love the way you interact with our communities representing our small businesses, and also the passion and the personal approach that you gave to everyone is just refreshing for city government. as a commissioner and board. so i know that you're not going to go away. it this is free you up to do a lot more and more meaningful things that you wanted to pursue in your career and your personal life. so i wanted to say i miss you a lot

sitting between me and director hemminger passing note to each other. but but i really wish you the best of the best for the future. whatever you want to be. and thank you for your service. so as the most junior one here, i just want to thank you for the example that you set and the voice that you've been for the business owners, for the community members. i think that it is really, really, really important. to you, to the community, the voice that you've given and i you know, one of the things about thought leadership is sometimes, you know, sometimes it's hard. it's sometimes you're not liked, you know, and sometimes times in order to lead, you have to be

willing to step out there and not necessarily be liked, but be that leader. and i feel like, you have found a way to find the right intersection between having folks love you very much and also so leading us in the right direction. and so i really do want to offer my support to the endeavors that you have coming up. and i appreciate the example that you set in the doors that you've opened for us as commissioners and for this agency, really. so best wishes and i'll hand it back over to my to the chair. thank you, colleagues. director hensley i'm just creating some space in case you want to chime in. i guess. that be beyond because to bid our esteemed former colleague farewell here, you know directory and i were co nominated together. we we've

literally been in these trenches together and you will be leaving a hole on this board. you represent a very unique community and you brought a voice to really be able to try to unify all different communities and all different perspectives and that is the spirit of unification that we need into the government. um, in general. so i, i, i know that you're not going far, far as our colleagues have said, and i know that this will free you up to impact the city and, and the world and other ways and we, i think we all look forward to hearing what those ways will be.

and i know that you will also continue to hold this board accountable for really the values that you stand for and continue to apply that managed way. and what ever other area of the of the corners of the world that you choose to have impact in. so i know that we'll all be in touch, keep you in touch as friends. and so and thank you for your service. thank you. director kowtow. the floor is yours. do i have two minutes? well, thank you very much, colleagues. i guess former colleagues. i started on the small business commission and i think i started about 6 or 9 months before the pandemic. and then in the middle of the pandemic was brought to you all.

and like i said, in the last meeting, it has been a huge honor to especially sit next to steve heminger for so long and learned so much from you. you've been such a great mentor to me. yeah, i guess the city really this city really took me in and gave me a home. and just to be a young person and a and a business owner and a openly gay person to sit where you all sit. oh, my god. sorry yeah, it's a huge honor because this, this this city is all i have. so so we do great work here. and i

think as i look back on the years that i've spent on this board, the memories that i will cherish the most are actually the sometimes ungodly hour that i had been called to visit and tour some of our facilities to hand out what seems like the only breakfast burrito that we give to employees at every single company event. but in seriousness, to meet the people who, some of whom have spent over 40 years, which is older than i am, you know, making our agency work, waking up every morning in an unglamorous way to do the work of moving this city forward. we have amazing people that work for us, really, honestly, some of the greatest public employees i've ever met. and so it was an honor to represent them up there. it was an honor to try to do the job well. and yes, i think to bring a sense of unity to this work.

it made me sad. and sometimes sitting where you're sitting, seeing our city seem so divided and to see neighbors yelling at neighbors, to see taxi drivers yelling at each other and seemingly at everyone else, and to see us try to do some big, bold, exciting things and to and to find the communities struggling to accept it. and i guess if i could leave you with anything, it would just be that a reminder that there are much bigger problems out there than whether or not there are barricades in the middle of the street or slightly off center, and that we need to see the bigger picture with some of our projects and that my hope is that the public, when they come to speak to you, that they do so with a little bit more respect. it was really hard sitting up there and getting screamed at and yelled at and to have verbal tomatoes thrown at me and not be able to either respond back or just say, you know, i'm a person

to you. and i think for the public behind me and those listening, just remember that the folks that you're providing your comment to, they also have feelings and they're just trying to do their their job for the employees of our agency, in particular, the folks who are in our offices, i would love our i would love to see our agency be the agency of. yes. and the agency of let's try it. is that am i being i'm being walked off because what's clear to me is in this city, in our government, we do not create an incentive structure for our city employees to take risks. there are too many ways in which that risk taking can bite them in the butt . and i think we really need to start doing that. we really need to start incentivize using our employees, our bureaucrats, our leadership to be willing to try things and see if they work, as opposed to being afraid of angering, whether it's the public or the communities, because otherwise we're not

going to continue to be the innovative city that we all want us to be. and finally, to you all, i know what it's like to sit there. i know how hard it is to make these decisions. and i know how sometimes it can feel like you are in fact, at a potted plant and my challenge to you is to remember our customers . our customers are the people who take muni, of course, and we need to keep our system clean and safe. and our customers are the people who are getting parking tickets and are getting their car towed in the middle of the night because they parked in the wrong place. they deserve your attention too. and so to constantly be thinking about how we treat our customers with love and respect and to try to do what's best for them and finally, you do. we didn't always agree on everything, but we always disagreed respectfully . and i feel very honored to have been able to be in the trenches with you, to serve on

this agency. c during a once in a century crisis, and to see you really rise to the occasion. it wasn't easy. and no matter what you do from here on out and how the agency continues to grow and progress, i hope you know that you did something really special by pulling us out of such a dark time and doing it with such honor and such diligence and such clear commitment to this city. so congratulations on doing that. and thank you, everyone, very much. i appreciate this. and i guess i'll continue to try to do my work in the manny's way. thank you, manny. other items of new or unfinished with manny's. we're here with us. okay. we have the photographer here. yeah manny, can you come up here? can we take a photo with you the whole. time guess maybe i'll

just shoot from here. yeah maybe. right up in the middle. yeah. okay this is you guys. thank you . okay. okay. here we go. thank you. thank you. thank you. all right, colleagues, are there other items of new or unfinished business for today. okay.

hearing none, we will open the item for public comment for anyone in the room. okay. seeing none, please open a remote at this time. we'll move to remote public comment not to exceed a total time of ten minutes. members of the public wishing to comment should star three to enter the queue. each speaker will have two minutes. moderator for speaker. for a little. more. speaker you've been unmuted. do we have. speaker can you talk closer to your mic, please? sure sure. i'd recommend we go to the next caller. it sounds like they're listening to the meeting on the computer. next speaker.

hi, sorry, i'm rocking. my day will come in a while. i sing it. if i were very good at it. speaker you've been unmuted. oh, manny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling. we will miss you so much having you up there. you did wonders for the board and for speaking what's so many of us were thinking, especially on december 6th, 2022, when we will be called for everyone to lay down their arms and for the agency to do what's right and connect our city for people outside of cars. and i thank you and i thank all of the joy, the joy that you would bring to the meeting and your patience and your humor. you are one of a kind and i'm very sorry that you're leaving too soon. but i know that you are doing great

things in this world and will continue to do so, especially for our city. so thank you. thanks, manny jen psaki by. thank you. let's return back to the first speaker. speaker you've been unmuted. sure you can. sounds like they don't know they've been unmuted and that's the last caller. the last caller. okay we will then go ahead and close public comment and please call the next item places you an item number seven, the director's report. good afternoon. directors got a lot of items covered today. but first and foremost, i want to bring up transit director julie kirschbaum and our cfo and just

transit director julie kirschbaum, who will be offering a special recognition. i happen to know that barry is biking here, so she tries to blame muni. don't take it. i'm excited to be here to present to people that i think really embody the agency of yes, that manny was just talking about was just giving you a hard time. i'm not one of the people of. yes do you want to start? oh, sure. good afternoon, board members. my name is barry. i'm the cfo of the mta and as julie said, we're very excited to be here to present a recognition award to diana hammons, who is the senior manager of revenue collections and sales. her team is responsible for gathering up all of the money and all of the fare

media that make both parking and transit run, as well as leslie bernfield, who plans special events for transit. and for me, this is a particularly special moment because diana hired me in 2006 to my first job at the mta. leslie has done, i think, a masterful job of improving both our internal and our external communication lines around special events. and especially as the city recovers, as there's been such an attention on to special events. but i'm particularly excited about the way that she partnered and collaborated with diana, particularly around outside lands outside lands is a 75,000 person event. it's essentially like having for chase center events. all all over three days. and we for a long time have really wanted to have the same

model that we have for chase where your ticket to the event is your ticket to muni and in this case, it will now be your bracelet to outside lands. is your ticket to muni and leslie and diana worked really closely with the outside events team to understand the experience that the event wanted to deliver to review the lessons learned from previous years, to really figure out where we could commit, but also making sure that we didn't overcommit it. and as a result that we were able to get agreement on this really exciting event and partnership. also special thanks to the outside land producer. another planet entertainment for helping us reach this milestone on and just you know in the same way that brie and i are constant collaborating as we move this forward, we also wanted to celebrate where we're seeing our

team collaborate is that it? so and that is all we have. well, we got to give them the because come on up. come on up. just. hello everybody. nice to be here. thank you so much to you and to julie and my manager, sean, for this recognition. and it's truly a pleasure to be part of throwing these events that make san francisco what it is. and to introduce transit as part of the integral experience of coming to, to and from all of those events. i just also want to recognize my colleagues from dispatching demetrius jackson, the operators who are out there with incredible enthusiasm under the leadership of anthony over here from t52 and oh, and also

edward dennis and our incredible, incredible field team that supports the operators on the field during this event. so thank you. good afternoon. board of directors. thank you for this recognition. thank you. brie and julie for this. i think julie's taking a little pleasure in this because she knows how uncomfortable i am in this moment. but i do want to say i'm so grateful for the opportunity that i've been given in this agency to work on such special projects that are so important to the city. but also the space that is created for me to be able to do that is really the amazing team that i have that i work with, including fred shelton, our revenue operations manager, our juan pena, the acting manager of our station and permit section, and emmett nelson, who's our program development manager and manages

all of our discount programs. so so i'm very grateful for this. thank you all. thank you. director tomlin. the board. thank you, sir, for your service. and congratulations on your recognition. and thank you also to leadership for continuing to make spaces to specifically acknowledge a contribution of staff. i think it's important to educate the board and the public about the meaningful contributions of the members of this community. back to you. director tomlin. thank you. and i do just want to acknowledge that. so much of the real work that happens in this agency goes unreported. and certainly the people who are

doing that real work, people like leslie and diana, exemplify the hard working, dedicated staff of this agency that make me so proud to be working for them. so thank you, team. all right. lots to cover. i hope all of you know that there is this little event next week called apec. we're starting to see some of the preparatory impacts for most city agencies. it has been all hands on deck the last couple of weeks. and i really want to thank tony henderson, who is our command command in chief for organizing everyone at the agency. and julie kirschbaum, who's been leading the executive level and the hundreds and hundreds of people who are working to try to make this event a success. this is a pretty big deal for san francisco. this is the biggest international event that the city has hosted since the united nations charter was signed in san francisco in 1945. president biden will be here along with chinese president xi jinping and

world leaders from around the pacific rim. the main impacts of the event are going to be felt starting monday, november 13th through sunday, november 19th, and will be mainly concentrated in the areas surrounding the moscone center and at the top of nob hill. but there are events all over san francisco, and so there will be traffic impacts associated with motorcades and many of the events are in flux. so our team is responding to constant changes. if world leaders suddenly want to have a new get together at the last minute, that is something that our team will figure out how to accommodate. but it is also resulted in some pretty significant transit impacts. and i really want to thank both the transit team, but especially the united states. secret service for taking the needs of san francisco neighborhood residents and small business is seriously

while also maintaining the security for all of these world leaders. so our team has been able to deal with the fact that moscone yerba buena station on the central subway will need to be closed. so we will be rerouting the t third trains via the embarcadero into the market street subway and merging it with the k trains, just like we did before the central subway opened. so that's a familiar pattern. we're also really grateful that we'll be able to run a very frequent shuttle train from powell street station and union square station, straight to chinatown and back about every five minutes, making sure that chinatown stays very connected to all of the events happening around apec. there'll be a number of bus reroutes, all of those transportation details can be found on our website at sfmta dot com slash api c that's sfmta .com/ apec. we are

updating that website at more than daily. given the pace of changes that we are receiving from the secret service. and on that website you can also sign up for text or email updates to better understand how to be able to get around san francisco, whether it is by driving or paratransit or walking or biking or muni. we'll also have information available in over 100 languages via 301 and have recruited broadly for volunteers who will be serving as ambassadors at all key places throughout the city, including throughout the transit system to not only help san franciscans get around, but to also help foreign visitors get around in an over a dozen languages. so we are are we are. we are. we are optimistically ready and we know now that all of our field teams will be able to adapt to changing circumstances. so this

is a really fantastic time to be in san francisco given the number of activities that will be going on. this is not the best time to be driving in san francisco, so please do take caltrain or bart or the ferries or muni in order to get around the next topic. i'm sure you've also seen in the news is the california department of motor vehicles suspended cruise permits to operate autonomous vehicles without safety drivers in san francisco and the california public utilities commission followed up shortly after that ruling in order. to no longer permit cruise to operate commercial service with a safety driver. we do not yet know what conditions these dmv or cpuc will place on cruise and what it will take for their permits to be reinstated. but we are tracking closely. we also

continue to believe that autonomous vehicles have the potential to produce significant benefits for the transportation system, particularly around safety. but this confirms our belief that autonomous vehicles need to meet very, very specific safety thresholds in order to be granted the ability to expand incrementally by demonstrating that they can operate safely under all conditions before being granted limitless expansion rights on on. next up, i want to talk about state funding, distribution of on october 25th, the metropolitan transportation commission staff presented their recommendations for allocating. the $1.1 billion that was allocated by the state government for additional transit relief. we are grateful that the mtc staff recommendation is for the sfmta to receive more money than we were expecting. following upon the state's guidance in order to prioritize need and ridership in

the distribution of that funding. as you know, the sfmta carries about. 47% of all transit riders in the nine county bay area. the this money is very, very welcome. it, however, does not completely close our fiscal cliff situation, but rather postpones the need to cut muni service into 2026. while we continue to work on identifying additional revenue sources to close the gap and ideally to get on the ballot in november of 2026, there is a whole lot more that we are collaborating with our other transit agencies, mtc and the state legislature on as well. in order to bring all the region's transit operators into integrated service and to make

sure that we're able to find a path out of our fiscal situation . the next topic is also related to mtc, also on october 24th, mtc awarded an additional $16 million for bay wheels bike share for e-bike expansion. as you well know, e-bikes are a miraculous tool for san francisco, effectively making our very hilly city flat. for people who ride bikes. about 80% of the region wide bay wheels program trips are trips in san francisco. and with this investment at bay wheels prices will be able to go down both the annual and monthly membership fees will be reduced and the per minute fees will also be reduced while we expand the e-bike e-bike fleet throughout san francisco. next up, we are very

glad to announce that last week we hosted a pretty interesting and significant international conference at the uitp, which is the international association of public transit had its 39th annual trolley bus meeting here in san francisco. more than 45 visitors from around the globe. agencies that operate electric trolley busses from several different continents came here to share their experiences and also to learn from us. i'm particularly proud to point out at the sfmta is bob and carter who is here. bob and has been leading our electric bus program. and more important, he has been coordinating with the other four remaining electric trolley bus operator in north america in order to ensure a strong manufacturing market as well as shared learning among our agencies in many ways, for cities like san francisco, seattle and vancouver that have

really clean, low cost hydropower, electricity and steep hills, the trolley bus is the perfect vehicle. our san francisco trolley busses pull power directly from hetch hetchy into power fall hill climbing engines that don't require that we carry two tons of batteries up and down our hills. and so we're glad for the opportunity in order to continue to invest in our trolley bus system. so this north american or this global conference, we are able to show off all of our facilities to people around the world. we are also proud to announce that our own chief maintenance officer, charles drain, was elected chair of the international trolley bus committee and it gave us interesting practice hosting a small but complex event for which i really want to thank my chief of staff, victoria wise.

next up, i want to also celebrate that on october 23rd and 26, our office of racial equity and belonging hosted a community connections racial equity event at the southeast community center in the bayview. this was done in collaboration with several other city departments welcoming young residents and any members of the public to understand and how to build skills, tools, how to network, how to increase access to city jobs and services, including how youth can engage with the city. we had more than 90 people in attendance for a whole variety of panel topic events and find me. i want to show a fantastic little video that the team put together in honor of the bus rodeo that was held on october 28th at the cow palace. this is a annual event

that was suspended during covid, and we're so glad is back. we had our transit operators navigate a very, very challenging and complex course out in the parking lot and you can play the video. oh, but it's just music. all right. all right . our transit operators navigated a very complex course. our maintenance officers competed in a whole variety of technical events where they had to solve problems with engines in our parking control officers competed in their three wheeled gopher vehicles, navigating tight timed courses while having their colleagues yell at them. and very importantly, director. so got behind the wheel of a bus and the orange cones who are sacrificed for her experience, i'm sure will will be forever mourned. we're very proud to announce as well that the first place winner of the operator

event, mohamed ahmed and the maintainers event, austin, you are. there she is. we'll be representing the sfmta at the international rodeo in april 2024. in portland, oregon. congratulations as well to our second place managers. winner director lydia. lydia so, lydia, did you want to add anything? well, thank you very much. i love that video to be precise. i, i think i spare the orange cone, but the barrels were sacrificed, you know, really miserable alley. but i was really. i wanted to say, i. i have tremendous respect and also the patience agents that my teacher, katrina brown, taught me. and also everybody around those cones and barrels were really carefully making sure that they might need to adjust it. as i moved along. and it was great. i love that experience

because it does enlighten me a deeper hands on understand taking on these challenges that our operators and our mechanics face every day, pulling up and parallel park in every stop that you're within that 12in to the curb is not easy, man. i got to tell you, i think i was two feet away, so it was it was a really good experience. and thank you for everyone's patience with me that day. i think i took i don't know what i did. i don't know how i did. but i really appreciate that. and i think that i have the honor to meet the only asian american female mechanics who actually win the award. and you see her on the slide. it was just melted in my heart to see, you know, women. we can do it. it's really hard core doing the mechanics work and i also met one of the longest standing operators, staff and her his number is like

three digits. so i think he started working for muni before i was born. so and this is really echoing what our you want to call him director yukito. he said that we have so many muni operators and our staff actually being in our agency for over many, many decades and they are they are the machine and they are the reason why we keep san francisco going. so i have a lot deeper understanding in all these cases as susan in the future might be bringing up to me. and i have a deeper understanding of what they are about. okay, thank you. i take up a lot of air time. um, i like to also take this opportunity to thank you, our director, jeff tomlin, and also our staff who had been basically really. they

try all they can and do the best they can to work with our secret service and work with our chinatown leadership and our chinatown. three supervisor, our board president aaron peskin, and also a lot of over a dozen of key stakeholders for chinatown merchants and community groups. we had conducted numerous meetings and communication is key and i really appreciate everyone under the leadership of jeff tomlin. also, i wanted to give a shout out to joel ramos, tony henderson, ian naimo rogerson, jesse lane, lulu phillips, luciano. these are the team that actually bridge the gap between our language barrier to a lot of chinese communities, not just within chinatown, but the ones that actually goes to chinatown that that they are really, really worried about. if they can will be blocked. so i'm

really appreciate it. and on behalf of our community, i really wanted to say thank you to our agency and these dedicated staff. thank you. are there other questions from my colleagues on the director's report or comments? director hemminger thank you, madam chair. jeff i wanted to ask you about two numbers in your report . the first one has to do with the ongoing saga of the fiscal cliff and i believe you cited a date of 2026, which is as a result of getting more revenue than you expected from mtc. we could sort of push the envelope out that far. yes, but not without risk, as will be discussing at length in the upcoming budget workshop. one of the challenges that we face is the question about the

likelihood of winning significant new operating funding at the ballot in november of 26. so if we're highly confident that we're going to win there, then we can keep, maintain gaining this level of service s under the expectation that we can find something to cover that one year gap. but if there's a risk of not winning significant new operating funding at the ballot, then it changes the risk equation significantly about when we would need to start trimming service s in order to live under the resources that we have today. i mean, candidly, i don't think there can be much doubt that there's significant risk that we can't pass a measure such as that. it would be unprecedented to do so in the bay area or probably anywhere else. i'm trying to get a

clearer picture of the variables that are driving this. and obviously one of them is we lost ridership ship, which means we lost fare revenue during the pandemic. our ridership though, is back up in the 70% range, isn't it? it's just below 70. and our fare revenue lags behind that by about 10. and then there's the general fund and is that the bigger thing we need to worry about for example, i mean, with two more years under our belt, do we get over 70? do we get up to 80? what's your forecast there? so the expectation for the general fund is a decline in general fund resources, both in real dollars, but particularly compared to how our operating expenses are rising. so both are a threat. and again, these will be numbers that we will be presenting to you in great detail soon. in fact, we've been talking about

how, how, how to present this complexity in a way that is understandable, not only to you all as experts, but also to the general public. well, and i know we've gone back and forth a little bit about the nomenclature we use to describe this. but i mean, my experience has been that transit has always lived hand-to-mouth and there's always been an operating shortfall to deal with. obviously, nothing as severe as this. so i don't want to minimize the challenge we're facing, but i think it's important to show people in the context of a system that has always required heavy subsidy and always somehow finds a way to make things work. we've got a challenge on top of that, but it's not as if this industry or this system is unused to challenges. it's sort of lived in a challenging budget

environment for most of its life . that is right. however one of the things that we are trying to do is to not gut maintenance. this in order to balance our books. so the revenue shortfalls that we have faced in the past, we have papered over by gutting maintenance and therefore degrading the quality of service over time. we are trying to reverse that and actually invest in proper maintenance of the system. um, i believe that the public has responded very strongly to our emphasis on particularly cleanliness and reliability. and so i don't want to get back into a cycle of gutting maintenance in order to pay for, oh no, we certainly don't. and i'll tell you personally, i really have not seen the system in as good a shape as it is for a long time. now, part of that is we don't have as many crowds and we'd like to fix that problem. but but i think you're to be commended for holding the line on that. and i know we and

others can be tempted to say, oh, just this one little new operating expense. yes. and so i appreciate that. and i'll save the rest of my questions for the workshop, which is going to be when julie, the board workshop, i believe it's january 30th. okay. thank you. and the second question is, i hope a lot shorter both the question and the answer. maybe about bikeshare. and here i forgot the number. what you said, how much of the bikeshare patty ronage is in san francisco? more than 80% of the region. wide bay wheels trips are in san francisco. and look, i would expect it to be the lion's share, but. but do you have a sense and evaluation about why oakland and san jose aren't doing better? i mean, it's partly land use and it's partly transportation in san francisco has significantly

higher density and therefore vastly more people within walking distance of a bikeshare station. and in addition, the investments that we've made in in bike infrastructure in our neighborhoods is also paying off. you know, while we may have lost commuter bike riders like we've lost commuter transit riders, those trips have significantly increased in san francisco neighborhoods, which is why we're committed to continuing those investments through our active community strategy. well, and as you pointed out, i mean, the fact that electric bikes sort of flatten the hills of san francisco, san jose's already flat. so we're sort of giving ourselves another advantage by change, changing our geography and i sure hope the debate that we're going to have about the richmond-san rafael bridge, which takes that into account because there it's as if we're going to be pedaling across the

bridge and in many respects, it'll be a different kind of rider experience. thank you, madam chair. thank you. other colleagues, do you have any questions on the director's report? okay. seeing none, we will open to a public comment on the items covered in the director's report. for anyone in the room. good afternoon. i keep maggie glasses. i'm a bit tired. uh i do not think this is the future what you're talking about. i'm sorry. because the future you see is to make everybody happy. so so it means that bike. yes. yes. okay, fine. we can use bikes. but, you know, san francisco is not hamsterdam. it's not so it's pretty clear that pushing this agenda for bikes is to limit the ability for people to move because then

you can have you have limited staff, you can put on your bike. so since the future is about no more weaponization of anything, including community action, like the phone you see, you have to work for that. i don't know how to put it. i'm sorry. i'm like hands on decks. for example, in the bus you can put jokes instead of bad harassment is unacceptable. yes, we know that. but so don't harass people with that push a joke. i don't know. i've got one here. what's the difference between a surgeon wearing a mask and somebody else? i don't know. it's a fun joke to me. i'm sorry, guys. i don't want to be the bad guy coming or giving you bad news. but what you're talking about is not the future. i guarantee you. thank you. next speaker, please. good afternoon, directors. is director tomlin. i'm mark

gleason. i'm here speaking on behalf of teamsters joint council seven and our affiliates and our coalition partners about the issue around autonomous vehicles, which was reported this year. our trade union partners have been in the forefront of the call for safety regulations, regulations of autonomous vehicles. unfortunately and tragically, a number of incidents this year have occurred that alarms city residents alarm first responders. and finally, the department of motor vehicles, which is charged with ultimate regulatory oversight of av cruise, has now been shut down by the dmv as reported, the behavior of the other prominent operator, waymo unfortunately resulted in the death of a dog earlier this year. we applaud city attorney david chu for taking the lead on this issue, challenging the state decision that allowed for this experiment

with street safety to be foisted upon metropolitan residents, metropolitan residents throughout california. indeed the mayor of los angeles and other prominent elected officials are following our city attorney's lead and calling out the dangerous aspects of tech experimentation on our roadways. under the circumstances. av experimentation on our streets does not align with this agency's core values in our opinion, including the improvement expansion and resource retention of public transit, diverse agencies and departments of our city are aligning with the leadership of our elected representatives in questioning and challenging the driverless autonomous experiment happening on our streets. we strongly urge the mta mta to join our city's leadership and essential agencies in this effort. thank you. thank you. next speaker, please. hi, stacy

randecker. wow, what a fun, fun meeting. so i'll go backwards. i will. thanks to the teamsters for highlighting that the issue is not actually a safety issue. it's a labor issue. that is what is at heart here. and i wish that the agency would be more broad minded, especially when i see this kick ass mechanic over here. we will need we have so many jobs to do, no matter about who's doing the driving. and we need this city to be safer for the and we need to not pay out so much in lawsuits for what has happened through injury or death due to our muni drivers. apec wayfinding. i'm just hoping that and i would say this to every city agency that's all that's

getting all cleaned up for our guests and stuff is just to take some of it and make sure that we do it for our own as well that are still here after the event, that we have it clean and wonderful and people able to find their way and make it easy to take transit at the bikeshare. i'm thrilled that we'll be finally getting more money and as a very frequent rider throughout the bay area, i would say that everyone drives in san jose and both the maintenance of the classic bikes the non electric bikes because they haven't had electric bikes in those markets. it makes them like very less attractive to take. and then the trolley busses. i'm so glad that we're sort of coming around on trolley busses. it's a much you said it beautifully director tomlin like that is the way it is the most efficient thing that we are getting this beautiful renewable

power. and it's we don't need the big batteries. so yay, i'm glad we're on the bus. thanks thank you. next speaker, please. good afternoon. my name is pete wilson. i'm executive vice president for local 250. lydia congratulations. katrina is an excellent coach, but just a little bit of warning. i know we are looking for operators. if you come and you pull two feet away from the curb, you will get written up. so you have to practice that. okay director tomlin, it's going to be quite the challenge this next week with all these people come. i've driven one night i drove the one california and president obama was in town, of course, staying at the fairmont. and so we had to reroute and go around and do all that. you're having. it's going to be like 20 presidents coming in and reroutes and all that. and what i'm asking as my way over here from flynn division, i saw an inspector

sitting in the truck watching probably the nine and the 1414 go by and i'm like, what are they doing? i wonder, sitting in that truck checking times, i know our computers can check their times. so one thing that i didn't get that much when i was operating is very many inspectors coming up and saying, hey, do you need some help? is there any way i can help you? what's going on? and i understand that it's stressful time, probably a stressful time for you, even though you seem to handle stress pretty well. stressful time for the managers, supervisors and everybody. i'm just asking for patience, you know, i'm asking for the supervisors just because somebody's 20 minutes late, half an hour late, you know, your team, the schedule is probably a great job of trying to adapt the schedules and we don't know what it's going to be like. we haven't had it since 1945, and that was 1945. so i would just appreciate if you could pass it on down and julie could pass it on down to people. just please be patient. it's going to be it's going to be crazy. so thank you. thank you. next speaker.

hi, board members. luke bornheimer related to the cruise disaster. i would love to just pass on a comment in case the ceo of cruise, kyle voight, is listening. gm board members. gm is the parent company of cruise or other venture capitalists who are investing in autonomous vehicles. we have an underfunded transportation agency and rather than figuratively be lighting money on fire to fund cruise, they could help fund sfmta. so i would encourage those venture capitalists to look at sfmta in the city and maybe invest that money to help us build a better transportation system. thank you . thank you. are there any other speakers in the room? this is for the directors report comments on items in the director's report item seven. okay seeing none, please open the remote at this time. we'll move to remote public comment not to exceed a total time of ten minutes. members of the public wishing to comment should dial star three to enter the queue. each speaker will have

two minutes. moderator first speaker. this is herbert weiner. my concern is, is that we have more trolleys because because trolleys has been playing out are good system of transportation and that should the trolley should also reflect the density of the city so that should be part and parcel of adding more busses to the fleet. thank you. thank you. next speaker. hello good afternoon. this is barry toronto. i just want to first say that it was a really nice tribute and honor that you gave to manny yaqoob for his service and for the

ideas he brought to the board. so thank you for the how you handled his departure. i want to talk about apec. i think it's important that you you keep the taxi staff informed and educated on on what's happening and to create and to and to let us know where you're going to put the temporary taxi zones in a timely manner and to have them also there's a problem. 801 howard and all the housing behind and on the south of moscone center has disabled people. so the least you could do is vet the most of the ramp drivers so that they have access to these buildings. so people in wheelchairs should not be put out because of this event. so i beg you to make sure that the ramp taxis have access to these buildings that house disabled people within the closed off

area. thank you very much. thank you. no additional speakers. okay. close public comment. please call the next item places you on. item number eight, the citizens advisory council report. we have no report that places you on item number nine. general public comment. members of the public may address the board of directors or on matters that are within the board's jurisdiction, but not on today's calendar. and i do have some speaker cards and anthony ballester, fred m mark gleason. madam chair, directors director tomlin, my name is anthony ballester. i am president of transport workers union local 250, a and i the first thing i want to say that i work with julie very well and work with jeff very well and of course there are things that we disagree with and that's why i'm here. of course, i know that you received the emails. i've sent and i appreciate that. and i

know you read them so most important thing about i'm here is about senior operators like director solis said, that they've been here for 15, 20, 25 years, 30 years. our members don't go on vacation for 2 or 3 years, four years at a time. so when they do have an opportunity to go on vacation, they go for six, seven, eight weeks. now the agency is holding them down just two, four weeks after being here, 15, 20 years. that's just disrespectful. and it's always been past practice and there's no limit on how many weeks can be taken. and city charter. eight for 40 or and our in our mou. section 13.5 paragraph 170. and they agency did not bargain in good faith and they've continued this practice for quite a while. you know, i don't mean any disrespect to julie or jeff, but mid-level management

are always telling us what they're going to do. and when we want to change something, they don't allow us. and this is the way management is going to act. why are we going through contract negotiations? we're going to have a hard time. so that's the first thing i want to do. i want to our senior operators to take time to go back to home country, whether it's china or india. you know, they need that time. so i like that change. one more other thing, another email that i sent is regarding this policy about supervisors looking into bags, purses. i mean, are you going to allow us managers go to a woman's purse and look at her feminine hygiene products just because they want to check her phone? just trust them. their phone is off and you know, and it's stowed. you know, you don't got to go into women's property and look at a bag or even a gentleman's property. this is wrong. so i want to kill this before it gets going. thank you. thank you. thanks for your sharing your comments. next speaker, please. hello thank you

so much for allowing my public comment. i have a son at lowell high school and on our listserv we started talking about somebody said, has anybody else had problems, problems with the bus, skipping them on the 48. we are at the end of the 48, so we don't have problems with the bus skipping us. but we have a problem that it takes an hour and a half or maybe an hour and 45 minutes to get to school. all the 48 also goes to soda. it goes to lincoln. it's skipping students on the way to school. it's taking 20, 30 minutes longer than it's supposed to. when this came up, people said, oh, i don't have that on the 48, but i've got it on the 23. i've got it on the 28, i've got it on the 44. so who do we want to get to? how do we want our students to get to school? obviously we want them to take the bus making that bus reliable, making it get there on time, make making it

have space for these students. it's critical and we would be happy. a bunch of parents from lowell would be happy to work with you guys. we also know parents at soda and lincoln and other schools and come up with a list of routes that need attention on and we'd love to help you make this better for our students. thank you. if i may, i usually don't address the audience. so this is a very important issue to us. we have all of the data on our crowding and performance. one of the most important things that we all could do together is to work with the school district to stagger school, start times. this has been one of our greatest challenges, and our transit team is here who've been trying to work with the school district so far without success, as i hope you know, we are in the worst financial crisis in our agency's history. we reallocated much of our downtown service to augment service to

school, but now we need help with scheduling because we have a we have a problem of success with an unprecedented number of kids using muni in order to get to school, which is great. it is problematic that they all need to get to school at exactly the same time. right. i mean, the they're the middle schools. are we can't really engage in a okay sorry. well yeah. anyway i'm happy to work with you guys about it. thank you for raising that issue. next speaker please. i also have a speaker card for stacy randecker. i'm one of those little moms to the. yeah, so whatever we can do, i know that there will be other people online also addressing this. but what it really for me is i know that transit is our first priority here. we say it all the

time. we say we're a transit first city, but i'd really like us to think about when we're making decisions about how people get around and that we take into consideration all the principles that that are transit first principles and that we let walking and biking also be viable options. i am so concerned about all of the decisions that are made that are to preserve parking to not annoy motorists, to make sure that everybody is okay and they get to park for free and it's just it's mind blowing when it is juxtaposed with the toll that is taken in injuries in intimidation, in deaths on our streets of pedestrians, people just walking on the sidewalk and they're mowed down, people wanting. i can't let my 16 year old son i have to think about

him getting a driver's license. i don't want him to. but it is just not safe enough for him to bike. we have to do better. we have to make this. we have to actually give the lanes, give the space, give the budget to making transit sing, to making biking and option so that we keep and that we make it harder for drivers. i'm sorry, there's no other way around it. and our city needs it. our planet needs it. please do what you can to really be transit first. thank you. thank you. are there other speakers in the room for general public comment? i do have more speaker cards. yeah. lucy wang. lee chen li. jenny wendy liu. lee chung. josephine it's okay, sir. you can go ahead. okay i wasn't quite sure how this works. it's my first time here at this board meeting. i'm fred mülheim. i'm a 50 year resident of the city and a long term

advocate community advocate for city college of san francisco. i love muni. i use it every day. it takes me reliably where i need to go. i love the van ness carter improvements and i'm always behind getting vehicles off the streets when it makes sense. i'm here to share concerns about the frida kahlo quick build project with you that i'm hearing from all the constituents at city college and from many surrounding neighborhoods. one, they feel that the project is going ahead way too fast and that their inputs haven't been sought out or listened to, particularly on the side of the college, which is now developing the new steam building. the diego rivera theater is going to be going in and the college is going to be losing 1100 spaces of parking with the balboa reservoir project. it's kind of the

elephant in the room is that it's a commuter school. some of the students have to drive to get there. so we have to provide some parking for them. if you are and it's been said, well, it's only 50 parking spaces that are going to go away. but those are parking spaces that turn over for multiple times a day. and students don't go there every day of the week. so it's affecting taking educational opportunity away from hundreds of students. we also have concerns about not increased backup on frida kahlo way by moving bus stops from the curb into bus islands where the busses will be in the main traffic lane and traffic will have to stop behind them. we also feel that is your time. okay, thank you. there are many points and thank you for your

time and interest. okay thank you for your comment. next speaker, please. hello. hello english name not real, but so you man. hey, they they do. we need a translation pension was fun. pink sing a fun song. i don't know what you have with my yeah the need to can't move on being the puppeteer ho minfong pain so you know the family who city then i come shanghai dong what is some fancy bank translate you you sang so you hey they they pay teng wine day ha you tomei ho tong hoi pong de

to lopunny fong bindi my ya hui tai sang gam hey dang dong what they sing thank you. i'm sorry, director. we didn't receive a request for translation services today. however, if we continue the comment and receive it, i can come back and provide you notes. after this meeting. thank you. next speaker, please. hi my name is wendy. but my english is so-so. i can just a little bit. okay my family with live together when we go grocery shopping, we buy a lot of food for the week. we can do it with our car. i feel many business trips have removed parking for many reasons and now i can find

parking to do basic grocery shopping, eat quickly and do housework for my family. peace at angle parking and parking. lala and moon bike parking on the sidewalk. thank you so much. thank you. thank you. i mean, you can speak cantonese or mandarin if you would like to say that again in your language, wherever this one is. oh leo yi dongfanghong manor. you song. okay. good afternoon. my name is li chen wei. i live chinatown. i say about the bus in the car. chinatown. very busy sometimes my son ask me to check the

doctor. the cartoon, the chinatown tuna la tuna la half hour. can i find the parking time? that's it. one hour. very terrible. i hope so. yeah. open a lot there. and parking. thank you very much. thank you. next speaker, please. no more golf. violin, town hall. i li chen. go, tiger chicken. nathan chen by parker mantyke go there like a cartoon. cartoon go, go. yo bang chow. cao this chair. holy cow. my job for so you. wanna

lock your your chen yi xiang you go hi. come to hai fong ping. hey, tiger. hey. morning to you hoy hong sotong the chair. welcome back. chair pong ping all day. siong bang, bang yun. thank you. thank you. any other speakers in the room for general public comment. uh no. no, man hi, wendy. go. hi, lady. go gaga. thank you. gao. hong kong. go hong kong. go, go, go, go, go, go! hi yi gong gao. why do you see halo? come in. go, go.

hi i mean, go, go. second face. hi john. sega. go we go. hi. we zheng zheng, zhao hui jerome john. see? come yao hong zhong. yao. yao yao. go. sup ho i say sup. okay hi, yi jin hyuk cheng chin zhao. hi. hi. hi. you go. what every other guy. hi zhong. hi guy. zhou zheng. yang hong zhong. yao gotti. gong hong gallo bin. why are how see jim yong yong gong. gong. gong. gong, gong. parking how are you? john thomas there you go. go. swimming. although they go a sidewalk. although move having or being. although team parking

although thank you. next speaker please. this is non agenda items general public comment. right. thank you so much. my name is rex ridgeway. i am with abraham lincoln high school and about an hour and a half ago our assistant principal sent an email and i'll just quickly read it. i am reaching out to you as one of the assistant principals of abraham lincoln high school. i have ceased. director ridgeway, ask me the other assistant principal, jordan lewis, and forwarding this message that i sent to engardio office regarding the frustrating that continues with the 48. not only is the 48 continuing to pass up our kids, but i myself was a student. have been passed up so i won't read read it basically i met with him today. they asked me if i could rush down here, at least be a face again. you've seen me before and i know you can't add a bus, but maybe a longer bus. but we're

really, really struggling with this. the term is pass ups and we're continuing to deal with them. any help would be really appreciated. so that's why i'm here. thank you. thank you for flagging. someone else raised that today. and i believe our staff were able to talk to them in the hallway. so i don't know if director kirshbaum or kennedy are here, but we can maybe have them connect with you as well. next speaker, please. hi, my name is julia toscano and i'm here to talk about the parking restrictions in nearby high sfsu san francisco state university. so i, as a student of san francisco state university, i live in the parkmerced apartments right across the street, and i have $5,000 worth of parking citations because i was unsuccessfully able to

receive a permit from the city so i could park in front of my own home. they required a utility bill, which is split between my roommates, so it's not in my name. i offered a proof of address from the post office i was offering other various forms of proof of address, but it was denied my by a i think, $5,000 just for parking in front of my own home as a student is just ridiculous. it's outrageous. the parking restrictions in san francisco just to go to school, to go to the doctor, to go grocery shopping, to do normal daily life things, you have to pay pay so much just to park and just to live here in the city. and i was on my way to the hospital all last week and i was pulled over in tenderloin between hyde and larkin, the highest homeless and

population in crime in the entire city by chp. and they towed my car right then and there. so i no longer have a car . and it's all because of these outrageous parking restrictions. so that's all i came here to speak on today. thank you for sharing your experience. next speaker, please. hi. my name is jenny and i drive my car every day. we're living in san francisco and somehow every house on my block has 3 to 4 cars. so parking in front of my own house is difficult. almost every day, especially on sunday, when everybody is home. i'm just asking for maybe more side angle parking. like i feel like a spot in the big sunset streets could fit like 2 or 3 side angled or back in parking and i feel like that would be very helpful to those of us who drive. thank you . thank you. next speaker, please. hello again. my name is

pete wilson, local 258. we represent fare inspectors. we are concerned about the way the fare inspectors are being treated. i had some talking to some shop stewards for fare inspectors and they were asked by their managers and supervisors to do something they were concerned about what was happening. so i asked the manager to step outside the manager and supervisor stepped outside. i talked to them. i said, better to comply and not get written up for insubordination and we'll talk about it later. we did then they had a hearing and had the question the supervisor asked is , what did your supervisor or excuse me, what did your union representative, pete wilson, say to you to have you comply? and that is illegal under the myers milius? brown act. they should not be interfering with union work. the other thing is it just came out that they are telling

fare inspectors that they can never sit on a bus. the rule is if they're on a bus and people are sitting down and they need seats, they can't sit. they've always complied with that. but now they're telling them they can never sit on a bus. so we're talking 2.5 hours straight. i would suggest that some of you stand up every once in a while and move around. it's good, but you also shouldn't be standing for hours straight. so i just think that what's going on there is very sad, as anthony ballester was talking earlier, the sfmta is forcing a change against our contract, saying that people and by the way, lydia, you were speaking i think you said yeah, you were maybe talking about rafael cabrera, who's a very he's number three. he's a cable car operator. he's a senior operator. that guy can have eight, ten weeks and he can go take it all. at one time they were saying, well, the newer operators cannot. there are times that they can't sign up for vacation. so i asked where that data was and the manager said, well, i can't give you

that data. it's just what i've heard here is the documentation that proves that every single operator has an opportunity. they just don't have the opportunity to sign up for the weeks that they want your time. here is the letter that they wrote us, and i've got the untruths written on here. you can enjoy that next speaker, please. dear commissioners and director, this is josephine. very glad to be here for the very first time. we represent that immigrants multi generation family, the working poor majority of people that living in and outside of chinatown in the chinese community, we need cars to really make a difference in our life. we used to stay in sros in chinatown, very crappy housing situation for people living in a room without toilets and without kitchen. but with a car, we are able to move to a further out neighborhoods that

we can get access to better schools, better work, and we can start being self employed. little business people, all handyman bringing tools with our cars, starting to have a start, having a contracting business and other businesses that will make us self sufficient. the car . nowadays roles are not open and gray highway is closed for commute. it adds a lot of burden to our community and also parkings are being taken away by many different reasons. some are necessary, but some like the bike rental rack, can totally be put on wider sidewalk in a 45 degrees. we can definitely use more technology to ensure transit and person walker safety. we can be walker and bus people. any day, not just some day. some people will always take bus and some people will always drive. we are everything,

every other day, every day. so don't make us pit each other against each other. let's make sure that we bring in technology to ensure safety, cross walks overhead, flash lights for people walking across, and other technology to ensure walkers safety, biker safety and transit safety. we can do all for everyone. we don't have to choose and pick whom we serve. thank you so much. thank you. next speaker, please. hey board members. luke bornheimer have a few things i want to touch upon today. first, no turn on red as you all know, last year we had 39 roadway deaths in our city. next year is the end of our vision. zero goal. no turn on red is proven to work. proven to make streets safer and can be approved immediately and implemented in an incremental manner that prioritizes, for example, high injury network

intersections, intersections with large number of people walking. since your last meeting, the mayor's disability council voted unanimously to support a citywide no turn on red policy, adding to the board of supervisors unanimous approval of a non-binding resolution sent to you. unfortunately, you and mayor breed are the only people with power and authority who have not commented on or voted on approving a citywide policy. and you are the only ones who can actually make it happen. so i encourage you to take that up as soon as possible, ideally before the end of the year. next valencia street. many people, including you, have talked about the evaluation report that is coming to you shortly. unfortunately, something that has not been talked about is the fact that crash and injury data will not be included in that because sftp and sfpd data is lagged and the public doesn't know that it that's a problem. that's like one of the only pieces of data that matters, right? is it safe? our injuries increased. that's a massive

problem. i don't know what to do with that, but someone should probably do something about that . staff have also not created a detailed design for curbside protected bike lanes between 15th and 19th, which would mean that if you voted to remove the center bikeway, it would have to go back to paint only on protected bike lanes. so i would encourage you to urge staff to create a detail design by the time that evaluation report is presented. finally in the last 10s, laura taylor was killed on the i-280 on ramp likely that happened because there was not good signage. she was riding a bike on mta streets ended up on a highway on ramp. probably won't count towards vision zero numbers. it should. it's a really tragic death. thank you. thank you. any other speakers in the room for general public comment? seeing none, please open the phones. christine at this time, we'll move to remote public comment not to exceed a total time of ten minutes. members of the public wishing to comment should dial star three to enter the queue. each speaker will have two minutes for speaker. speaker, you've been

unmuted. by moderator. let's go to the next speaker and come back. this is herbert weiner. one concern i definitely have is there should be remote public comment. now sometimes abusive language can be used on the phone. at that point. they should. the offensive speaker should be cut off and stopped from talking. the second concern i have is also about the timely bus service for lowland lincoln high schools. i believe this can be remedied by adding more busses to that run and not taking away from other runs. we definitely need more busses to reflect the need for public

service, and i think that this is the main key. the leading bus stop is not the solution. it's basically having more busses to the fleet. so these are comments i have. i realize that you have a budgetary crisis. you proclaim a budgetary crisis, but i believe that you still have room enough to add more busses to the fleet. thank you. thank you. next speaker. hi this is adam in soma. um, first off, thanks for still keeping public comment. it's much appreciated. not all of us can get there in person, but i wanted to focus on on talking about street safety in soma because we have a number of super narrow alleys here in soma, some of which are overloaded with two way driving

as well as parking lanes and if someone else had commented earlier that the sfmta is deathly afraid of removing parking at and that causes safety issues, we've been trying to get sfmta to either remove parking and or remove make a two lane road one way so that cars and trucks do not have to go up on the sidewalk. but so far we're going to keep trying. but so far your organization has refused to do either. and one of the common comments that we've gotten from engineers who come out is that sfmta does not want to remove parking spaces because drivers will complain about it. you should not be putting free parking above the safety of residents in a neighborhood who walk and bike on local streets. you know, cars do not pay for parking and most of these streets and you know, everyone uses them. the other comment has

to do with the valencia bike lane. we know it's not working the constantly. just this past week yet another semi pickup truck is using it as parking cars go in and out of the center of the bike lane. all the time. if you're not going to bother with enforcement, if you're not going to bother putting up concrete bollards that stop cars and trucks from coming into the bike lane, then rip it out. and let's go to the protected bike lane proposal that luke had mentioned. we need to put safety and usability above the convenience of car drivers. thank you. thank you. next speaker. hi there, this is susanna upton. first, i've long awaited to say thank you to all of those who advocated for free muni for all our youth. thank you. now we need to get our kids

to school on time. i'm here also to talk about the 48. my kid is routinely skipped by one, two and sometimes 348 busses at 24th and guerrero and at 24th and mission. he routinely is tardy for first period and this is a really important year for our my high schoolers to be on school on time. obviously some when he's late we try to get him to school by car. obviously some families cannot do this right. and it contributes to our city issues of students being truant. i reached out to my school community for suggestions, but instead i heard the same stories of kids being skipped in morning commute on bus lines and see 23, 28, 29, 44 and seven. i'm here too. i've i heard the board

earlier talk about some suggestions on rotating start times. this is something maybe to think about, but not achievable this year. we need your help to make improvements for our kids. now for the 48, how about an immediate 48 express? maybe during morning commute 30s one intermission stop, maybe mission and 24th and then no. and all in words right now there's a big attendance issue that the sfusd is working on. also bussing are getting our kids on bus to school can really help reduce traffic at our school sites and surrounding streets. something that rotating start time would not help with a quick comment on the valencia corridor is that it? thank you. your time is up a quick okay. okay. thank you. next speaker.

we have no additional speakers. okay. with that, we will close public comment and colleagues and members of public. i apologize. we did not have translation services available. those are we recommend that people request that 48 hours in advance. there's a phone number (415)!a646-4470. anyone can request language assistance. we request two days in advance so we can accommodate that request. with that, please move to item ten directors that places you on item ten your consent calendar. these items are considered to be routine and will be acted upon by a single vote unless a member of the board or public wishes to consider an item separately. item 10.1 requesting the controller to a lot funds and to draw warrants against such funds available or will be available in payment of the listed claims against the sfmta. those are items 10.1 a and b item 10.2 approving various routine parking and traffic modifications and making an

environmental review findings. and it's come to my attention that item 10.2 a did not include an address and so will be removed and returned to you at a future meeting. today you will be considering items 10.2 b through d as listed in the agenda item 10.3 authorizing the director of transportation or their designee to execute a grant agreement in any amendments to such grant agreement with the california department of transportation in to receive approximately $1.3 million in discretionary funding for the sfmta's embarcadero mobility resilience plan. item 10.4 author rising, the director of transportation to approve amendments to as needed specialized training services contracts. the first one amendment number six to contract number sf mta 1839a with moran consulting to extend the contract duration 15 months beyond the contracts five year term and to the contract amount by $1 million for a not to exceed amount of approximately

$3.8 million to a not exceed amount of approximately $4.8 million. and amendment number three to contract number sfmta. to 1839b with z.com to extend the contract duration 15 months beyond the contracts five year term without increasing the not to exceed amount of $3 million an item 10.5 approving a reduced roadway. shared spaces closure of hays street between gough and octavia streets. 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. each friday and 1 p.m. to 10 p.m. each saturday from november 10th, 2023 through saturday, october 19th, 2024. consistent with the sf board of directors recommendation given at the october 17th, 2023 board meeting, the application from the hays valley merchants council for roadway shared spaces permit is to close hay street between gough and octavia streets friday from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. saturdays and sundays from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. and making environmental review findings. that concludes your consent

calendar. okay, colleagues, unless there are clarifying questions, i'd like to go to public comment on the consent calendar for anyone in the room. i had a couple, but the hays street. i don't know what to say. other than i think that it should be closed 24 over seven 365 and so the merchants meager ask to have all weekend long should be granted and stripping it down further is just it's silly and it echoes it's much like valencia and many other merchant corridors we need to do things for our city that help our merchants and bringing in cars just doesn't and then i was

really curious about the embarcadero money. the report made it sound like, hey, we are getting free money and unless we have money coming from somewhere else, i'd really like to hear more about what the money is going to be used for. i mean, i don't want to turn down free money, but i care very much about the embarcadero and think that that's another place that should not have cars. and so i'd like to know what the money will be spent on and that it will be about planning what's best for the embarcadero and yeah, i can't remember, but thank you. thanks for your comments. next speaker, please. good afternoon. alan barradell here. i want to express my opposition to any plan to close hays street for more than one day a week. a one day a week closure was already it was already extensively discussed and already agreed upon. in fact, one day per week

was the recommendation of sfmta staff. it should be clear why something about the process, something about the process seems unfair. there should be a fair process for sfmta initiatives and policies that can negatively impact a neighborhood, and especially the small businesses and the residents there. and i'm dumbfounded by what appears to be sfmta's tone deaf steamroll ing over residents and merchants concerning concerns regarding hayes valley street closures as it reneges on earlier agreements . i support hays street residents and merchants in stopping the sfmta and supervisor preston from reneging, reneging on this agreement. for a limited said the agreement was for a limited hayes street closure and trying to replace it with an unnest necessary and unwanted multi day closure or even worse, a permanent 24 over seven street

closure. i urge the sfmta board here that it must approve the original single day programing that was agreed upon based on studies reviewed and recommendations by the sfmta and outreach to hays street merchants at that time. please note hayes valley does not lack open space. it's got a lot of parks. we support traffic and transportation plans for all modes, all modes and with unobstructed access to hayes street business corridor for a vibrant, accessible, a healthier business. so thank you. thank you. next speaker, please. good afternoon. directors director tomlin. my name is david robinson. i'm a homeowner in hayes valley and also a member of the board of directors for the hayes valley neighborhood association, an obviously i am here in support of the friday

night, saturday closure continuance of the closure of hayes street and the corridor between golf and octavia. also supporting that staff look into full time closure of hayes street the restaurants and the shops along that corridor are benefit greatly. we represent residents of hayes valley that have overwhelmingly supported continuing this. i think the board was received many emails in support of it and they have overwhelmingly overwhelmingly commented that that makes our neighborhood even safer. and more well used. and it is a destination not only for residents, for people from throughout the city, if not from throughout the state that visit san francisco. they've made that very clear. so i urge you to support that. and then on down the road have staff look at continuing that on a 24/7 basis.

thank you for your time. thank you. next speaker, please. good afternoon. board members and director tumlin. my name is robin leavitt. i'm a 30 year resident of hayes valley and i'm here to speak in support of item 10.5. the recommendation for hayes street shared spaces on fridays and saturdays, but also directs your staff to design a process to pedestrianize a street. since receiving sfmta staff feedback at the october 17th board meeting, the community has committed to making the hayes street shared space a viable program with five activation events and eight more scheduled by the end of the year. the opening of streets to pedestrians and users other than motorized vehicles is consistent with san francisco's transit first climate action and vision

zero goals as well as the recommendations outlined in the market. octavia area plan, which the city adopted in 2008. for over three years, repurposed hayes street has been a boon for hayes valley residents, visitors and merchants alike, providing an oasis of calm and safety in a neighborhood with some of the worst air pollution levels in the city and inundated with traffic clogged arterial streets, including oak fauci, franklin golf and octavia boulevard. for fairness dictates that if our streets are going to be to continue to serve as traffic sewers in exchange the community deserves traffic free space as a respite from pollution noise and the perpetual threat of being hit by motor vehicles. please, please approve the friday and saturday schedule and direct sfmta staff to design a process to

pedestrianize a street giving our community a path to a 24 over seven on hayes street. shared space. thank you very much for your consideration. thank you. next speaker, please. hi my name is andrew steiner. i'm here to ask to please approve item 10.5 to continue with the program on friday and saturday for the hayes street shared spaces and also instruct mta staff to design a process to pedestrianize a street. i created a website called car freezorg. we've gotten over 1300 signatures on it so far. we've also gotten the endorsement of the hayes valley neighborhood association, hayes valley for all the lower haight merchants and neighbors association on page slow street, the outer sunset neighbors. and yesterday we got an endorsement from the sf symphony. this is a broad coalition of merchants, neighbors and organizations that all support a fully

pedestrianized hayes street. all we're asking for today are those two particular days. the feedback from sfmta staff at the last meeting was to activate the space more. as someone else said , we've already scheduled 13 events between then and the end of the year when i say we, i'm not doing all of this. these are independent orgs that are using the space for the next five fridays are already booked for events. so i just want to point out how important that evening is for us. it's our busiest evening and i really want to thank you all for the discussion you had three weeks ago to amending it to allow us to continue to use friday. so thank you for all your work. cheers thank you. next speaker, please. hi, my name is richard johnson and i'm with a group called be safe. and then also we have an ongoing petition, citywide petition, and that's the petition fair. hayes valley and

i'm here to bring up another point of where it's interesting that many of my neighbors and friends are focusing on hayes street. we have a car free street that's been there since the late 60s. it's called the buchanan mall. and i think if you're going to expand energy that would be something to be looking at. it's already car free. it would actually do what the merchants are saying along hayes street to activate the lower fillmore and the fillmore district in general. but it's been something that's been there since the 70s. i have to say, as someone who's a transit rider and a pedestrian, i reach out to you as the agency to really make our neighborhood instead of closing our streets, doing more with the transit. i'm a regular rider on the haight haight street busses and to me it was like the usual waiting to go to an appointment at ucsf and had

to wait like 30 minutes for a bus. and we were promised greater transit with all the development that that's come to our neighborhood. and we're not seeing that. so i'm saying that you should follow the what your staff had recommended and to scale it back with certain conditions and add not to go forward with the two day and definitely not to move forward with studies to close off the street. you should actually be expanding your energy and kind of teaming with the money that's already been invested on the buchanan mall to really that to me could achieve everything that everyone is asking. and it would be a simple walk for people to just walk over there and to do something which i do on a regular basis. i want to thank you for your time and like i say, i encourage you to follow your staff report. thank you, director thomas speaker, please. okay. thank you. that's your

time. hi. good afternoon. i'm jennifer laska, the president of the hayes valley neighborhood association. and i'm also here on behalf of lloyd silverstein, who couldn't be here, who's president of the hayes valley merchants council, just to urge you to vote yes on the consent agenda item today for hayes street. i think we had a robust conversation last month and came to a good compromise. so please just stick with it and hope you vote yes. thank you. thank you for your comment. any other speakers in the room seeing none. please open the remote at this time. we'll move to remote public comment not to exceed a total time of ten minutes. members of the public wishing to comment should dial star three to enter the queue. each speaker will have two minutes. moderator first speaker hi, good afternoon . this is barry toronto. for some reason my hand was lowered during public comment and i didn't get a chance to make

public comments. so, so thank you for taking that away from me. just like you take it away. my taxi stands in the city as well by not having enforcement, you could really make more money for transit if you actually actually had more pco's on during the off hours and forcing the illegal double parking and the illegal parking that goes on in the streets. i want to address this regarding hayes valley. obviously, the closure doesn't work for every business. and even though man leaving represented small business, there's some some hypocrisy going on here. if you care about small business, then you should you should do better outreach and hear the concerns of the small business people that don't benefit from certain changes, such as somebody put a the rental bikes in the middle of the block, taking away this this businesses. deliveries so he

didn't have a place for the delivery to double park in the bike lane so the thing is that you you can't take care of everybody's needs but you need to listen to all members of the community, not just a few, because then they become unintended consequences. thank you very much. thank you. next speaker. hi this is adam from d6. i just wanted to call in support of all of the hayes valley residents who are supporting the closure of hayes street. i know here in some we would love to do similar with some of our streets. so it's the kind of thing that makes a neighborhood more viable, more popular. and it's great to have walkable, walkable streets and walkable areas with restaurants and businesses. san francisco

should see more of this across the city. so i encourage you, please do what the residents and majority of business owners on hayes are asking and close the street as requested. thank you. thank you. next speaker. okay, this is susanna upton. we need more pedestrian space. so pedestrianization of hayes seems right to me. i have more experience on valencia, which really needs increased pedestrian pathways. if hayes is like valencia where i have to walk in a single file, single file with my walking partner, that's just not right. we can't we can't look into windows together where we it's difficult to have a conversation in my by my senior mother in law is feels rushed and pushed along on

valencia i just might be the case for hayes as well and so more pedestrian ization in our city is welcomed by me. thank you. thank you. we have no additional callers. okay thank you. we'll close public comment on the consent calendar. colleagues, may i have a motion to move the items? second, second. thank you. please call the roll on the motion to approve the consent calendar. director heminger heminger. director henderson. henderson. i director hinsey. i i. director. so i. so i chair eken. eken. i thank you. the consent calendar is approved. thank you. let's move on to the regular calendar. please call item 11. item 11 authorizing the director of transportation to issue a request for proposals for contract number sf mta 202420 fta for consulting services supporting the communications

based train control upgrade project for initial term of five years in an amount not to exceed $25 million, with five options to extend the term for an additional year for a total of ten years in an amount not to exceed $36 million. good afternoon, directors. i'm dan howard. i'm the project manager for the train control upgrade project at. today. we're going to give you you decide to give the opportunity to give you a little bit of a project update in addition to requesting your permission to issue the rfp for our project consultants. so we'll go through a little bit of the background as well as the project objectives and the progress report. we'll talk about our approach for risk and then go into the contracting strategy of which this consultant rfp is a part. so why are we upgrading the train control system for our muni rail, our train control system is approaching 30 years old and it has not been comprehensively

overhauled during its life. some core components are still the original components from 1994 1998, and in some cases the system supplier has given us notice. as for some of the parts that they're obsolete, no longer manufactured and no longer supported. up on the screen you see the floppy disks that we boot the computer up each morning with. those are the actual floppy disks. is the state of the art now. and the train control industry has passed us by by several generations. but because we haven't meaningfully upgraded the system, this actually presents a unique opportunity to reconsider our train control needs and to host an open bid for the replacement model train control systems. today they track all of the train locations . they prevent collisions and they manage the spacing between trains as well as headways in the tunnel. they automatically operate the trains by controlling the accelerator and

braking. they set the train's routing in the system by distinguishing between a j and a k and l or an m because of those functions. as the train control system has outsized influence on our service delivery, the train control system can help us ensure consistent travel times and frequencies. it can also allow muni to offer flexible service plans and better rider communication during special events and service disruptions such as apec. this we can also reduce some types of delays that are caused by train congestion or traffic signal delays or junction delays. as i mentioned, our current system is aging. it has outdated hardware and software that's increasingly obsolete and difficult to maintain on due to the lack of parts. and as our maintainers retire, it's we're also losing experience both on the on the

supplier side as well as the sfmta side. the system is also dependent on 1980s technology that is fragile and easily disturbed, which complicates our efforts to modernize and to upgrade unrelated aspects like the special trackwork, for example. so oftentimes in service we have trains that fail to connect to the atcs and they have to operate without it. when that happens, that causes gaps. bunching slowdowns and rolling congestion throughout the system. the 2019 muni reliability working group, which was a panel of mta board members , supervisors, advocates, labor and transit experts, recommended that we replace the atcs in as as a top priority for muni in additional a there is no train control on the surface. on the surface, trains are unregulated and therefore our junctions are first come, first serve and the traffic signals that are meant to work with those junctions have limited ability to

coordinate because they cannot see the trains coming in advance . so we're working against the clock where we don't know the end of the countdown. two weeks ago, the system experienced a complete failure of the central components. in the morning of october 24th, trains were stopped in the tunnel for nearly half an hour. as time passes, it will likely it will become more likely that we'll experience failures such as this that will affect service. and without spare parts we run the risk of even greater disruption. the agency is working behind the scenes to refurbish our own spares, salvage what we can obtain used equipment from sister systems. but when we're doing that, we're borrowing time. we'll need to replace the in about the next 5 to 8 years upgrading and upgrade and modernizing the current train control system to current technology will itself provide benefits just by adding the modern technological capabilities such as wi-fi that we all are familiar with to

improve metro performance and reliability. on top of that, we are also planning to expand train control to the surface where it doesn't presently exist to allow us to have comprehensive rail service management and to compensate for some of the drawbacks on the geometric layout of our city's railway. we can't completely overcome the limitations that we've inherited from our streetcar system. but kbtc can significantly address the delays that are caused by signaling and congestion and kbtc is a strong investment in the reliability and capacity of our muni rail service. so after the need, i'm going to go into the project, the train control project that i manage is a ten year project to update the atcs to a modern kbtc and to expand the oversight of kbtc to the surface portion of the rail network. these are the key objectives for the project. the project will increase our system capacity of muni, allowing us to run more frequent

service. it will also extend upon the exemplary safety record of our current atcs and actually extend those safety benefits. this system wide as opposed to just the subway. it will allow us to have more consistent train spacing and travel times. it will support our service at all times. it will allow us flexibility for special events and contingency operations ins. and we're also taking the opportunity to build in with with the supplier contract, continual system upgrades on hardware and software so that we don't find ourselves in a position where we have a 30 year old system. again in these are some of the benefits that we expect to deliver to riders once the project is done. transit riders can expect to have fewer delays after the project has been delivered. they can expect to have faster trips and less time waiting between trains. they can also expect to have more consistent wait times that match the advertised frequency as opposed to frustrating

bunching and gaps. they can also expect not to be stuck between stations in the in the tunnel, as was the case in 2018 and 2019. and they also will allow our our transportation management center to have more flexibility in managing service out in the outer reaches of the system. so the train control project will be delivered in phases, starting with the pilot phase. that will be a limited street running area that will validate the complete street kbtc system. this is this is proposed on an area of track that is both critical to our service with the to the ballpark and the chase center. but it's also an area where we don't presently have train control. so it represents a lower risk in terms of failures. if there is a failure on the pilot phase, we would simply revert back to the operating rules that we have today. once we've successfully demonstrated the system is capable from the equipment on the vehicles to the equipment on

the wayside to the central equipment, will then take on the most technically complex part of the project, which is replacing the existing atcs with the new system in the market, street and central subways concurrent to that will be also beginning to do the planning and design and implementation for the exterior lines such as the nlcm and t and j. to give you a little schedule update right now, we're currently working through the vendor selection and contracting process. so in january you authorize us to issue an rfp and to select a supplier for the kbtc system. we issued the rfp in march and we received proposals after several extension requests from the suppliers. we did finally receive proposals on october 10th. currently we have those proposals in hand and we are evaluate eating the bids going

forward. we expect to bring a contract to you for the train control supplier in the summer and we'll also plan. we also plan to bring the contract for this consultant that you're considering on this item today. around the same time, so that we'll take them both to the board together following your approval, we'll need the board of supervisors approval for both contracts. and so we anticipate a notice to proceed for the train control supplier in early 2025, which is what you see on the screen there. following the ncp. we expect an 18 month design period, followed by the beginning of the pilot phase. we expect to deliver the first pilot segment and have it be operational in 2028 and then to turn over the subway to kbtc permanently in 2030, we expansion to the surface will also, on the surface lines will take place concurrent. lee so we'll be able to deliver those a little bit faster with the last one finishing in 2032. and then after we finished all the

deployment, the contract that you authorize us to, to advertise for includes up to 20 years of support for the ctc from the supplier. our funding approach, which is inextricably linked to uncertainty. and at this point of the project we are in the most the highest period of uncertainty. given that the bids are out and we don't yet have an understanding of what the impact of those of the contract values may be, we are going taking the project through the process and we should have a much better picture for when we when the board is updated on the budget and the cip next year. but right now in our current cap, we're funded at 290 million in this cip. but we estimate the project overall project cost to be over 600 million. it's important to note that we have

been successful in attracting some competitive grants and discretionary funding sources, and that continues to be our project approach for funding is to use the project work that we've done, as well as the funding that we've secured to attract more funding from the federal government and state in the form of grants. we anticipate that the strength of this project will will continue to attract those grants. now to just give you a brief kind of overview of some of the work that we've been doing with the risk management on the project, we've done a lot of work when it comes to the interweaving questions of risk within the project. so as you can see, it's kind of like a brick wall that you're laying a foundation that's based on decisions. and then as you as you continue, you have to base more risk decisions on top of those decisions. and so the point that we're that we're making here is that the a

project that we have has many unavoidable risks. and some of those risks translate directly into costs. some of them are scheduled risk. and but each one of them carries a risk that we it carries a choice that we have to make in terms of are we going to accept the risk or are we going to try to mitigate it further, which does itself take time and money. so an example of that is, is the risk that we have erred where we wanted to obtain a system of high quality. we knew that with our procurement strategy, we that we wouldn't be able to do that with a low bid construction type contract. so we separated out the installation work. but by separating out the installation work that created something else that we that we needed to manage. and we and we ultimately decided in the beginning of that of that art exercise that the risk of sfmta managing a separate installer was a lower risk than the implications of having a poor quality train control system. and so those are

the types of decisions that we're making on a regular basis. and there are dozens and dozens of examples of that in addition to help us manage those, the mta board has created a subcommittee. i think we've met three times in the past year that really provides a forum for staff to discuss those risks with the board members. i know lately it's been a little bit difficult because we've been in this contracting mode and haven't been able to express everything that we want to express with the with the procurement rules. but soon we'll be through that phase and we'll be able to work together a little bit more closely on on the design questions on questions of bringing the installers on board and construction. but we did cover a lot this year. we covered the overall risks that obsolescence poses to metro service risks that we intend that we expected to encounter during this procurement process. risks to the schedule and how to how to communicate those transparently. any pricing that risk, which is

an ongoing effort. and we intend to have some more development in next year about that and managing the uncertainty that we know exists in the budget as well as we really left no stone unturned when it came to researching international best practices and lessons learned, both from sfmta and other projects. and we and we did give get a lot of good feedback from the subcommittee. there. so moving into our contracting strategy, as i mentioned before, because in part we wanted to select a robust train control supplier and select them on their merits and also the ability of the supplier to provide long term support, which is actually something that mta hasn't really done in the past. it's always been an afterthought. you know, you buy the system and then later you get around to doing a sole source contract for the support. we decided, you know, we really want to put the support up front and center. so it is, you know,

we had to go and receive permission from the board of supervisors to negotiate an up to 30 year contract, which is which is a little bit groundbreaking working. and by doing that, we had to create this this structure here that you see on the screen where we have the supplier responsible for providing the system. they're also going to be our design partners. so as soon as we get them on board, we're going to have them really doing the heavy lifting in terms of designs, requirements that, as i mentioned, that's the contract, that's that. the rfp was issued in march and the bids that were evaluating the contract that circled is the one that's before you today. may the 2nd of the three, which is the consultant contract that allows us to support our project management. it provides some international expertise, design expertise to bear on the system and to generally support things like construction management and other avenues. and then later, as we go through each of the individual phases, we'll be bringing individual rail installer contracts and the nice

thing about that approach is that when we bring those installer contracts before you, they will be based on 100% design. so there should be little to no risk in in those because we have worked out all the design details and will be much further along than some of the other contracts that we typically negotiate. so the consultant rfp, as was mentioned , this is an as needed technical services contract supporting sfmta. the initial term is for five years and $25 million. we've added five options of one year each, bringing the total to ten years and not to exceed of $36 million. that's that's out of an over $600 million budget. the key rationale, as i mentioned, it's part of our risk management strategy in risks pertaining to the project. we also have a need to augment our technical staff acutely when we're having difficulty hiring, particularly engineers, onto the project. there is not a lot of

engineering experience in the united states, much less the bay area. and so we've had difficulty bringing those members on as full time staff. we do have some open positions. if anyone is interested in applying, we'd love to have your application, but in the meantime we'll use the consultants to help augment that. we'll also be hiring junior engineers in the hope that they can we can build them up and teach them the knowledge from the consultants and have them learn. and then we're also going to need a third party to help us hold the supplier and the account installer accountable to the obligations of their contract. so this is a summary of the services that are included in the consultant rfp, which is part of your packet. but in the general, the general sense, we have some project management and admin support, construction management support design and engineering. as i mentioned, they're not going to be the designers that's going to be the supplier, but they will help sfmta evaluate those designs when we get submittals as system integration support. so those

are the number of systems that the kbtc will have to talk to, like our cad system or our prediction system. we'll have support there to help us should we need it, qa support so sfmta will have a large qa responsibility needing to qa both the suppliers designs and the suppliers equipment as well as the installation work that was done. testing and commissioning will be a large part of this project. it i expect in future years when we get to that point to be providing regular updates on this progress of that and consultant support will help us again have more eyes, make sure that that goes smoothly with minimal disruption to the riding, public safety and security evaluation is critical to the acceptance of the of the system from the cpuc, fta and other regulatory bodies to making sure that we get authorization to operate the system. and then as was necessary, we also believe that

we'll need some post delivery and operations and maintenance consulting because there will be a strong learning curve as we transition our tmc, our field staff, our train operators to a new system from an old system. we don't believe we'll be able to do that with just the supplier. but we'll also need some consultant support to help us create materials and smooth that that transition along. so again, the action before you today, we recommend that you authorize the director of transportation to issue an rfp for contract 20 2420 fta for consulting services, supporting the kbtc upgrade project and again, those terms five years for 25 million with five options to extend for an additional year for a total of ten years, not to exceed 36 million. and that concludes my presentation. thank you. thank you, colleagues. deputy city attorney susan cleveland. also, i'd like to make a comment before we come to you. yeah, thank you, chair. deputy city attorney susan cleveland-knowles. i just wanted

to follow up on something that i think dan explained pretty well in his presentation. but there are two separate out things underway right now. first is the consultant contract, which is what is in front of you today. so that is where the prime discussion should focus for today. second, there is an ongoing evaluation of the communication based train control system going on, but that is in the middle of a procurement. so to ensure that the procurement process is conducted fairly, there should not be information provided to the public today regarding regarding the ongoing procurement. so, for example, a number of bids, the ongoing evaluation process, all of that is not to be disclosed today. so my colleague david ennis, who has been advising dan and the team on this procurement, is on webex, an and i just didn't want people to be startled if he jumps in from the internet to

interrupt a discussion or a question. so we'll try to keep try to keep the discussion going down the right track. but i just wanted to make sure that was understood. and thank you, dan, for making that fairly clear in your presentation. ann, thanks. thank you so much for the clarification and i just want to also acknowledge the service of my colleagues, director hemminger so and henderson on the train control upgrade project subcommittee. and so we'd love to open it up to you all first, if you have any thoughts or recommendations for director henzi and myself, and i think i saw you, director henderson, raise your hand first . sure. is that me? yes. so our to our like to ask a question about the other contract. are you saying i can't ask any questions about it? or

just those related to the current evaluation of the proposals. i'll let david clarify, but i think it's mostly related to the evaluation of the proposals. but david, do you have anything to add? yeah, this is deputy city attorney david innes. um you can ask about the public information about the ongoing procurement. in fact, the rfp was reviewed and approved by the board, but any information regarding the progress the any details on participants, even what is going on on our side regarding the ongoing evaluation of the proposals is protected information and shouldn't be disclosed at this point. at the risk of potentially undermining the process and requiring it to be started over again. okay. well, maybe just to avoid heart attacks here, i'll i'll defer the question about the contract

to another time. i think it would be helpful, dan, to hear about about how you built the cost estimate for the contract that is before us today. okay. it's a lot of money, but it's also an investment in an even bigger sum of money that we're going to be be seeking approval for later. so where did where did this number come from? thank you for the question. the number came from it started out as a as a round and a percentage figure of the overall cost. we looked at that as a kind of ground truth to make sure we weren't out of out of whack. this is an as needed contract. so the number that you're seeing before you is a cap that that i don't intend to hit. i expect it actually to be less. there are significant services that are in

this contract for example, with system integration services that sfmta intends to self-perform. um, and so those, those provisions in the contract are kind of an insurance policy that if we need additional support, it's there. so we based our annual estimate of one point. it was 1.3 a year as million a year based on actual number of hours that we would use using comparable sfmta classifications. so that that wound up being less than the overall amount. and then we added a little we had about 25% contingency fee. and then bounced that off of the overall project cost. so as i said, we expect to spend less than the cap, but the cap was was put in place also to include and inflation as well over the over

the ten year life of the project. and this is a professional services contract, right? so we're not talking about low bid or anything like that. yeah. so the way that we'll receive bids will be they won't be bidding on the overall the overall cap number that you see before you. that's not going to change through negotiations. what is going to change is the rates. so we're going to we're going to be negotiating salary rates, which is essentially to me as a pm, that's that's how fast are we accelerating towards that cap. and so we will be looking at that. and we will be looking at essentially the year over year expenditures. but we won't we won't necessarily use it all. okay and colleagues, let me just make one last point and then ask my new fellow committee members. one thing. the chair able was able to pull off is to remove herself from this committee by appointing the rest of us to it. but that's, you know, power has its privileges

as the last thing i wanted to talk about is risk and risk management. and i commend the staff for taking that question head on and seriously, we obviously, we have had the ability to benefit from a couple of risky projects that we just finished. i think there's probably a limited amount of transference of knowledge there because the other two projects were big honking civil construction on and this is really a software job and those can be the worst if you follow the industry in terms of remember how long it took the state of california to get a new dmv computer. so given the fact that it is a unique contract, i think that emphasizes all the more that we really take the

risk question seriously, i think you're covering in the areas that ought to be covered. the one that we're not covering and really aren't able to do is the donald rumsfeld the unknown unknowns at and i think a good robust risk process takes account of the fact that there are things we don't know. and we really can't know them at the beginning of the work. and we have to build in some what i would call humility into estimates. we make of time and cost and i know you've heard me talk about it until you're probably sick of it, but i do think we need to factor in that element of risk as well. the risks that we don't know, because very often the one you don't know is the one that really kills you. so again,

thanks for the effort. thanks for keeping our committee informed. i know the last time we met i was out of town, so i believe you met with the other two members. and i'd certainly like to give them a chance to make their comments. now okay. thank you, director. so please. thank you for sharing your knowledge. it's amazing. i love this. i just want to piggyback rye on what my fellow director, peter hemminger, said that the unknown is the usually is the one that throw us off the track. so in your $36 million budget, what is your contingency percentage. for the for the consultant and contract? it's 25% across the project. it's actually 25% as well. but

director hemminger was i think was alluding to we have more work to do next year. we what we did with the building, the project up again, we're at an early stage in the project so we're we're using building blocks, rough order of magnitude estimates and now we're only starting to kind of crest the surface and get into some more of the details now that we're getting proposals. and when we get into design. so the work that we have ahead of us, i believe, on top of that is to identify risks and price those individually while maintain our 25% contingency for the unknown unknowns. okay that's do you do you think that 25% is kind of in the higher end side for content agency? just wanted to get a sense of scale here. i believe it's about standard for projects, for professional. it's about middle of the road. yeah. okay um, your slide about putting the three different contract outs in the same page,

it was very helpful. so thank you. and my understanding is the supplier, the rfp already you already received all the proposal and that's in the procurement. yes. so now we're talking about the consultant rfp . i'm trying to understand the timeline about the consultant rfp. when we award them the contract, would it be in sync with the same schedule of when we award the supplier contract? because i've tried to see that i would assume when we have these engineers and experts in traffic control, what they propose for us to do only makes sense if our supplier has the capacity to deliver. so it's a chicken and an egg thing. so i like to know

are is it am i am i wrong or am i right or what's what's our plan? no no, i think it's a good question. i think so. the supplier rfp was much more complex than this as needed services contract. so it required it requires a much longer process to work out through all the details. our intent is, is we issued that one first. so it started ahead of us right? but we plan to issue the consultant rfp now and have that basically catch up. if you imagine them in a race. and so our goal is when they when we get to the finish line and when we come back to you for contract approval, that we'll be able to present you both the supplier and the consultant around the same board meeting. so they should come at the same time, which will then mean that when we give the supplier rfp or np, that we're giving the consultant np right around the same time as well. so we want them both to

come on board at the same time. and that was how we designed the process. okay, great. and didn't have the luxury to read the draft rfp, but i think i remember i mentioned it to you in our first historical teacup meeting. thank you for the orientations. the sp and db goal of 15. i like to see that we actually also have micro lba for our san francisco, so minority business contract participations . yes. and is virginia harmon on the phone to speak to? yeah. great. virginia harmon. good afternoon chair ekin members of the board director tumlin virginia harmon. i am the manager of the contract compliance office. i'm the agency db liaison officer. and you ask a very good question. what about the microbes? well they can participate on this project because we are presently

implementing two different types of programs. one is the lba program. um, and we use that program when projects are locally funded and the other is our dbe program. when the projects are federally funded, our dbe program requires us to set an sp goal. and for firms to achieve that goal, they have to be certified as dbs under the dot program. sbs under the state of california department of general services program or or lbz under the city's local business enterprise program. so firms can participate in that way. on this project. and as you know, the goal is set at 15. sp participation. so we're looking to see dbs. sbs and lbi's lisd bid by the prime bidders to achieve those goals. okay so there are opportunities there

for this. this project is highly specialized and but we did work in consultation with the project team and identified that there were some opportunities still, in spite of the highly specialized nature of the work and some of those areas are, you know, project management or construction management work, administrate on contract management work and all of those areas. and we're hoping to see sp participation there. okay, great. thank you very much. does that answer your question? it does. okay. thank you. dr. henderson, please. virginia i have a question for you. i think just along that line of the business goals, i'm curious if there i think i heard that there are some uncertainty with just how much of the 600 million will be paid from different sources. so if we run into a windfall and

it's, you know, a different source than anticipated, so if it's a federal source or a state source, and we expected it to be something different, does that change at all the sp or db goals? no so it will likely not change in the circumstance. typically when we fund projects with federal money, there's a requirement that we use the federal program so we can't switch back to the local program just because we got some more local money. so we're we'll be stuck in this federal program, but it's okay because in fact, we are are able to accept the certifications under the sba program that we're presently implementing. oh, you are? yes, we do accept certifications under our sba program. okay. got it. okay. and then in terms of the outreach or excuse me, preparation for these businesses

to be competitive, is there something specific that you are doing that maybe you have not done in the past that you expect to be able to reach these goals better? well, we do routine outreach, you know, throughout throughout the year on all of our projects and all of the projects that we're planning to bid on this project. in particular, though, we've been meeting with the community and of small businesses and have discussed with them the opportunities that are upcoming. okay. thank you. and i just wanted to say finally in wrapping up, i think we had a really robust discussion on at the teacup meeting on friday and i really appreciate this presentation on and the way staff was able to make this very complex and long term project understandable in bite size pieces. i think that the well, not the concern, but the thing that came out of it to me is

that this is such a long term project and it's sort of the way the approach that you all are taking is pretty not unusual, but it's something that you're testing out. and so i do hope that we really do keep track of the lessons learned so that in however many decades when you're putting the little microchip on the screen to show the outdated technology that the staff of this agency will be able to will have those breadcrumbs that can help lead them to a solution in in the next upgrade. so please do keep that in mind. you know, just the institutional knowledge and figuring out a way to make sure that that that this process is memorialized in a way that can be helpful. so that maybe the next upgrade is shorter or maybe more affordable and the

other thing that i wanted to just have a good understanding about is or a little bit of clarity about is that we anticipate bringing the other contracts in a couple of months, right? the supplier, is there an additional contract that's going to come with that or is just the supplier box? yeah. so next year , as we think around the summer is when we'll plan to bring the supplier and the consultant contracts to you. there is the installer contracts, but we're going to bring those one at a time as we start the construction of each phase. so those won't be for several years. okay. all right. thank you. if after all of the comment and everything, i would like to move the item. okay. thank you, director tomlin. yes, i wanted to thank director hemminger for his comment about risk and being transparent about risk. the reason why the subway is working

better today than it has in decades is not because we have more resources, but rather because the team has been really thoughtful about risk and communication in trying new approaches in order to operate it better and maintain it better. i think we've learned a lot over the last couple of years about the necessity of being very up front and transparent about the risks and things that we worry about and tracking those over time so that we can make course corrections continually as well as build trust. the presentation that dan , i believe gave to the train control subcommittee had a much longer discussion about risk, which dan also presented to the entire executive team and will be using as a model moving forward so that we're continually reporting on the things that are worrying us, whether it's schedule or cost or installation concerns or contractor concerns as we want to be very transparent about all

of that rather than hide the problem because it's through transparency that we can actually deliver this project successfully. this is something that we are modeling in our capital programs and construction division as well as throughout the transit division. and i'm hoping that it will be the model for the rest of the agency in terms of managing complex projects. yes. and finally, i need to i need to correct the record. previously, i have made statements erroneously stating that our train control system is loaded off of 1976, era 5.25in floppy disks. i stand corrected and note that it is loaded off of 1980s era 3.5in disks. we are much further ahead in our technological development than i had previously stated, and i want the record to reflect that. thank you, director hensley. please awesome. thank you. and thank you again to my colleagues

for serving on the train control subcommittee. i think this is making this item easier for chicken, and i do just have one question for dan on, um, that you expressed a desire to hopefully we spend less on this contract, on this contract, but it being an as needed contract out to that end, i was wondering and you showed in one of your final slides, you showed possible service that might be included in this contract. but will you be requiring whoever the subcontractor is to submit scopes of work? often that are specific, like every year, once a year, you know, so to help kind of control the cost cost on that. yeah thank you for the

question that speaks to the way we intend to manage the contract , which is through an annual work plan. so each year on the anniversary of the contract, we would go over with the consultant team the expected tasks that we expect to have them accomplish and help us with through the year. so it'll be part of our annual project planning discussions. we can also meet with them more frequently if we if an urgent needs arise. but at least every year we'll go over that with them and we'll essentially be selecting from that menu that you saw. and under that menu there are subheadings of individual of the types of other individual supporting tasks of which of those tasks we feel like we'll need. so we definitely won't there won't ever be a year. i mean, knock on wood, i don't think they'll ever be a year where we need all of those in one year, right? like there there's going to be some that are going to lie dormant, you know, there's one about post delivery support. we're

obviously not going to need that till the end of the project, but the so we'll be selecting from those and then the consulting will essentially build their team for the year. they need to understand and plan their workflow and so the structure of the rfp is reflects that as well. we as opposed to some other as needed contracts, we're not asking the consultant to commit a large number of staff exclusively to this project and to locate them here because we know or we intend not to use them frequently enough to require that. so we've required a small number of staff to serve for continuity purposes as the project management staff. when i say small, i'm saying about four. and then and then then they're meant to identify by their lead personnel. they're experts in each of those different disciplines who may be assigned to other projects, but who we expect to be available for ours. now that's where the devil will be in the details is availability of individual staff. and so we'll be each one

of those annual work plans will be kind of a negotiation of sorts between the consultant team and the project team in terms of who we're getting, what the overall level of effort or number of hours is and cost. and we'll be using that as a mechanism to control costs so that we remain under the cap. perfect. sounds like there's a responsible plan in place for that. and so, madam chair, after discussion in public comment, i'll i'll will gladly. second director henderson's motion of approval. thank you. thank you, director hensley. colleagues i will open it up to public comment at this point for those in the room, any speakers is seeing none. please open a remote at this time. we'll move to remote public comment not to exceed a total time of ten minutes. members of the public wishing to comment should dial star three to enter the queue. each speaker will have two minutes. moderator for speaker

for. thank you. good afternoon. chair amanda egan, alita dupree. for the record, she and her i request your leave to speak on this train control item and i have standing. this is very important and i haven't been on the subway in a while, but i have been on the subway at times when things were not quite working as right as i hoped. and while it has improved, yes, i learned something new today about these floppy disks and 80s technology things i had in high school. so i think we have to work at improve this. i can't say i have a long history with writing on the subway in san francisco, so it goes back to 2009. but i do have this summer a resume of using communication

based train control in new york city. on there train system, which is actually called a subway. perhaps some of you have gotten to see it and use it and the kbtc does perform markedly better than the than the systems or the older systems, some of which are 80 years old. so i enjoy my time riding on the seven line and some of those other new sections. so i hope we can do this work quickly and there's going to be more contracts coming along. but i want to have the best subway that we can for san francisco and i'd like to see how train control works on the surface, i guess. i guess we're going to turn the trains into autonomous vehicles. that'll be very interesting because i follow that. so. so i appreciate it. and thank you for the welcome that you have shown me to speak

on this. thank you. no additional speakers. okay that will close public comment at so colleagues, this subcommittee is a little bit of a an unusual format for us. we haven't done this too much the way the board of supervisors does. but if any of you do have a recommendation for us to consider now or in the future going forward, i'd be happy to hear that. just because you're able to dive much deeper into the topic. but director henderson, i think you had a motion. there was a motion and a second. great. let's call the roll on the motion to approve director heminger heminger. director henderson henderson director hinsey. hi director. so i. so i chair egan. i egan, i thank you. the item is approved. thank you. please call item 12. item number 12 approving an amendment to the sfmta's zero

emission vehicle policy to allow for future trolley bus acquisition in and extend the timeline for achieving a 100% zero emission fleet to align with the california air resources board and innovate their board's innovative clean transit ict regulation timeline, which is currently 2040. good afternoon. julie kirschbaum, transit director. thank you for the opportunity to bring to you a recommendation to modify our bus electrification policy. our road to low and zero emissions vehicles is a program that i'm very proud of. i want to talk today about some of the highlights of that program as well as where we think our policy work needs to go in order to continue that success. this addressing the climate crisis is a core value driving our work.

it's one we talk about a lot and is articulated in our citywide climate action plan. our biggest challenge is the transport sector, which makes up 44% of san francisco's greenhouse gas emissions. but i'm very proud to say that public transit makes up less than half a percent of those emissions. within the transport sector. our biggest challenge is private vehicles, private cars and trucks, which is why all of the work we do around making transit and walking and rolling and biking attractive. so important it by contrast, you can't even see muni on the graph and that is because we make up less than 0.0001% of the gas emissions. not only is the majority of our

fleet electric, but the hybrids that we operate are operated using renewable diesel and our fossil fuel free. the reason i started with this is to make sure that as we think about these important goals around zero emissions vehicles, that we also continue to recognize that the best way to reduce emissions is by improving modal share is by tackling that that difficult 30, as you saw, we had the honor of hosting the uitp trolley commission a couple of weeks ago and the secretary general, basically the head of uitp said something that really stuck with me, which is i would rather have a diesel bus and a transit lane than an electric bus stuck in traffic and i that really

resonated with me because getting to a fleet that is zero emission is important. but supporting that fleet with protected transit lanes and with a safe and clean bus shelters and all of the other things that we are doing to improve service quality is critical. i introduced this framing because one of the things i am going to be signaling today is that we do think we need to continue to purchase hybrid busses as part of our overall fleet program and that is explicitly to continue to support those modal share goals. if we are not able to continue to buy a combination version of electric and hybrid vehicles, we will be forced to keep our vehicles past their useful life and we will lose some of the transformative nature that we've seen in our

fleet program. our fleet program is really it's really principles based and it's something i'm so proud that our maintenance and our engineering staff have embraced. we started by saying that we were going to design a performance based specification and what that means is we are not telling the bus manufacturers how to build a bus or where to put their engine, what kind of door to design. we are telling them that we need vehicles that do not break down and can be maintained easily and that they stand behind in terms of warranty and they're helping us to build the best vehicle that they can build. we've then committed to make sure that we are maintaining, bring it to the highest standard. and that really means meeting and oftentimes using data to exceed what the manufacturer owners are recommending. so that we are fixing components on busses before they break, not waiting

for them to break the last kind of key piece of this program is that we keep these vehicles in a state of good repair, which means not keeping vehicles past their useful life and continuing to replace them on an ad needed basis. our progress towards zero emissions has been mighty. as i said, we are fortunate that all of our trolley busses, our trains, our beloved cable car and historic vehicles are powered by clean hydropower from the hetch hetchy dam. and our hybrids, which we were an early adopter of in 2007 and now represent our full diesel fleet, run on renewable diesel. we've also, as the technology for hybrid busses, has advanced, we've really taken advantage of it. the last 68 vehicles that we purchased, for example, can be. completely zero emissions

through about 25% of their route. so we have used a partnership with the manufacturer and gps coordinates to make sure that these busses are running completely battery through some of the neighborhood roads like chinatown and the tenderloin that are experien facing a disproportionate portion of that vehicle. emissions that i talked about earlier. we are also now successfully piloting electric busses. we now have ten busses, soon to be 12 from four different manufacturers, us and the pilot is teaching us a lot. the first thing that it's teaching us is that these busses really can handle san francisco conditions. it can handle our terrain, it can handle all our our heavy passenger loads. we're testing them all over the city.

so everybody is benefiting from them. and we've put these big lightning bolts on them. so people know that they're they're part of our experiment. we are also not seeing the reliability yet on these vehicles that we are seeing on our hybrid fleet. and we are currently working to hold these different manufacturers accountable, all to improve the quality of their product, to meet the expectations lines of our customers. we have also learned a tremendous amount about the facilities and the facility work is absolutely the most challenging thing. pieces of this we have now 12 plug in chargers at our woods division and we are so grateful that we have received a large federal grant that will allow us to add an additional 12 chargers chargers that have the overhead pantograph, which is a much easier way to charge the vehicles, along with. six sps

lots at a creek that will allow us to pilot 60 foot electric vehicles, which we're also very anxious to test everything we do in the fleet world because of electric location is now inextricably linked to our facility program. and these two teams and these kind of two worlds have worked together to create a really a living plan and a living approach. when we adopted the 2018 policy, we it was very restrictive. it eliminated all busses except for battery electric, and that included the trolley busses. and as a result, the potrero facility, which is going to be our first new facility investment, was anticipating kind of short term trolley, but then really a transition to electrification in we are now strongly recommending based on what we've learned in the last 6

or 7 years that the agency stay vested in trolleys, which means that potrero would become really the trolley hub of the of the agency. it has expanded in space in it and would allow us to move the majority of our trolley vehicles to this central location. the zero emissions policy, which the board adopted in 2018, called for us to be 100% zero emissions by 2035 and to not buy anything but battery electric busses by 2025. i am here today to ask you to modify that policy because it is not achievable or it's really only achievable if we don't buy new busses, which i believe will degrade our transit experience. we adopted our policy about nine

months ahead of the california air resources board and which has adopted a slightly more relaxed goal of 2040 and the carb program does also allow for exemptions based on some of the challenges we're seeing, particularly around funding and utility coordination. so our main recommendation today is that we modify the policy to be more expansive, to allow all zero emissions vehicles, including trolleys as well as to align our time line with the california air resources board timeline. as i indicate. did i think the biggest hurdle in front of us is funding jonathan's team is estimating that just the electrification portions of the building

progress program are upwards of $1.3 billion. we also are seeing about a 30% premium between hybrids and electric vehicles. so that in and of itself is also another about a quarter of $1 billion. so this is this is a lot of money. it's a lot of need. and we have frankly had a mixed record, which is not unique to california. yeah, i had an opportunity this morning to speak at a conference about the us transition to clean busses and there was a southern california property de octa there. and one of the things they pointed out is that because california was such a leader in early adoption of low emissions, we are not receiving federal kind of credit when we compete for these grants because we are not seeing dry dramatic drops in emissions because as i showed

you, we're at 0.001. but by not helping us with this journey and with this regulatory requirement, it's almost rewards the states that didn't make the same investment that california made in low emissions. so the main the main pivot that i'm asking is that we continue on an ambitious journey towards zero emissions. but that our vehicles track with our facility capacity . this is the program jonathan is here to answer all your hard questions about it. but it does start out with the two pilots. i talked about. we are then working towards the kirkland yard being our first fully electric facility. the benefits

of starting with kirkland is it is an open air facility. it is relatively straightforward in terms of the construction process, but it is an unfunded construction project. so we have been moving as much money as we can to keep the design going because as we very much want to open up this facility in 2028, we also believe that as the project matures, it will become more competitive of for discretionary funding. the second, all electric facility would be a slave creek, but we don't currently see a pathway to complete that project before 2030, which is why we are anticipating not just the upcoming procurement to have some hybrid vehicles in it, but also the subsequent procurements through the end of the decade and in terms of next steps for this work, we if the board

signals and makes the policy change today, we would very much like to designate potrero as the trolley hub. we are recommending that we temporarily store the 60 foot trolleys while we do the potrero construction. we had previously talked about building some very expensive temporary facilities and with our 2018 vehicle demands, that would have been absolutely necessary. but but as i said, because this is a living document, because we understand now that our short term vehicle demand is relatively short, we can an approach it in this more cost effective way. we also would like to continue to pursue a combination of procuring hybrids and electric vehicles. the action before you today would be

to revise is the zero emission policy and then we would be bringing you later this year or early next year a procurement for our replacement vehicles initially with new flier to by 94 hybrid vehicles. as 7 in 40 foot electric vehicles and then the six 60 foot trolley vehicles . and then i'm also very excited that gillig, which is a bay area based bus manufacturer and has not been interested in the past in selling sfmta busses, has been really excited about how we're approaching our maintenance work, how we are striving towards partnerships with the private sector. and so they have also agreed to build. five 40 foot trolley busses as and then lastly, i want to flag that we do anticipate needing to

come to you in 2024 for to approve an exemption to the to the carb policy in order to have this mixed procurement approach. this graph here, i think tracks our transition. we would be. targeting 2040, which is about how long we think that the facility program is going to take in order to support this work, but also continuing to be nimble and make changes in real time if things start to be more complicated than we're currently expecting. and the last topic that i want to talk about before i wrap up is that we are very committed to having a just transition for our workers and

really make sure that this board knows that this work will not result in any job loss for our our current amazing maintenance staff. we are very, very fortunate that the we took the hybrid approach to this transition because the vehicles are so similar. our we have been able to train our automotive mechanics that maintain the hybrid vehicles to maintain the pilot busses with really no more additional training than what they would receive with any new bus. we also are so fortunate that we have a traction power. the staff already working on the trolley vehicles that would expand their scope to support the electric location of our facilities. so we do not have some of the complicated job training and transition needs

that the rest of the industry has. but we are also continuously tracking this work and making sure our staff understand that we remain vested in them as we make this transition an i think that i have made the mistake in the past when we've talked to different policy groups about electrification to be overly rosy. this is the last hybrids will bring you or this is the last, last hybrids that will bring you. i'm trying to take a different tone today, which is to say in many ways, i think the plan that we have laid out for you is the best case scenario. it assumes funding that we still do not have in hand. it includes coordination with a regional utility provider that is trying to scale up not just for san francisco and not just for transit, but across multiple sectors as many, many parts of

the city are moving towards zero electrification. so we are trying to manage those risks by doing this planning, by working with pga on what our big need is as well as the specific projects that we are looking all over the country to try to understand how the different properties are approaching this and what we can learn. we have been doing a lot of outreach on this because it's not necessarily intuitive. you know, how does continuing to buy hybrids or easing up on our policy help with emissions and taking the time i think to explain the connection between mode share and also some of the challenges with facility

electrification i think has been time really well spent. and we're really proud that we've received several letters of support for this policy change from groups that are year or two ago really didn't even want to entertain the idea of a policy change. and i think there's a general interest in particularly the environmental advocacy community, to want to make sure that we continue anew, to charge ahead as quickly as we can, but also a recognition that we need to do so in a way that is practical and fundable and does not compromise our current service. i'm also grateful for our close partnership with the department of the environment on this work and really thinking through how this fits into the city's overall climate action plan, which ultimately is our guiding document. so the today's

action before you is to amend the zero emission policy. it is to align it with the california air resources board, which is currently targeting 2040. it also would allow us to continue to invest in in all forms of zero emissions vehicles, which allows us the flexibility to make decision plans based on different facility constraints and also to learn over time and. to really integrate zero zero electrification in vehicles into our overall climate change approach and make sure that we are driving forward in a way that is complementary to our ultimate mode. shift goals and doesn't contradict it or put it at tension. thank you. thank

you. directors, are there questions for director kirschbaum before we go to public comment? director heminger. thank you, madam chair . julie, i actually had a question about the slide. you didn't show on the trolley expansion. is there a way to bring that up? there it is. and maybe you could just help me reconcile. you know, we were sort of full of praises for the trolley earlier in the meeting, and this is considerably more negative. um, so i believe i don't know whether this is a response in part to the proposal that we saw from the electrical workers. but i do want to ask the question anew. why not instead of what? what did jeff say? hauling those two tons of batteries up and down our hills? why not expand the trolley

network and achieve the same purpose? thank you for that question. i my apologies that this slide came off as negative because we are very enthusiastic about trolleys and in particular we are enthused about the evolution of trolleys which include in motion charging. we are currently testing it on four of our vehicles and will be able to expand it to the entire almost 300 vehicle trolley fleet . what it does is it allows us to go 5 to 10 miles off wire and then recharge within about 45 minutes. so it has a lot of advantages and we very much believe that trolleys are an important part of our zero emission future. and that we should continue to invest in future generations of trolley vehicles. we are are cautiously

optimistic that the biggest hurdle that we faced in 2018 we may be able to address, which is we cannot stay vested in trolley vehicles if there isn't a trolley bus to buy. and when we bought the current vehicles us, there was one manufacturer, new flier. they only agreed. to design a trolley bus because as we join seattle so we really had buying power and they said don't don't get used to it. this is this is the last one in under jeff's leadership, bob and gayatri, who is here, pulled together a trolley consortium of five north american agencies to signal to the manufacturer, hey, we're we're going to continue to stay vested in trolleys and even if you're not too interested in any one of us collectively, we start to have some some decent numbers. nothing compared to

diesel or electric busses, but still something that is can be cost effective. it's been very successful. and one of the things that we were most excited about during the trolley conference was solaris, a european bus manufacturer attend ing and signaling that they will be entering the us bus market. it to not only build battery electric busses, but to also build trolley busses and bring all of that european trolley experience to san francisco in in the short term trolley expansion has all of the same challenges as the battery electric do because we currently only have two trolley facilities and we're about to close one of them for a 3 to 4 year construction period. we also have a really aging ing infrastructure, so i'm hesitant

to build new wires and new substations when we have substations that are 50 years old and very badly need to be replaced. but what's exciting about the inmotion charging is we don't necessarily need to paper over the city with new wires. we can really take advantage of corridors that already have a portion of wires. so for example, a corridor like the seven eight, which has overhead wires on haight street and market street but doesn't have them in the sunset, could become a trolley route. so we very much do think that trolleys are part of the future. they may even be part of our expansion past 2030, but they don't have any immediate expansion capability because of our facility constraints. but that's something that over over a relatively short time will be remedied, right? absolutely

okay. well, i'm glad i asked the question because you sound more positive than your words, at least as i read them at. and carb is on board with this. i mean, they've reached the point where they're they're willing to say that a trolley powered by hydro up in the sierra is zero emission. yes, they are. okay, well, that's good. that's progress. i certainly support the policy change as you're proposing today. i think we probably as a city jump the gun a little bit before we needed to and now have to backtrack a bit. i think carb has woken up and smelled the coffee and i very much appreciate the comments text you gave us at the beginning, because what what we're doing here is chasing a vanishingly small source of emissions means if you want a big source of emissions, go talk

to the commercial trucking industry. and i recall when we got involved with carb on this as a region, we said, couldn't you go pick on somebody your own size because public transit is worried about just opening the doors every morning. but look, they're on the search of all the emissions, not just the small ones and the big ones. so i appreciate the fact that they're , i think, making a reasonable course correction and that we are to thank you, great other colleagues, directors so. thank you for the presentation then i would like to i'm looking at the slide with all the electrification on the of our properties and what you mentioned was that only maybe 1

or 2, it's i think it's this one, only 1 or 2 are funded. and so, so it's like i'd like to hear a little bit more about how if it's even, what is the likelihood of like these there's the right bus for us to buy and we have the money and already build these facilities to migrate them to electrification means that these busses needs. um, i think that's something we are going to learn more over time. we are are going after every grant opportunity city. we did face a pretty significant setback with the geo bond. that would have been a major infusion of resources for our facility program which is just in general a hard program to fund. so i, i don't know that i have a sense

of what our odds are in terms of funding. we are leaving no stone unturned. we are going after every every source available to us. okay well, thank you. so director hensey, any further questions? no questions. i'll just say i'm in alignment with director hemminger on this very part of the item. i. i understand the previous board, um, or attempting to be leaders in this area. and i think we are and i think we as an agency, we are a leader in green bus transportation. we um, and i think we should keep that as our goal and, and fortunately by the time i outlined in the current policy before today's action, i

just don't see a path forward in getting the facilities that we need for, for the zero emission vehicles by the time outlined in the current policy. so again, very supportive and appreciative of staff bringing this forward. i think it's a practical approach. to do this. um issue. so thank you. and, and after public comment, i'll be happy to make a motion to approve this item. thank you, director henzi i'd like to open it up for public comment, but for anyone in the room on this item 12 at this time, actually, chair egan, i did have department of environment staff on the webex and i believe they did want to share some words. okay. thank you. so tyrone, hi there, it's

leo kai. i'm the deputy director for san francisco environment. tyrone wasn't able to make it today, but he asked me to attend on his behalf. um, i wanted to just affirm that the board item that you're hearing does align with the city's sustainability goals and that our department supports the plan being put forward by staff. as quick background for the public to san francisco environment department is responsible for coordinating the implementation of the 2021 climate action plan, which was unanimous unanimously approved by the san francisco board of supervisors and signed by mayor breed as well. our goals are codified under chapter nine of the environment code and the code calls for net zero emission by 2040. so director zhou and i met with the sfmta team and support the plan revisions as emphasized during julie's presentation, san francisco does

indeed have one of the cleanest municipal fleets in the nation and such a robust public transit system. and as we electrify the transportation and building sectors, we do see and i wanted to confirm that there is indeed a statewide challenge of improving the electric grid. so it is really important. we also need to ensure that we are continuing to maximize ridership and that requires us to ensure operational, reliable city. that's the key thing. so the adjustment proposed in the timeline still fits with our overarching climate goals of net zero emissions by 2040, and it accounts for changes in the landscape around implement and funding. so thanks to the mta board for letting me speak today , thank you for that context. it's very helpful. thanks for joining us. you're welcome. uh, go to public comment now. all right. thank you. thank you. board members. my name is alex lansberg, research advocacy

director for with the san francisco electric construction industry. and pardon me, i've been talking way too much today, so for the past few months i've been appearing before you to speak about the importance of leveraging our existing overhead line network for decarbonizing san francisco's transit system. so i'm glad to see this monumental policy change before you and want to thank director tumlin for his leadership in bringing it about. while this represents an important turnaround from the plan to eliminate that network a few years ago, there's a lot more work to be done simply put, electrifying muni quickly and economically. i mean, we heard what a billion and a half dollars already will require a creative approach to integrating new technology and leveraging our existing infrastructure. what does this mean in practice? this number one, no new diesel purchases sfmta must first analyze how to deploy the dozens . i think we've got over 100 now total of its unused trolley busses before making a massive capital expenditure on diesel to do, we need to analyze the high opportunity trolley bus deployment opportunities that we showed in our map. the 7 to 9

were on there. i think the 38 needs to be incorporated as part of the gary rapid transit planning to see what we can do there and we need to revisit the yard redevelopment plans because as we can see, they are actually working against us on these things. so thank you for moving this forward. a couple of things. i know i only have like 30s left on specifically around the adequacy of the grid. i think one of the things, one of the really important things that our study showed is just the much, much more robust energy management and efficiency of the trolley bus network. a good example is compare bring what they're doing in geneva versus columbia. columbia carries one line, carries six times as many people at half the energy load compared to another line in geneva. so i think that that's absolutely critical. the second the second one is on manufacturing capacity. i think what we're seeing, i know what

we're seeing is other agencies are going to deal with this. let's have the next speaker jump in. okay. thank you so much. chair egan, director tomlin and members of the board. my name is mark sawchuck. i'm a daily muni rider and i'm also a member of the community working group that is advising muni on the reconfiguration of the muni metro system. but today we're here to talk about a different form of electric trans transportation, the trolley bus system. i submitted a letter of support for this agenda item, but i feel so strongly about it i decided i needed to come down here as well today for almost 90 years, since 1935, san francisco's trolley bus system, the most extensive in the united states, has combined excellent reliability, superb performance, especially on the city's unique topography and unbeatable

environmental credentials. but the 2018 zero emissions policy made what at least to me was always a bewildering decision to plan for a total phase out of the trolley bus network in favor of battery electric busses. while i support these and i support hybrid busses on routes that are not currently wired, they still can't match the unparalleled performance of the tried and true trolley bus. therefore, i strongly encourage you to support this agenda item which amends the 2018 policy and explicitly recognizes the trolleybus network's value and future contribution to a 100% zero emissions fleet. let's not repeat the mistake of the 1950s, when the city gave up most of its remaining streetcar lines. we learned then that once transportation infrastructure is gone, we never get it back. and with no shade to the muni metro system, about which we've just heard lots about the upgrade

plans, the trolley bus system is the crown jewel of the muni system. let's treat it as such. thank you. thank you for your comments. next speaker, please. um, why does why did carb not see the lights and why do they pick on transit agencies to improve? it's the same thing that sfmta sadly suffers from. it's very hard to say no to cars , but we've got to the i'm curious what the trolley bus pricing is in contrast to the hybrid and the battery electric bus pricing mainten bus is going to be lower for battery electric busses and trolleys will absolutely be lower, too. i know you have to translate that into maintaining the catenary, but it's still going to be cheaper. we need to say no, just out of principle in the city. no more

diesel. none. none should be purchased. it's just a silly way to spend our money and we do. i remember your words, chair aitken, about about how much is it going to cost to get us what we want to get us? what we deserve? you've said this for active transportation. what does it take to get us this connected network to get us a safe streets that our city is worthy of what people any person deserves to have? what is the same thing we need for our transit network? that is what we need to be working towards. what is that number? and how do we roll it out? and i'm not saying you just spend it all, but we have to start limiting cars. we have to make it expensive. we have to make it difficult. we have to take the lanes and we have to charge them and take that money and put it towards transit and active transportation. and i it's very difficult to hear that we don't have the money or we've

got to buy this because it's cheaper and whatever. when i know it's costly in many other ways over the long haul. please charge the cars and make the transit and active transportation that we need. thanks guys. thank you. next speaker, please. good afternoon, directors. my name is cyrus hall . i urge you to move forward with the suggested modifications to muni policy. i want to highlight a couple of really important changes here that julie talked about. one is resynchronizing vehicle purchase schedules with capital plans around facility upgrades to synchronizing the vehicle plans of carbs policies, including carbs recognition of trolley busses as zero emission vehicles , and three vitally re-embracing the trolley busses as part of the agency's zev plans. i really agree with what was said that the environmental north star and best option for reducing emissions is making sure that we can increase service and keep service stable and we need to do whatever it takes to make that

happen. but i am concerned that the suggested plan to purchase a significant number of new diesel hybrids when we know that hundreds of trolley busses, not hundreds, around 100 trolley busses will be sitting idle because of a lack of space for regular maintenance during the patrol yard redevelopment that there had been a plan to provide temporary space to continue the use of these already purchased trolley busses. that space was reallocated and my understanding, because it was needed elsewhere. and my question today is rather than buying as large of a new fleet of diesel hybrids as being suggested, can we find space and get those busses back on the road? we already own them. is there a cost effective plan to make that happen? i would also ask you to reconsider yard redevelopment plans in light of today's policy changes. the presidio yard, for example, could accommodate modern amc trolley busses as yard redevelopment should be done in

alignment with comprehensive system electrification analysis that reflects the challenges of b e b's, battery electrics and the fit to function nature of trolley busses. i also want to say i deeply appreciate i'm looking at this from the outside. it's a very complex topic and i appreciate staff's dedication and hard work to make these decisions in the most efficient way possible. thank you very much. i'm not seeing any other speakers in the room. please go to remote at this time. we'll move to remote public comment not to exceed a total time of ten minutes. members of the public wishing to comment should dial star three to enter the queue each speaker will have two minutes. moderator first speaker. thanks again, chair amanda. alida dupree. for the record, she and her i'm simply an ordinary user of muni and other systems. i do support trolley busses. we should not remove one foot of wire. i think that we should consider the

expansion of trolley bus network and that should be a part of our toolbox. but i don't think that we should buy any more diesel vehicles or is even renewable. diesel does produce particulates which are impactful, unfortunately, and not so good ways. maybe not as much as straight petroleum diesel, but it does produce particulates and limited production. run of renewable diesel. that diesel would be probably better used in the trucking industry or the railroad industry because they're going to take a lot more time to transition than what we can do here. it doesn't seem like it's hard to get charging equipment. there's charging stations for cars and light vehicles being built all over the country, some of which have capabilities as high as 350kw more than what we would use for

a bus change is hard, but i practiced my values by living in a home that operates on 100% solar energy, electricity and my home. is 100% electric. we have no gas service in here and i don't want it 30s and i take 53 years of using the new york city subway, which runs on electricity. so san francisco has a very green fleet, but to me, buying diesel busses is like using candles to power for a power failure in your home. instead of a flashlight. i choose to look forward. thank you. thank you. next speaker. hello i cape grasteinn. i'm also a regular transit rider and i'm exiting the comics by alex and cyrus and other people that yeah, we should really look to avoid diesel purchases because

we have operating costs that are both will probably be higher and also are unknowable and could be much higher. diesel prices go up exponential. suddenly we have dozens, as i said, unused trolley busses and we could really try to use them and we can try to deploy these trolley busses like, for example, the seven and nine lines or candidates that we could use for bus rapid transit and then also install in motion charging. so i think i think there's a way to really focus on avoiding diesel and looking at continuing trolley busses and looking at maybe different way to redevelop the portrayal yard in the context of emphasizing trolley busses. so yeah, i would urge sfmta to do that. thank you.

thank you. next speaker, our. speaker, you've been unmuted. good afternoon. good afternoon. my name is pete wilson. i am a trolley bus operator. i'm asking that you do not close potrero the crown jewel of our busses are the electric 60 foot trolley busses, like on the five, the 14, the 30, the 49. please don't close potrero trolleys charged during the day while they drive, not back at the yard with huge storage batteries at the yards. please don't close potrero. there's a spot behind me where the plan was all along to put our busses back there. now we're going to put our busses back there in mothball them. please don't close potrero. many cities like la pulled their tracks out in the 50s. we now have another opportunity to notice a lot of people pulled out their wires like cambridge just did not. so excuse me, their wires are still up, but they just got rid of their busses. so don't close potrero renewal. renewable diesel is decreases carbon by

65. that's still 35% carbon don't close potrero potrero is central. yes with julie alluding to getting rid of presidio. please don't. we need to expand? we don't need to contract. please don't close potrero. thank you very much. thank you. next speaker. good afternoon. this is peter strauss. i'm on the board of san francisco transit riders and i'm speaking, which i think i can be pretty brief, but i'm urging you to support the staff's recommendation today. this is a very appropriate and necessary course correction to the 2018 policy, which in many ways was short sighted and inappropriate. and this is the right step for the agency and the right step for carb to allow the continued use of trolley coaches at this

time. um, that said, within this policy, i'm very encouraged by the last thing julie referred to, which was the improved batteries for the trolley coach fleet that will allow the in motion and route charger thing and urge the staff to consider the use of trolley coaches with such batteries at the earliest possible time on such lines as the seven and the nine which operate mostly under wire today and can be expanded to make better use of our trolley coach fleet and electrify them fully that much sooner. thank you for your time and thank you for your consideration of this. thank you. next speaker. this is herbert weiner. i strongly support the proposals, but i do think you have to restore the 47 potrero and three jackson lines. they are very important trolley

lines and i think the city really misses them. so to enhance trolley service, please restore these lines. they're very important to the public. thank you. thank you. we have no additional callers. okay. we'll close public comment. director kirschbaum. i just wonder if you might be willing to address some of the themes that we heard in public comment around the sort of desire for a bright line of no new diesel purchases. and the question about whether trolley busses could play more of a role in our needs going forward. yeah absolutely. when we were first planning to move potrero during construction, we had a peak bus demand of about 630 vehicles at and we didn't have a bus to spare because every other vehicle we were using to do the

maintenance that i'm always bragging about our current peak demand is just over 500. so we are in a much different situation than we were in 2018. in 2018, our vehicle, our facility program was being anchored by the fact that we were planning to spend had about $150 million to move potrero this would not be a facility that we owned. it was a port owned facility and it would be an investment with a very short term purpose. so i'm very grateful that we've been able to shift the plan and take some of those precious dollars and invest them in in kirkland, which we see as the first all electric facility. i also want to point out that while our current demand is about 510, i

very much believe that we are going to need to grow our service. s as the city recovers, as we come up with stronger our financial approach is collectively to get transit back to a thriving state. so i don't think that we can look to the vehicles that were storing as our answer because they will be back on the road by 2028. the vehicles that i'm talking about purchasing in 2025 and 2026 will have a 12 year lifespan as well. well past that kind of two year bridge. so i do enthusiastically support trolley. it's exciting to see so many san franciscans really express their love for this unique and important mode.

but i do believe that some of the advocacy has been significantly oversimplified and does not look at all of the complexities of a large scale trolley expansion. well okay. i think we had a motion. is that right? or director lindsay, were you going to make a motion? oh, madam chair, i'd be happy to. yes. thank you. is there a second? i will approval second. great. please call the roll on the motion to approve director heminger heminger. director henderson i henderson. i director hinsey kinsey i director. so i. so i chair eken. i eken. i thank you that item is approved and concludes the business before you today. okay. thank you. colleagues, staff, members of the public. we are adjourned. next meeting started in november 21st and december 5th.

>> >> >> >> >> my name is bal. born and raised in san francisco. cable ca