trying to look for fares. if you give us a couple of spots for taxi stands, we can just post up and not drive just wait for somebody to come out. please reevaluate your decision, totally in favor of the decision you made. i agree not to have cars in the park. thank you. >> clerk: you have five more callers. >> caller: good afternoon. this is joe. thank you for having me today. i e-mailed you last night about what thought about your mask

mandate, lack of mask mandate. if you heard from other callers, step up to the plate. it's time for you to find your inner stefani. if i want a woman, i want to be -- i want to be tough and brave and resourceful and fight this bloody covid. step up, man up and get this

done. why do we have to say we have to make mask mandate go away. i don't think there's a lot more that have to be said. director tumlin i'm a fan of yours. if you need -- you need to lead now. thank you for taking my call. [ indiscernible ]

>> chair borden: we're on item number 9. please call back in 10 minutes. thank you. next speaker. >> caller: hello. i'm from the senior disability action. i like to talk about the mask mandate. we can go to google online and go to san francisco covid infection rate and look at the graph. our infection rate has start going up ever since the mayor

had released whatever it is, the general mask mandate. it's been going up ever since. if you look at the graph, our infection rate in san francisco is at the same rate as mid-february. we are going backwards. it seems very strange not have a mask mandate at this time. it will make it even worse for us and continue on with this covid. i'm tired of it. let's do the right thing to the very end so we can get rid of it or at least it's not at a high rate. second thing about, yes, the j.f.k. drive is closed. it doesn't make any sense to allow paratransit on there but not paratransit taxi. it's not accessible now.

at least have the taxis go on to j.f.k. drive. over 55% of paratransit users use the taxi. it makes sense to continue on with the taxi service on to j.f.k. thank you. >> caller: hello. i'm betty trainer. i'm the board president as senior disability action. i wanted to say people ahead of me have spoken eloquently about the urgent need to reinstate the mask mandate on muni buses in san francisco. covid levels are rising in san francisco. covid can be spread on crowded buses. i take the 38 geary bus

regularly it's getting so crowded people are returning to work, students are returning to school. people just starting to get out more. many disabled people and senior srely on public transit. we are extremely vulnerable to becoming infected with covid virus. please reinstate the mask mandate for the safety of our bus drivers and passengers. >> caller: hello. i'm a san francisco resident. i'm calling to keep the mask requirement. not everything has to be back to pre-covid.

it's not over. this does greatly impacts immunocompromised but this benefits everyone. flu cases have gone down so significantly. wearing masks really should be the new normal. even if surges go down, we're guaranteed perfume surges and other variants. i stand in solidarity with previous callers. please support in keeping the mask mandate. >> caller: i think you need an orientation on the pandemic.

especially on the two -- [ indiscernible ] why do we have the c.d.c.? you're following the directions of somebody who just telling you to do something and you're going to do it? some of you should resign. this is madness. we need to keep our masks on for the sake of our children! do you get it or not? also you need to -- you have to have the ability to do an assessment. if you are leading the m.t.a., everybody should wear the mask. we have -- it's very dangerous.

read the reports from the c.d.c. get an orientation on how virus evolves. otherwise step down from the board. you're putting people in harm's way. thank you very much. >> chair borden: next speaker please. >> caller: hello directors. happy tuesday. i'm with richmond family s.f. i'm calling to support senior disability action request to reinstate the mask mandate i'm getting e-mailer my preschooler was exposed to covid. i've been getting them throughout the past few years. it's still very scary for those of us with children under five. please reconsider. i want to shot out --

[ indiscernible ] i'm very excited that the m.t.a. taking over the management of the garage. it's so underutilized. if you haven't been down there, go down there. drive through it and ride your bike. you have to check it out. it's an amazing space. thank you so much. have a good day. >> caller: my name is lisa church. i wanted to thank everyone on this staff for your work on j.f.k. i know it was very hard. i'm very excited to have it in place. i cross down to be there all the time. i'm very happy to hear about all the hiring. i hope that transit continues. mostly, i'm calling in to say i'm a daily muni rider.

i very much hope you listen to all the previous callers and reinstate the mask mandate. there's no reason for it to be removed. i really hope that you help us keep san francisco safe and all of us that depend on muni to be able to get on the buses and feel comfortable. >> caller: hi. i want to ensure that we continue to represent our seniors and our vulnerable communities while they're taking public transit. it's important that we continue to do that. one of my main concerns is to ensure that it's the polite thing to do to wear a mask inside a transit. we can think about summer is right around the corner. there will be an increase in

ridership during this time. tourism will be up. i'm thinking there's going to be lot more folks wanting to use public transit. in that time pier, there's going to be folks that will rely on that, vulnerable folks. we have to ensure they are safe riding it. making sure daily chores that they have to do t taking care of their families just like anybody else, making sure they are safe. let's keep people safe. this is a public we're talking about. no life is lesser than another person's life. let's make sure we're doing that in a safe capacity. >> clerk: that was our last caller. i have one new speaker card.

>> hello, good afternoon board of directors. i'm here to talk about taxis getting access to golden gate park, j.f.k. drive. that will be wonderful. there has to be a way to carve it out. two years in the pandemic, it's really no imposition to carry a mask in your pocket and wear it on transit. that saves even one life, i think it's important for everyone to think about. another caller mentioned there's like pressure from the mayor's office. forget about that. it's about people's livelihood and about their health and safety. thank you very much. >> chair borden: we are done with public comment. we'll close public comment. people make comments about pressure. that's not what the truth is. i caution people from making

judgments about things that they don't have firsthand knowledge about. next item. >> clerk: citizens advisory counsel report. no report today. item 9, public comment. before we begin, i want to share that we did receive late ask for language assistance. we'll be calling in to our language line, service via phone to provide translation. for any members in the public in the room requesting language services in cantonese, spanish or any other language, please see caroline here. she'll organize the groups and do a translations that way. >> chair borden: great. >> clerk: i do have speaker cards.

if you need language assistance, please see caroline to the side here of the room by the front doors. >> i'm from the coalition on homelessness and today -- a year ago, on may 4th, after hearing compelling testimony from folks who live in their vehicles and their advocates, the board asked the sfmta staff to report on racial and financial equity issues around poverty. it has not been done yet. los angeles stopped all poverty tows two months ago in response to a federal lawsuit. sfmta has been sued for poverty tows this year. in -- that case is ongoing. has the board received an update on this case?

why does the public not know what's going on? does the board know? i wanted to show you that our stop poverty tows coalition sent a letter on march 2nd drawing attention to these lawsuits to resolve this litigation before it continues been the city stands to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees for practice that really does not make sense. we want sfmta staff to provide an update to the board about why it has not ended these poverty tows in light of the board's clear disapproval ongoing litigation and guidance from l.a. where this cruel practice has already been halted. thank you.

>> thank you. i wanted to speak to the situation with the fly wheel apps failure to make payments to drivers in a regular and reliable consistent fashion. in some instances this has gone on for years. some instances drivers are owed thousands of dollars. i don't mean to personalize this. i'm not speaking here for myself. i hope i'm speaking for many other drivers. this is really happening. at one point, i was owed over $1000 and for over a year. right now, i'm getting paid may be once every three weeks. it's been almost four weeks now

since the last shift i was paid for. this is simply unacceptable. it's particularly acute right now because fly wheel has this deal well uber. they will be in charge of the payments to the drivers. this is really important that this gets settled. the only protections that we have are the protections of regulation. [ please stand by ]

we wanted to also respond to some of the things that director

mentioned and i was talking about the citizens advisory committee of mission bay and i have kevin, executive director ever ucsf campus planing and theories a. executive vice president of alexandria real estate which is in charge of the hi-tech knowledge companies which have parking and donnaly ler a she tired gas and electric company and resident of one of the condos and in mission bay which has parking and yoyo chan, vp of government and community relations for the golden state warriors which uses our suite for parking. sarah davis resident of one of the house boats which has parking spaces for them and vice president of san francisco giants, michael free man

representing the condos and toby levin the only who represents the affordable housing community but this is only for mission housing and development corporation and it's only one there's eight of us and you know a lot of them are here. i just hope you guys listen to all of us, thank you. >> thank you, next speaker, please. >> i'm with one thing that was communicated by the director of streets, the name slipped my mind now. he said he was saying about how the rpp is not intended for surgery groups of people and he include us in this group and if you look at the -- what is it,

sorry. the planning, the plan for the area, it says that the -- i'll read it. wait a minute. i can't find it. sorry. basically it's saying that i the said it's not for outsiders it's to keep cars from people outside of the neighborhood off the streets and which we're not, we're actually, we live there and it didn't encloud -- it's for our commuters to keep those cars off their streets and that's not what we are. we actually live there and we need to park there. we have to. it's not a choice for us. it's kind of a bad situation. hopefully something can be done. thank you. >> thank you for speaking.

>> next speaker, please. >> yes, hello. my name is monique and i live in mission bay. we are here to request for residential stickers for our cars because the parking meeters are becoming -- it's a hardship. we're all low income housing, seniors, and families with cars and i understand it san francisco wants to promote people using public transportation but it's not a reality when you have small children and you have to go to the store. the fact that we have to live there in our residency and the parking is like $8 an hour, during special events, that are back-to-back, not only that, they're mandating for people to

have credit cards and things like that and sometimes they might not have that going on right now so i want to speak up, not just for myself but my whole entire community and the children and the seniors. thank you. >> thank you >> hello my name is evelyn and i'm here also requesting a solution for us in mission bay. for parking. i have two small children and we'll use public transportation if it wasn't because i have two small children that i need to drop off, pick up every single day from daycare so it is really difficult, especially when we have to pay for such high amounts of money and we're just

asking for a solution for us. thank you. that's all i have to say. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> next speaker, please. >> i'll read off a few games. row see o yemen does, leah chen. >> thank you. >> >> so i live in the mission bay area and i'm retired but i still am pretty much involved in like

sports and par participating in sports and because i have no income, i cannot afford the $8 an hour parking. so i'm hoping that the government would be able to do something with the parking rate to help out as seniors retired seniors. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker, please. >> hello, i'm (inaudible).

[voice of interpreter] >> i live in the mission bay area as well. the reason why i have brought my kids here is that to try to convince the government to help us with finding affordable parking. we have like a 80-year-old at home and a 5-year-old and so for us sort of middle income

families, it's very difficult to afford like an $8 an hour parking at the facilities. hopefully we're hoping the government would sort of look into solving our parking problems and giving us what we should be -- what we rightfully park -- giving us a more affordable way to park. >> next speaker, please. >> >> i live in mission bay area so

i just think that is not really designed for us as a low income family and there's no way to take out building from the ground and put it somewhere else and those people who go to the park or chase center pay like $500 for a ticket or they don't care if they pay $8 for parking but it's like we forced to pay like them and so, i think i sent all i really needed to say. >> thank you. >> i'll read off a few more names. roberta moore, chante'. ben and alena dupres. >> i came out from civic center

earlier today with garbage. his services i would rather bart than muni because it's cleaner. your trains are filthy. your buses are filthy. this is ridiculous. during a pandemic they should not be dirty but back to another situation. when you walk from mission bay down to fourth and king, you guys got no stop signs, at fourth and long beach. you got one stop sign. we also take our lives at fourth and long bridge. and there needs to be something done about that, man. i got got ran over at 9:00 this morning. because you got one stop sign. there needs to be something done at fourth and long bridge. thank you. >> thank you. >> next speaker, please.

is there someone in the queue based on the cards you called? go ahead, sir. >> i don't think i'm in chronological order of the names you called but my name is ben, taxi driver. i wanted to put something on this thing. i think i figured it out. so, i don't know if it's going to work. great. i've been happening out these flyers to drivers all week and it's really been an eye-opening experience it seems like there's this like organized campaign of wage theft by the app and the photo of the driver here frankie fox they owe him over $1200 since the beginning of the pandemic so for two years he tries calling and he can't get anyone and he couldn't make it here today so i wanted to speak to frankie's experience and there are dozens and dozens

maybe hundreds of drivers like frankie out there who have not been paid by the app. frankie's solution is to decline every order they send because he has no trust that he will get paid because they vote him for so long. so this is the flyer i've been handing out to the drivers this week. and i don't know if we need to get david chiu, city attorney involved but it appears as though beer getting into the realm of organized campaign of wage theft from drivers and it's unfort a we thought fly well was our best weapon against uber but if they're keeping the driver's money it's a big problem. so, you know, taxi and accessible services she said to the c.e.o. a couple weeks ago at the meeting you need to pay your

drivers so i want the board of directors, please hold this sfmta accountable because we condition have this stand. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker, please. >> good afternoon, directors. president of flywheel technologies. first i want to thank you very much foray proving the up front taxi fare pilot that will start very soon. we think that this is going to be a transformative pilot that is going to change the way taxis and ride shares work in more of a collaborative fashion, through out the united states and maybe globally. i do want to speak some things here today. i have never personally dealt with such personal harassments since we announced this strategic partnership with uber.

the reason i'm speaking here today is to make it very clear, our company is not the enemy. we have stayed loyal to the taxi industry, trying to modernize the taxi industry to make e hailing and smartphone booking a standard service. unfortunately, a small minority of drivers want to go backwards in the way that taxis used to service the city. do you remember? trying to get a taxi in the richmond district and so fourth. the future is smartphone booking in e-hailing. on top of that, we've been able to partner with uber to provide their customers to taxis to be serviced as taxi rides. it's quite as ston issuing what astonishing, weservice 30,000 t3 cities in the united states and there's a common theme we're seeing. the industry is still backwards

in the technology it needs to be competitive. so although we're suffering harassment about changes we're trying to if you tell in the pu, we're pro taxi and i want your support in the future, to make sure taxis can be competitive going forward. thank you. >> if you. next speaker, please. >> good afternoon. my name is izzy ola from fly well technologies. so as you know, it's a app, the modern app that connects risers to taxi drivers. but i want to give you facts about fly wheel. so to date, we have booked over $5 million -- 5 million rides in san francisco, taxi rides and of that, $100 million has been paid to drivers. i just want to you get an

understanding of the impact we have in the city when it comes to driving taxi rides. if we didn't have the fly wheel app i'm sure those rides would go to the ride share companies because we provide that modern experience, what you expect in today's world, right. but yes, there are drivers that are owed money. and a lot of that has to do with the way we process transactions and deal with charge backs and fraud. we don't pay drivers until we get paid. it's the way we've always run the model. so there are times when there's fraud of the rider and we've seen a lot of crazy stuff and drivers commit fraud. we have to hold it and resolve it and it's time-consuming, most of the time we resolve it but there is sometimes we don't and we still pay the drivers. not enough is said about how we pay the drivers when there's fraud and we don't get paid. we get charge back fees for this. our biggest fault and i'll take

it on is we don't communicate with the drivers. when there's a fraud and we're dealing with it, we don't say hey, you are not getting paid because we are dealing with this. we don't do that. we're trying to solve the root cause of the fraud in the timely payments and the good news here which i've been telling the drivers and we already have over 100 drivers registered is our new payment platform providers and it's a company called lien. >> if you are around later i would love to talk to you. we can't do it because it's not on the agenda but we have a lot of questions about flywheel. next speaker, please. >> they didn't call my name yet. >> i did, go ahead. >> all right. >> i don't feel like standing up there for a long time.

thank you, again. for those of you who haven't met or seen me now you have. i'm alena dupres, she and her. now you get to see what i look like and that i am the face of an ordinary user of muni. i represent simply myself and therefore i can speak about what i want to and i'm an independent voice here and i think it's very important to keep working on clipper because if we really want to save money for people of all economics and demographic strata, clipper is the way to go because you will always save money so we have to work on that and become an all clipper-based system. how can we be a san francisco that is sometimes i wonder if we're in tune with what is going

on in the world. i have flown 24 times since last june. every time i get my boarding pass, on my phone, and i see it all the time in the airports. and i have the clipper app so i have not used it because i have the reduced fare clipper card. i mentioned to you, please do not forget those of us who have reduced fare clipper cards. we pay less but we're not evading fair. we're still paying into the system. it's a real legitimate program. i have mine because i'm a service connected veteran over 50%. so i ask you not forget about those of us who use the reduce clipper card. i'll show it to you if you want to see it some day. i ask again that you will be inclusive. that you will have me on your system just like everything else. i pay my fare and follow the rules of conduct and i hope to be back in a meeting soon.

thank you. >> thank you. >> next, please. >> good afternoon. my name is manual garcia and i live in mission bay. i support my neighbors because we have a lot of problem with the parking. so right now i don't have i problem with that because my wife, she's got an injury and she's disabled so we have the plate. i know a lot of people have a problem with the tickets and a lot of people cannot pay the ticket too. the only thing is we need to know if we can help us with that. i don't know what to do to explain that. >> thank you, very much. >> thank you. next speaker, please. >> >> hello, my name is rosio mendoza. we want a request for a solution

that can help us. right now, the parking situation is very hard. meeters run from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. monday to saturday and sometimes on sundays. so you know, we understand that mta has said that area was designed for parking meeters so maybe something else can be done to accommodate us. maybe we can get a special card and a list maybe for free after 6:00 because usually most parking areas, meter parking areas run from 9:00 to 6:00 so maybe that would be a rely. at 6:00 they can stop and other visitors can pay the meeters but for us anything, at this point anything can be a help for us. even if you want to park far away, which is what i do, the lowest free area is 20 minutes away and it's only four hours. even if you mark there you have to go back every four hours to move it and if you work from home or you have kids it's hard.

maybe you can do the work but little kids they're like no. that's too far for me, mommy. so, yeah, thank you. [applause] next speaker, please. [please stand by]

>> the other problem is even greater. several drivers report not being paid for one or two years. amounts ranging from little over $100 to well over $1000. i want to tell you about a driver named joe. he's 70 years old. he retired since covid. all of his working life, joe worked hard. he took one day a year off work, new year's day. one day a year. he bought and paid for his medallion. how could this happen? he met with us. we know they want to pay people. one of the things he told us they didn't have the money. what happened to this money? it wasn't their money. we also call on you to appoint

new mutual to oversee the process. all drivers was significantly delayed payments. these drives have been owed money for two years. >> caller: i would like to see a medical finding done on the challenge of walking a quarter of a mile to the bus stop for

seniors and disable. we really have to do a medical finding on this. i have been issuing this request for years and it's been ignored. the second thing i want member of the board to take a chain or walker and walk a quarter of a mile to the bus stop and see the impact on that. the board is really been ignoring this. it's detrimental seniors to disable. this is totally unfair. we are a significant portion of the city population. you have to take this under

consideration. that's all i have to say. >> chair borden: next speaker please. >> caller: hi. this is hamilton carter. i live in district 11. we don't have a car so we take the muni every day. we don't have any other way to get around town. it's tough on foot. with cases rising again, i have a pulmonary condition and unsafe for me to ride muni with unmasked riders. i like to request in muni bring the mask mandates back.

it impacts the driver. we sat and watched after we got e-mail after e-mail that the bus routes weren't going to run. for us inconvenience that the bus didn't run. we had to sit there and think the driver has covid. that's kind of seems bad. please bring masks back to protect the riders. >> caller: hello. this is barry toronto again. great, first, i need to give a shot out to the investigator. there are lot of hard working employees at the m.t.a. taxi

access and mobility service. there's nobody that works harder than peter wood. please honor him at your next meeting. he is fantastic. the next issue is we have a problem at the baseball game. they start threatening writing tickets for us doing our job and picking up at the ballpark. we got a problem here. somebody is looking into this situation. we should not be abused and threatened by p.c.o.s. i love izzie. izzie is great. he has done a great job. stop using the word rideshare. you're not taxi friendly if you use ride share. you cutting off your nose to spite your face by the fact that so many drivers don't trust the

app company. because they haven't been paid at all or in a timely manner. therefore, it hurts people who want to use the app including an sfmta official who called me frantic. that's the problem. it is fantastic. all i ask at least get started by expediting, bringing more drivers over to using the app. let's do it. i volunteered to work with izzie to get the drivers accommodated to the app. it's fantastic. it puts confidence back in the drivers getting paid on time. thank you very much. >> caller: hello. just noting it's interesting looks like the director left during public comment. i don't know. maybe that's a trick of the camera. it doesn't make me feel heard.

first getting more ridership on muni and helps with vision zero by getting cars off the road. why not work towards free muni have a trial run and see the impact free muni would have. cities like fresno, california with a republican there have tried it during the pandemic. i like to see some hard data on why free muni isn't a goal. second, speaking of cost, -- [ indiscernible ] i like to see the data how much it's costing us for muni to harass certain people on certain muni lines. maybe if they weren't afraid of fare checks we'll have more ridership. mass transit should be the goal for trying to curve the climate crises. we don't have a plan, all of this is bull.

>> caller: hello. i'm responding for a translation. >> clerk: we would need to call back in. >> chair borden: i think director cajina can help. [speaking spanish]

>> director cajina: i'm a resident of mission bay. i am requesting help with the ticket situation and fines. the $8 an hour is too much. i'm please asking for help. i'm inquiring about residential permits. the financial burden is quite stressful. it is more expensive to pay parking than it is to live in mission bay. >> chair borden: thank you. next speaker please. >> caller: my name is hanny. i live this district 11. without the mask mandate it's not safe for me to ride muni.

i also can't get vaccinated. please bring back the mask mandate. thank you. >> chair borden: next speaker please. are there additional callers. >> caller: hello. can you hear me? >> chair borden: yes, we can. >> caller: i'm a medallion holder 561. i drive for fly wheel cab. from january 2021 to january 2022, i was late in getting paid from flywheel to the amount by end of the year, they owed me $3208. in early march, i talked to

izzie about it. in march, i got deposited something like $2900. it took care of my payments from january 2021 to january 2022. i'm still owed money for january, february and march of this year. i'm still in the process of calculating how much i owe for april. here's the thing, fly wheel wants cab drivers to go ahead and work for uber to pick up uber passengers at below the meter rate. the main thing that our taxi cabs they give us an advantage over uber is that our rates stays the same. if you get in a cab on new year's eve or sunday morning that meter is still going to be the same rate.

if a person goes to call for a cab and uber cannot supply a driver, that person is going to call the cab and everyone knows this. for uber to ask fly wheel to pick up their drives, uber must be playing fly wheel a large amount of money in order for fly wheel to do that. is fly wheel getting paid by uber. >> chair borden: thank you so much sir. we are not able to answer those questions. thank you. >> caller: hi. this is adam in d6. i live in south selma. i wanted to call in and in strong support our neighbors in mission bay and the issues that they're having with parking and

their desire for residential parking permit. i understand the arguments about master plan design. here in south selma, we know from experience that sfmta has often overruled its own original master plan design. an example of that is on fourth street with the central subway line. fourth street was made two ways and designed so in original contract and drawing to be in compliance with state guidelines. sfmta decided not to do this has not implemented any mitigation measures. we regularly see cars driving the wrong way along fourth street. we regularly see illegal turns at fourth and brannon. sfmta has no desire to enforce any of this. despite repeated pleas by the neighborhood resident. the excuses that you make when

you tell the residents in mission bay that it's against the master plan to have residential permit parking, ring false. we know from experience that things are changed without residential input. things are changed for the benefit of sfmta and these changes do put people at risk. another example, a two lane alley but sfmta demands is actually going to handle three lanes of traffic. cars regularly and trucks regularly up on the sidewalk. these issues have been with the sfmta for years. decisions that have been made by this body is ignoring the local residents. thank you. >> caller: i'm calling in support of masks on muni

vehicles. anything you can do to reduce of risk of muni in the middle of pandemic is very important. ultimately, masks are a risk reduction mechanism. they're not perfect which means that the cleaner we have the air in the vehicles the better for everyone. particularly for people who cannot wear masks such as infants, people with breathing devices or small children. thank you. >> caller: hi. i drive fly wheel taxi.

on march, i received $154.70.

fly wheel still owe me $644.32. i hope fly wheel -- [ indiscernible ] >> caller: hi. i had difficulty calling in before. i hope i can talk about mask mandate. i'm calling in support bringing back the mask mandate on muni. i've been thinking a lot about safety during the pandemic, how about governor newsom will lift mask mandates and counties will follow and local businesses and organizations will follow. i think about how these decisions are based not on public health but rather on capitalism, ableism. on desire to return to normal. s.f. positivity is high.

we know case numbers are undercount given people are doing home rapid tests. we don't know how future variants will impact that rate. as someone who's had symptoms that overlap long covid, i would not wish that pain on my own worst enemy. i hope you will not fall to group think and to act in accordance with public health. please do the right thing and bring back the mask mandate. think about how you might feel later on in life. we're the a critical moment in time where you can make courageous decisions and not just go along with the group and be proud of the ethics and morals that you showed at this moment and the bravery. as a disabled person and care giver this mask mandate is

beneficial for everybody. pleases bring become the mask mandate. thank you. >> clerk: that was the last caller. >> chair borden: we'll close public comment. the hardest thing about public comment is that we are not able to have a discussion about the items that are brought before us. under the brown act, you have to publicly notice at a meeting what you will talk about so that members of the public who might be interested or able to be there and participate in the discussion. public comment is challenging because we've heard some things very much concern us. we definitely do want to figure out how we can work you from mission bay and work on those problems so staff will be following up. related to the taxi issue, the concerns about fly wheel are very disturbing. i think there are lot of questions that many of us have. i understand there's some things transitioning in the payments

area. that is another issue i think we would like to have addressed as a board. we cannot discuss at this hearing. i want everyone to know, we heard you loud and clear. we are working to have a discussion at the appropriate time so that members of public who aren't here today weren't participating can participate. thank you. next item. >> clerk: item 10, consent calendar. members of the public listening on the phone, if you wish to address a board, press star 3 so you can be added to the queue. please identify which item number you speaking to. 10.1 requesting the controller to allot funds to the sfmta inna

kovaleva. item 10.3, adopting a resolution making findings pursuant to ab3 ab361 to allow for continued remote meeting. item 10.5, authorizing the director to issue with the department of human resources joint request for proposals for workers compensation claims third party administration services.

to evaluate proposal and negotiate a contract with the highest rank proposer. that concludes the consent calendar. >> chair borden: directors any item you like to pull from the consent calendar. we'll open up to public comment. this is an opportunity for members of the public who have any comments on the items on our consent calendar. >> clerk: i have no speaker cards >> chair borden: is there a motion? >> director hinze: i move the item. denied please call the roll. [roll call vote] -- >> chair borden: can you please call the roll. [roll call vote] the consent calendar is approved. >> chair borden: regular calendar. >> clerk: item 11, presentation

and discussion on ridership van ness bus rapid transit performance, muni metro modernization renewal. >> chair borden: director, exciting news. >> i have some fantastic people here to deliver what i think is a lot of good news and also the shapings of good news. i'm going to make an attempt to speak from here and have them peek from the podium. >> chair borden: as long as you're on the microphone. >> it's a pleasure to share and present recent program initiatives in the transit division. i brought alexander -- our

transit performance manager and charles drain who our chief maintenance officer. they are just one of hundreds of people in the transit division and throughout the agency that are innovating right now and trying to work out lot of different thoughts. i will be talking about everything that we're doing to make the most of our current conditions. but also what we're doing to try to change and improve our feat. we are going to be covering ridership trends. i think there's a lot to learn from the ridership. there's some real pockets of optimism and we're very excited about that. we've also got some exciting preliminary data to share from

van ness b.r.t. we appreciate you coming out and celebrating that milestone. then take a deep dive into a number of interrelated initiatives designed to improve and optimize our rail service. we had an opportunity to go into the subway overnight. charles shared with me a nap is critical. that's a lesson learned if you're going to be on the sun u subway at 3:00 in the morning. take a nap at 5:00 p.m. it was incredible to see the energy and the collaboration and

the innovation that was going. what i don't have despite director tumlin's earlier advertisement is a really thorough update on the next steps for service restoration. we hope to have that in an upcoming meeting. we are aiming for july for the next round of service restorations. we will use the december plan as our guide for what you approve. we have so many moving variables right now. we are finally delivering most of our service. we are only missing about 3% of our runs each day. i would really like that to be zero percent. i'm concerned that as we continue to add service and to keep up with the growth and to make the connections, which is so important, that we don't grow

faster than we're able to hire and improve attendance and address some of the issues that are impacting us. we will be addressing that soon. i apologize that we don't have more specific details for you today. with that, i'm going to turn it over for the first part of the presentation to talk about ridership. >> hi. i'm here to talk about ridership. we are seeing steady climb over the last couple of months in ridership. we did take a hit with a combination of sort of the typical dip that was a bit more exaggerated during the holiday season and then we got hit again by omicron. we're back. we're finally back up above where we were in fall of 2021 until this past month had been

our high. that's some exciting news. today i actually want to talk about ridership on the weekend. we talk a lot about missing riders, missing commuters and lot of that is really focused on our weekday ridership. we've seen some interesting things in our weekday ridership recovery. i want to walk you through that. as of the first two weeks of april, we were at 67% of pre-pandemic ridership recovered on the weekends. which is bucking trends significantly higher than our weekday ridership recovery. which is also the strongest in the bay area. the 22 fillmore is an exciting

example -- this is one of those routes that we prioritized early on in the pandemic. we restored about 85 to 90% of the service hours very early on. we saw ridership rebound extremely fast on this route. this graph shows weekend ridership. weekday is excellent. we're at 96% recovered on weekdays as of end of march. -- i think it's a little bit higher now. we added a connection to mission bay. we extended the overhead wires into mission bay to do that. it shows that you can direct resources towards community needs. >> chair borden: i feel like

frequency is consistent. >> next we're going to go through three groups of routes. i grouped these routes by the type of service that they provide. these are the big routes. the 14r, 9r, 5, 5r and 49 and 8 are in our system. these all have above 60% ridership recovery. these all received substantial priority treatments over the past five years. the work that we did ahead of the pandemic i think really paid off provided a rapid a reliable system for people who are returning to transit or who never really left. lot of these routes you'll see in may good number of them are

above 50% of pre-pandemic ridership. these are riders that needed our system. they needed us to be there. we were providing that service for them throughout the pandemic. >> chair borden: i've been doing my part taking the 14 and 14r. [ laughter ] >> i'm a loyal 5, 5r rider. the next one shows some of the more community focused routes. the 22 does blows everyone else out of the water. that reroute really contributed. the 29 when i was talking with our service planning team was as bit of a surprise. we're doing outreach about additional improvements on that line. hopefully more success to come.

so our smaller and smallest routes i'm also a loyal 33 rider. they provide general mobility. on the weekends we're seeing that people are using them a lot to get around. their recovery has been really spectacular. connecting people to hospitals to recreation, to neighborhoods sort of across the city, it's been success story. that's it for ridership for now. that was a little bit of weekend ridership success. the next one is sort of very preliminary, i want to emphasize preliminary review of early van ness b.r.t. performance.

the top line items are -- we saw 13% increase in ridership during the first week. i can't express how big of a bump in ridership that is. travel time savings we're hoping will improve as riders get acclimated using the new red lanes. travel time variability to issue of reliability has decreased up

to 26% northbound and 55% southbound which is just numbers that are hard to find elsewhere. we'll continue to monitor this over time. we did do a quick preliminary review of travel time savings compared to april 2016. you can see again, by the different time periods, 7 to 9:00 a.m. there was 29% saving. the midday period 24% and evening rush hour was 23%.

really again very exciting, very preliminary numbers. >> former board member was reflecting today in preparation for this presentation. he wanted me to share that in 2016, this was a controversial decision. it wasn't easy for the board at that time to make. this is essentially the north-south freeway. it took a lot of bold initiatives on behalf of the board to make this decision. it is clearly paying off. that kind of continued leadership and support and really pushing for investments in transit and in transit

equity, we're just really grateful for it. i wanted to share that thought. i think it's easy once you -- [ indiscernible ] you can look at how easy that was. why don't we have 10 more of them. i want 10 more. >> chair borden: i'm hopeful -- what's interesting with the van ness b.r.t. it made it more being on the bus on mission street it's even more apparent like double parked cars slow you down. it will be interesting. it might create a new level of support for going bolder on mission street. >> i'm very optimistic for that. sean kennedy is going to come in a few weeks and talk about muni forward 2.0. which really envisions the second generation of projects where transit riders are only stopping at stops. which is very close to what

we've been able to achieve on van ness and what we like to be achieving system wide. the next thing that i wanted to talk about is our vision for modernizing the muni metro system. it is a complex process. it is not the rail system we would have designed in sin city. it is the rail system that we inherited from railroad and speculators and lot of people that had a lot narrower goals than what we have today. it is also our greatest transportation asset in the city. it moves millions of people a year and it is critical to both our economy and community

connections. what we envision for it is that it really is the best option for city wide trips. it supports our climate and environmental goals. it improves access, transportation related quality of life. it compliments and delivers on our vision zero goals. it's free of delay. the program is going to have both a surface element as well as subway congestion element. it's frequent and it's reliable like what we talked about with the bus system it's safe and accessible to all users. this addresses personal security as well as accessibility for everyone. the connectsf program is really the road map. for this work. we've kind of attempted with this graphic to capture some of

the major elements that we believe are needed for muni metro modernization. the subway renewal piece is the most complex. it is the investment in state of good repair this board affirmed in your recent budget decisions. it is also the muni forward surface rail program which we have under way and have made some progress on inner juta we

want to know when the vehicle leaves the yard, are we going to have a communication problem. that train can stay home today. right now we're finding out about it. we're in the miles of the portal. too late. can't help it. can't do anything about it. really the combination of simplifying the system, adding more surface priority through the train control system is fundamental to that train control project. we're really grateful to the transportation authority in caltrans planning grant that we received four doing some compete

planning studies we want to understand what element of this very expensive program can fall into m.t.a. core capacity program. we're working to defining that in the coming year and a half. we'll also delivering on some early wins in the subway and bringing the kind of precursor studies that we need to define the work. we're also not waiting for ten-year improvement program to address conditions in the subway. we saw tremendous improvement during covid primarily through the simplified schedule and all of the amazing work that charles and his team did during the shutdown to really try to

prevent breakdowns and other issues. we're trying to make that performance as transparent as possible. we know that you as a board when you made the decision to put the j back into the subway, ask us to track that work. we are doing that. it is all available at sfmta.com/subway/performance/dat a. some of the highlights are shown here. the most important metric that we have for subway health is travel time variability. prior to covid, people were having to allocate upwards of 30 minutes of their day. they didn't know if they will be in a good day or bad day. you can see that that variability has dramatically

been reduced. we tackled some slow zone ace some things that were creating problems for the average trip. which is why you're seeing the overall improvement. we are continuing to track this and to monitor this and we will keep the board appraised as we go. a symptom of subway variability is subway cueing. that's essentially how often are you spending stopped in the subway when you're not in the platform. the answer should be never. prior to covid when we had a schedule that we really couldn't support, we were seeing sometimes two even three trains backed up as we approached

embarcadero in the morning or as we were leaving with west portal in the afternoon. i'm pleased to say that we've seen a significant reduction. we basically eliminated multicar cueing with the simpler schedule. we think that the shuttle which are providing lot of frequency to our heaviest ridership which is between west portal and embarcadero is incredibly

important. we're working to make sure that we get everything running as smoothly as we can with the service plan that we currently have in place. with that, i'm going to turn it over to charles who's going -- incredible partner taking very complicated system and digesting it into a deliverable program. >> thank you. good afternoon directors. i'm the chief maintenance officer. i wanted to talk about subway renewal program. early on as we started to communicate with lot of different groups lot of questions came how do we not find ourselves in this situation again? our team went and looked closely

at lot of capital projects to understand what we needed, understanding what our vulnerabilities are, taking the best practices, understanding the difficulty of maintenance from all of our teams outside stakeholders and we've kind of come -- we have 104 different projects in the subway renewal program. it's a very fluid program. within that, we have principles that we really strongly believe in. we won't find ourselves as we do a 10-year investment. find ourselves in 50 years asking the same questions, why are we here again. with some of the ideas -- keep our subway in state of good repair. this will be through asset management, lifecycle management. not just understanding that systems need to be based on time but we do things like continual investigations, condition assessments.

looking at the usage of the system. switches in the portal are operated constantly. we're understanding that and putting that in a comprehensive asset management system, understanding how to replace and understanding when to replace it. not waiting 45 years to do so. we have some complicated systems, software, hardware related to train control. we can't wait 45 years. we can't wait 10 years. imagine operating a control phone -- cell phone that's ten

years old. we got to do things. track some of the hard test assets, the tunnel itself. they are viable. they are serviceable for 40 or 50 years if they are well cared for. understanding lifecycle management. improve our customer facing amenities. you probably seen that in church and castro stations. we're moving through that work. we'll continue to do that and make those improvements during some of the shutdown periods. these are self-delivered initiatives. these are improvements that are made by the maintenance away team during the non-revenue period and fix it weeks. we'll continue to do just that sub ray rail -- subway rail grinding. it improves the ride and life of the rail system. something that we've not done in

our history. it's a way of matching the profile to the actual profile of the train wheel. address known vulnerabilities. backups electrical systems, communication systems, fire safety systems -- we've been doing this 45 years in the metro tunnel. we know where the weakness are. to know that when some of the our partners like pg&e or other utility providers communication folks let us down, we have backups that we don't have to stop the station. we don't disrupt service. we have redundancies built in plays. building in resiliency. this is understanding the forces of nature. we have access to the portal.

really understanding that what our tunnel needs to do over the next 100 years, preparing for resiliency. we're partnering with the port to understand that work and to prepare for sea level rise. project delivery, strategically planned shutdowns. this is so important that we continue to deliver small improvements by the maintenance away team, by our maintenance teams. even partnering on some of the bigger projects with contractors. it will require outages.

it require a phasing of what a shutdown looks like. we want to make sure we're transport in communicating that.

proper replacement and repairs. establish a debris removal program and improve drainage systems. this is so important and not really thought of. not even seen by riders. we will go in and we'll have to clear things around our crossovers and turnouts. if our base and our drainage systems are not clear and clean, we'll have standing water. we'll have build up of debris. we will have things that will actually degrade the life of the system. the hardware, the track, the switch machines, even things that will get into the control systems and train control systems. we must really start with the foundation of the subway.

we pull things apart and making sure we have a solid base that our drainage systems are clean and clear and we keep up removing all the contaminates within the subway. we want to make sure that we have that in place. on the traction power side, again, cable upgrades. these are near 50 years of age. we want to upgrade even capacity so we can operate three and four car trains. we want to be able to handle all the current that's needed for all the vehicles of the future. couple of other items. overheadline system. we have an overhead system. it's out on the surface. it's in the subway.

was it a good idea to bring it in the subway? it was technology of the time. it's very confined space. we understand there's a lot of new technology out there. we will be having task order, a way of reviewing and understanding if we're going to offer new technologies such as overhead conductor rail. we talked to other agencies using this feature. it is a track or or less rigid system that's mounted to the ceiling of the subway.

we'll continue that work and upgrading fire and safety system. we have a facilities conditions assessment to look into all of our stations to understand the conditions around the station agents around the customers using the platform. what's the best environment. we'll deliver customer facing improvement like our wayfinding. we're going to be having some really good feedback this fall from the central subway. we have brand new stations which are operating. hopefully we'll take that feedback, anything we can incorporate from those stations and lessons learned from improvements there if we can incorporate them, we'll be looking at adding them to the future. this is an estimate of

essentially how much our program will cost us. $1.7 billion over the five investment areas. implement strategy is to move through our program management, continue community engagement. we will need funding strategy to round out what we need for this program. we'll continue making improvements with our small team improvements during the fix it weeks and during any of our shutdowns that we have. we have several studies that will continue to move on. i'm pretty happy to talk about

fix it week. we had 10 days. we wrapped that up last sunday. we took 10 days. we got to use 8 of those days. warriors had playoffs two of those days. we did not. we let service run the regular routine. just continuing our commitment to state of good repair and better muni metro. we're back to doing this on a quarterly basis. next fix it week we do expect some time around july and august. we're working with our communications team to get that information out to the public. just to talk about several groups, just to cover it. our maintenance engineering team gets surveys on the trackway. our overheadlines team, the cable sliders at church and

debose. track maintenance clearing up debris across the track way. custodians continuing their work. signal maintenance teen working in the church relay room. they are doing lot of prep work before the communication-based train control. they are pulling out some of the old conventional system freeing up space for future installation of the new system. our mechanical systems team was

doing some testing at the west portal station in that last photo. couple of items not in photos but to go over track wayside improvements, track switches. we had some rail replacement that occurred at the embarcadero double crossover. traction power improvements, overhead wire renewals track left and right at church station and the junction area. about 1000 feet was replaced in that area.

i want to say that all this work was done by the maintenance teams from maintenance away, buildings and grounds. even the sustainable street paint shop was out assisting with graffiti abatement. 90% of the work is planning and prepping for this. so it goes well. again, it's an entire team. the maintenance team would not be pulling this off if it wasn't for our communications team, getting the word out there. letting folks know exactly how -- letting customers understand what the schedule is, what the alternatives are. transit management center, how they have command and control. we have so much work activity going on with numerous clearances.

our field operations staff, trying to make sure that they close the stations at 9:30 p.m. so we can get started at 10:00. it really helped to have hours that we normally have. we barely have -- we operate subway 21 hours a day. at best we get three hours to do what we need to do. it's 10 miles fixed guideway, about 10 minutes a mile. thank you to them and thank you for letting me speak today. >> chair borden: thank you so much. it's incredible. i do have a question about scheduling the work.

i understand we need to get the work done. we have all those riders. i wonder how we balance trying to find times in conjunction to larger city wide events. i wonder is there a way to do that around bigger city event where is areas are hot spots. i think it attracts more riders to us.

i know this is more important to get this work done but thinking about how we schedule and how do you guys can do that. >> i think that's really good feedback. we're very focused trying to find the best gap in chase and baseball events. we need to make sure that we also don't lose sight of any other major activities that the rail system needs to support. we're a city that is built on special events. it's so amazing to see them coming back. it's why this isn't like the third week of september every year. we're trying to find the best time. i will make sure that i share a

feedback that we needed to. >> chair borden: director hinze? >> director hinze: i have some questions. i will try to go in order of the presentation. i will ask director borden question in a different way. i know we had to do this for week or 10 days. how do you think communication went with the riders as a whole? chair borden cited one instance. i saw communication on social media.

how do you think it went? >> i think it did meet my expectations especially given that this is the first time that we've done this pre-covid. we do want to have a consistent messaging and consistent service plan so that customers who are regular to the system learn what to expect during this time. really focus on having the bodies and the signage in place to support people who might be taking it for the first time or might not have been on the system for a while and take it because they're going to the film festival or going to have dinner along the corridor. in general, the level of comments i thought was commensurate little bit lower what i would have expected given

the inconvenience that we're asking people. we always try to do better in optimizing this area. >> director hinze: always good to hear. going back to ridership, i was excited to see the weekend ridership also --

i did want to ask about the recovery. >> i think for large part, some of our highest ridership routes pre-pandemic that have been lagging in their recovery rate are those that had extremely high peaked rush hour travel and our routes that headed downtown. we can pretty confidently say lot of those missing riders that downtown office commute. i do want to really say i think we did have a lot of ridership throughout the pandemic even very early on.

i tried to stay away from talking about work related trips. when we say that, we mean white collar commuters they think our system done an excellent job being very good and reliable system for people that work non-white collar downtown commute jobs. i would like to do a deep dive into the weekday ridership trends seeing. it's been a much more complicated story and would take a bit more time than weekends to find the happy news. [ indiscernible ] >> director hinze: on the van ness all that look very promising. director tumlin did mention in

the last meeting that staff was still kind of tinkering with the single timing to optimize this travel savings. >> there is work still being done before we turn on the signal priority. all of our vehicles are equipped. we already have that same system on many other parts of the corridor. the golden gate staff shared with me at the press conference how excited they were that they made the investment in the same transponders. they're now getting signal priority on mission street in addition to what they will get on van ness. it's a system we have lot of experience with. it will be up and running on van

ness soon. >> director hinze: perfect. thank you for this deep dive into the subway. the dashboard look amazing. i want to add, if you wanted to kind of -- i know when we made the decision to put the j back in the subway, the board asked you to track things that might be going on or trends and problematic.

did you wanted to address concerns about timing? >> i'd be happy to. we're going to be meeting with some of the folks who have been working closely to advocate for service on the j line. i think some of my correspondence fell a political flat which never my intent. we did at the beginning of that correspondence, talk a lot about equity and ridership and some of the decisions that we're making and how we manage the service. every route that we have is important and we're committed to the j line being successful. also, kind of understanding that in it larger context of our rail system and of our service.

the concerns that we've heard from members of the public have to do in part with the schedule. the schedule is not even 15 minutes on the j. we were trying to slide it in a little bit more elegantly into the subway. sometimes it's 12 or 13 minutes and sometimes it's 18 minutes. that's something we can change when do our next schedule upload. i don't think that's detracting what is very high performance on the j line now.

it's among the strongest in our system now. is there more that we could do at the terminal? potentially and we're looking to increase our staffing and always refine and improve our service management. we've had some folks from that committee out actually logging the train. it mirrors what we're seeing as well. our preliminary evaluation is that we think we have met the board's expectations. >> director hinze: okay great.

on the subway train, i think that the board feels it's an essential project and we're excited about getting the ball rolling. i'm curious to know your idea of funding plan and how much -- [ indiscernible ] >> thank you for that question. the train control system is upwards of 5 or $600 million. it's an expensive project.

it's one that we're scoping not to just be the initial investment but to include the annual incremental investments we need to keep it in a continuous state of good repair. it is a funded project in the c.i.p. it took a lot of creativity from our grants team. i do not know all of the sources that it's drawn from. our philosophy in this c.i.p. was to get as many things into study and planning and design so we could compete for some of the more discretionary sources.

>> director hinze: perfect, thank you. >> director tumlin: if i may add, the performance data that was included in the slide show presentation is being pushed out to our public dashboards. for any one who are interested go to sfmta.com/subway-performance-dat a. all of that data is being pushed out in realtime. it will allow you to track performance as we continue to make experimental changes. you can simply google sfmta subway performance data and will come up. thank you. >> chair borden: director heminger? >> director heminger: thank you. just two questions. both of them touching on subjects director hinze introduced. my own view is that the train control system is the linchpin

for improving the subway in general and the system in general. we can have a whole fleet of brand new cars which we will have. if we can't plug them in the system, that portions of those cars makes the system work, we really wasted lot of money. i thought i heard you say today that the r.f.p. might be coming to us in the summer. i thought you might have told us the spring few months ago when i asked the last time. just a question about the health of the respective process and are we slipping and can we recover the slippage? >> we did slip a little bit on the grounds that we have to get it right. it's really complicated and it needs a lot of different people eyes and expertise on it. i had hopes to bring it late

spring in may. i think we're going to be closer to the end of the summer. i believe that the time that we're spending now is going to save us delays in the future because we're clarifying and increasing what will potentially be the vendor accountability in the r.f.p. >> director heminger: as a reminder it might be helpful if you can provide the board with your latest schedule. if we're putting the thing out in the summer, what's your hope of when to award that contract? >> i believe it's going to take about a 12-month period. we'll follow-up with a memo to the board so you know when we're targeting giving the r.f.p. to you. >> director heminger: thank you. the second question will be helpful if you could put up the queue slide.

>> was that in reference to qanon? [ laughter ] >> director heminger: no, that's it farthest thing from my mind. this is what you do at a movie, you cue up. the question goes back to the debate about the j which is now in the subway. it appears that the cueing got a little worse even before the j service was restored. it's on an upward trajectory. i thought the way we left the subject was let's put it back in and let's see how it works and at some point if it's breaking we got to revisit the decision. where is your horizontal line? that says i got to start worrying? don't tell me you already crossed it. [ laughter ]

>> i don't know. >> director heminger: back in the bad old days in 2019, the cueing was horrendous. that can't be our milestone. >> director tumlin: ultimately that will come down to policy decision that you will need to make. we'll be providing you with recommendations. part of the challenges, there are many factors that interact to results in delay. ultimately, one of the things we're concerned about is the subway being managed in order to accommodate known growth and change. we're expecting new development at ucsf.

we have a subway that was designed to accommodate four car trains that we're running one and two car trains in. one of the key performance indicators that i'll be looking at is not just vehicle delay but passenger, capacity and a aligning passenger capacity with where changing demand lies.

>> director heminger: my sense will be that the train control system is still years away. we're going to have to grapple with this question with the train control system that we got. >> director tumlin: we can point out -- there are factors that can buy us some additional time. while we work on all of the parts in order to get the best service. >> director heminger: thank you. >> vice chair eaken: director yekutiel? >> director yekutiel: you have couple of questions. the first one is about wifi.

which we held as something that was put in when the subway was closed in 2020-2021. you and i have communicated. it does seem like it's not actually working. i tried it a couple of times. what's going on with the wifi? >> the wifi that we put in as we know we were putting it in in ad hoc basis. what we're finding is that people are streaming and doing much heavier wifi use than it was designed for. it is impacting kind of everybody's ability to have a little bit of service that we have some users that are using it in a very intense way. they are working kind of incrementally to increase the capacity and also weighing

decisions like should they limit the amount of -- like how people use the system to that people can do basic things like check their e-mail and send a text message versus watching tv. it's something that we are both trying to fix on the fly and envision what is the more permanent stable solution. right now, the system is working as designed but is being used much more intensely. >> director tumlin: bear in mind that the wifi system is basically radio signals from the station themselves. it's not designed to be continuous through the tunnel. i found it to be about 95% reliable.

really only in the station. >> director yekutiel: it works in the station. when you in the middle of the phone call or send an e-mail, it dies on you is it part of this plan? subway renewal, what would you say the timeline will be for it? >> we should probably capture it in -- in this plan. we can follow-up with our chief technology officer and have her provide an update on the incremental investment and what we hope to get out of them and what limitations will be. >> director yekutiel: we're putting in over billion dollar in reliability and speed which

makes sense to me. this other factor of experience is also very important. i do fee -- feel like, folks coming in here, if they realize they cannot use their technology while commuting. my fear they will choose other ways to commute. we lose them as potential new customers. they're not going to join our system. they need to be able to work on their way to work. people have changed. i do hope that we can right size the investment to make sure that we are competing with all the other ways that people have to get around who need to get to work and commute. second part, there was one specific question i had. it was slide about reductions in bad trips. i don't think it was q.

it was good trips and bad trips gone down. there was a reduction in the amount of bad trips from october to november 2021. i'm wondering it seemed pretty substantial. i wonder what that was about? then it went up again. bad trips went down. >> director tumlin: you remember our first muni fix it week was when i had first started just before covid. i believe that that sharp decline is direct result of that investment that we made immediately before covid. >> director yekutiel: i'm talking about in 2021. we saw it went down in the fall and it picked back up again.

>> director tumlin: there was no muni service at that time. you can ignore -- the subway was closed. >> director yekutiel: my last question is just kind of more general. i forget who i was talking to about this it was at the press conference for federal funding for the system. we were standing there. it really hurt me. i looked around,ism -- i was behind the podium next to mayor breed, saw dirty tape to the wall and blinking light bulb and cracks in the pavement this. these are cosmetic things that have been there and someone missed it. maybe i spoke to you, i wonder if there's a team or spring

cleaning of our subway, our part of the system for any other pieces that crack here or broken light bulb there and dirty tape. these little things do add up. i wonder if there's some kind of team that does that? >> we definitely can form a group in our maintenance team along with our custodian staff building and grounds and go through and talk about and come up with some creative ways to do this during fix it weeks to actually pay attention to these things and address them. excellent feedback.

[ indiscernible ] >> director tumlin: i love to have you down to talk to the custodians who were so proud of their work when we randomly showed up at 2:00 in the morning to talk to them. in addition to making the station a lot cleaner, we've been inventing a variety of new techniques to reach some of the the harder to reach parts the station that are impossible to get to when the customers are there. because they're able to shut off certain electrical systems, we're able to get a lot more cleaning done than we can get done during the normal -- >> director yekutiel: amazing. the other cities seem to have more art in every station. i'm wondering if it's part of of this long range plan to renew our underground. there is some plan to bring more

art to the stations that don't already have it underground. >> i think that's great feedback. there's opportunity within investment. >> director tumlin: we're also looking at partnership including teaming up with the plaza folks to welcome them to not only memorialize harvey milk outside the castro station and take advantage of the void of the station itself. we have some of the best wall space in san francisco. we welcome community partnerships. >> director yekutiel: great. thank you. >> chair borden: director eaken? >> vice chair eaken: i will try to be brief. first just thank you so much for the breakdown of the data. i know it takes lot of work to do this analysis. it really help us to understand what's happening in a way that basic overview slide that you

can kind of miss the story. i appreciate the data analysis. one question on slide 7 that's the recovery routes. you flagged 14, 9, 5, 49, 88. is that high ridership routes? >> almost all of our highest ridership routes? i have to look and see if there's anything. i think the 38 -- they have a slower recovery on the 38. that's really the only other major one. >> director tumlin: you will notice the best performance is the 14 and 22 are lines that were never oriented in the financial district. their percentage recovery is much higher. >> vice chair eaken: on van

ness, thank you so much for sharing the numbers. april 1st we did the ribbon cutting. it's great to see the numbers coming to us so quickly. i hope we're evaluating in addition to transit times any safety outcomes. i'm hoping we have reduced speed and produce safety only the corridor. i know that's a goal. on slide 22, this is the rbis --principles for subway renewals as i look at these, these seem to make a lot of sense. i guess i'm wondering what's new if anything about these five compared to the way we've always done things. some of this seem like hopefully we'd always have been operating this way. i wonder if anything is

specifically new. >> i don't believe a program of this scale can be successful if it doesn't have framing and an approach. while a lot of these may seem common sense, they are not necessarily how we've approach projects in the past. they take some of the lessons learned from our vehicle program where we were able within 15-year period to not only bring that into a state of good repair but to create a continuous state of good repair program. the reason we're focused on these principles, we think that the only way to deliver this work successfully is to treat them kind of continuous north star. i think in terms of innovation,

the lifecycle management is something that -- it's really a stretch goal for us in the subway. everything has been treated exclusively as age of an asset with no understanding that some portions of the subway are used continuously and some are used very infrequently. the train control system, we invested in it 20 years ago. we took a step back and are now puzzled why it's not meeting our current modern-day needs. these types of things are really intended to infuse this program and make sure that it isn't just a capital project and it's a culture change.

>> chair borden: director lai? >> director lai: i will make some brief comments. really glad to see so much good news.

i hope we can have a predictive exercise, not just a point in time. i do think that there's quite a bit of unknown what that is going to look like. >> chair borden: any other questions? we'll move on to public comment. this is time for members of the public who like to comment on

this item where we talked about the transit performance and the van ness b.r.t. mr. miller you can come up to the front. >> hello, good afternoon board members, i got to get back used to this. thanks for the presentation. few things i had about it. when we talk about like the sub ray reliability, i think there's like a few areas they are small but they add up. i female -- i feel like they can be fixed easily. the operators will go back and check and clear ought the second car of the k trains. that takes even a minute. it slows down all of the service behind it as well. i feel like that's a big area that can be improved. in terms of bus service, i think the reliability has improved.

lot of fewer missed trips. i think it can be confused. one line i ride the 18, pretty often, there's at least one bus missing that's every 20 minutes. it's not that i understand the driver shortage. what happens the other trips are move around to try to mitigate the gap. that can be very confusing because all of a sudden, the bus that i think is in 20 minutes is leaving in 10 minutes. i'm rushing to get out of the house. if that can be communicated better to the riders, i think there will be less confusion. something else recently. rode 114 golden gate transit. i was shocked how people were making local trips.

i think there's a lot more people who love to take muni. i was impressed by the weekend service ridership recovery. that could indicate that routes like the 76x -- >> thank you. i took the subway about a week ago. it was fine. i'm intrigued about some new possibilities such as a fixed overhead rail.

i'm wondering if the higher performing lines are electric. i think people do care about the propulsion that we use for our vehicles. electric vehicles, they are just quieter and faster. i rode ac transit electric bus from the oakland airport couple of days ago. once do you that, you don't want to go back. it's kind of like riding a tesla. you don't want to go back. i think we have to consider our people gravitating to the electric lines. i am thinking about people in the market corridor. it cost me less to use bart within san francisco than muni.

i use bart to get from embarcadero to civic center. i'm probably going to use it to get back. it only cost me 75 cents while muni cost me $1.25. fare integration got to be part of getting people back on muni. i'm seeing good things. but we got lot of work to do. i'm still not seeing grand central terminal. i'm not still not seeing new york city. we're doing better. thank you. >> chair borden: anyone else in the room that want to comment? we'll go to online callers. >> clerk: we have two callers. first caller. >> caller: i have two concerns. one is are you going to add more subway vehicles to the fleet? i think there needs to be more

underground trains. that is one aspect of it. two, what are you going to do about the communication, command and control structure? that has to be vastly improved. operations have been flawed. that applies to the transportation. company with you -- when are you going to restore the three jackson and the van ness. very important line. presentlily people who take muni are really inconvenienced about access to jackson street. these are my concerns.

i am concerned about the expansion and restoration of vehicles -- [ indiscernible ] , thank you. >> caller: regarding the van ness b.r.t., i like to see the numbers provided for the time savingses in minutes and not percentages that are presented currently. looking back to 1997, a book that muni used to publish with the timetables in it. there was really no savings in time. currently now.

in 1997 they ranged from 19 to 20 minutes run time from market to north point. southbound in 1997 it was 18 to 19 minutes now it's 19 to 23 minutes according to the current schedule that's published. it's basically a wash. i will be interested knowing if growth contributed to this increase in run time, how much did the development and growth in san francisco along that corridor pay for the cost of b.r.t. that we have now. again, the transportation sustainability fee in that. i took a look at randomly the

schedule on the pictures on the 49 line. looking at 22nd and mission, trimble and mission just strictly random. i noticed a trend that there were two buses either two or three minutes behind and then there was anywhere from 10 to 12 or 15 minute gap for the third bus. i don't understand why that along the mission corridor -- >> clerk: that concludes all the callers. >> chair borden: that concludes public comment. that concludes this item. great presentation and very exciting. that take us to our next item. >> clerk: discussion and vote

and conduct a closed session council with league counsel. >> chair borden: anyone like to comment on our decision to go into closed session. they may do so now. anyone online? >> clerk: no callers online. >> chair borden: directors. is there a motion? >> motion to go into closed session. >> second. >> chair borden: please call the roll. [roll call vote] the motion passes 7-0. we will go into

>> clerk: we're waiting for confirmation from sfgov tv. we'll let you know. >> chair borden: we're reconvening open session for the may 3rd meeting. >> clerk: item 13, announcement of closed session. the board met in closed session to discuss the cases with the city attorney. no action was taken. item 14. motion to disclose or not disclose information discussed in closed session. >> motion not to disclosed. >> chair borden: please call the roll. [roll call vote] motion passes 6-0. this concludes business before you today. >> chair borden: thank you so much.

meeting adjourned.

valencia has been a constantly evolving roadway. the first bike lanes were striped in 1999, and today is the major north and south bike route from the mission neighborhood extending from market to mission street. >> it is difficult to navigate lindsay on a daily basis, and more specifically, during the morning and evening commute hours. >> from 2012 to 2016, there were

260 collisions on valencia and 46 of those were between vehicles and bikes. the mayor shows great leadership and she knew of the long history of collisions and the real necessity for safety improvements on the streets, so she actually directed m.t.a. to put a pilot of protected bike lanes from market to 15th on valencia street within four months time. [♪♪♪] >> valencia is one of the most used north south bike routes in san francisco. it has over 2100 cyclists on an average weekday. we promote bicycles for everyday transportation of the coalition. valencia is our mission -- fits our mission perfectly. our members fall 20 years ago to get the first bike lane stripes. whether you are going there for restaurants, nightlife, you know

, people are commuting up and down every single day. >> i have been biking down the valencia street corridor for about a decade. during that time, i have seen the emergence of ridesharing companies. >> we have people on bikes, we have people on bike share, scooters, we have people delivering food and we have uber taking folks to concerts at night. one of the main goals of the project was to improve the overall safety of the corridor, will also looking for opportunities to upgrade the bikeway. >> the most common collision that happens on valencia is actually due to double parking in the bike lane, specifically during, which is where a driver opens the door unexpectedly. >> we kept all the passengers -- the passenger levels out, which is the white crib that we see, we double the amount of commercial curbs that you see out here. >> most people aren't actually

perking on valencia, they just need to get dropped off or pick something up. >> half of the commercial loading zones are actually after 6:00 p.m., so could be used for five-minute loading later into the evening to provide more opportunities or passenger and commercial loading. >> the five minute loading zone may help in this situation, but they are not along the corridor where we need them to be. >> one of the most unique aspects of the valencia pilot is on the block between 14th street. >> we worked with a pretty big mix of people on valencia. >> on this lot, there are a few schools. all these different groups had concerns about the safety of students crossing the protected bikeway whether they are being dropped off or picked up in the morning or afternoon. to address those concerns, we installed concrete loading islands with railings -- railings that channel -- channeled a designated crossing plane. >> we had a lot of conversations

around how do you load and unload kids in the mornings and the afternoons? >> i do like the visibility of some of the design, the safety aspects of the boarding pilot for the school. >> we have painted continental crosswalks, as well as a yield piece which indicates a cyclist to give the right-of-way so they can cross the roadway. this is probably one of the most unique features. >> during the planning phase, the m.t.a. came out with three alternatives for the long term project. one is parking protected, which we see with the pilot, they also imagined a valencia street where we have two bike lanes next to one another against one side of the street. a two-way bikeway. the third option is a center running two-way bikeway, c. would have the two bike lanes running down the center with protection on either side. >> earlier, there weren't any

enter lane designs in san francisco, but i think it will be a great opportunity for san francisco to take the lead on that do so the innovative and different, something that doesn't exist already. >> with all three concepts for valencia's long-term improvement , there's a number of trade-offs ranging from parking, or what needs to be done at the intersection for signal infrastructure. when he think about extending this pilot or this still -- this design, there's a lot of different design challenges, as well as challenges when it comes to doing outreach and making sure that you are reaching out to everyone in the community. >> the pilot is great. it is a no-brainer. it is also a teaser for us. once a pilot ends, we have thrown back into the chaos of valencia street. >> what we're trying to do is incremental improvement along the corridor door. the pilot project is one of our first major improvements. we will do an initial valuation in the spring just to get a glimpse of what is happening out here on the roadway, and to make any adjustments to the pilot as

needed. this fall, we will do a more robust evaluation. by spring of 2020, we will have recommendations about long-term improvements. >> i appreciate the pilot and how quickly it went in and was built, especially with the community workshops associated with it, i really appreciated that opportunity to give input. >> we want to see valencia become a really welcoming and comfortable neighborhood street for everyone, all ages and abilities. there's a lot of benefits to protected bike lanes on valencia , it is not just for cyclists. we will see way more people biking, more people walking, we are just going to create a really friendly neighborhood street. [♪♪♪]