>> hello everybody! i'm san francisco mayor london breed and really excited to be here with sfmta at one of our incredible muni yards, where we know every single day the people who work for sfmta are showing up and doing some incredible things. you know, what is-i want to take us back because we have sf natives and you'll hear from one of them today, but i remember growing up in san francisco and how challenging it was to predict when a bus might be coming and in some cases, those buses would never come. i remember the conditions of the buses. i remember so many real issues that are not necessarily the kinds of same issues we deal

with today. it isn't to say we don't have challenges with muni, but every mayor that has come along, including a mayor i will not name said, i'm going to fix muni in a hundred days, you remember that? leaders are not the one s who fix the problems, the people who actually work for the institution are the ones that fix the problems. the people who are the mechanics who are the cleaners, who are the operators, who are the folks who day in and day out deal with the challenges of our public safety system and continue to show up every single day for the people of san francisco. the reason why we are here today is to really highlight something that has changed, and the pandemic changed us of course. it changed how we work, how we go to work, downtown and other

neighborhood, it changed work from home and other things but muni has to keep going and it has. it has become cleaner. it has become more reliable and it has become safer and many of the surveys juf tumlin will talk about today will help you understand the perspective of our riders, but also the perspective of some of our operators and the people who are ambassadors and others doing everything they can to insure muni is safe. a couple things, number one, when we say cleaner, well here you see a cleanic demination and how work and care goes into insuring that every bus is clean in detail and properly and the people who do that take a lot of pride in their work. those who are out there throwing stuff on the muni bus know we got 11 cameras watching you, and we got 11 cameras

watching out for the people riding muni in order to help us deter er some of the crime and challenges that exist, but we also know sometimes the issues occur right outside muni stops and why we also employ ambassadors and people who are eyes and ears doing everything they can to protect our ridership and to make sure that muni has a really great safe experience. and our operators. i know most of our operators don't take no mess, but at the same time, they got to drive the bus, so we need to show them some respect and what they are trying to do is get you from point a to point b wherever you are trying to travel safely. at the end of the day, so many rely on the system. i remember my grandmother used to ride the system, i used to ride the system regularly and i still every now and then pop in on the buses with my hoodie on just to get some experience of what's going on with our muni system and i must say that our

drivers are really good drivers, and i will also say that our buses are extremely clean and i'm really proud of the work they have done and continue to do to make sure this system is continuing the incredible work it does. muni ridership is over by over 25% that has been in the past year and higher then it has been since coming back from a global pandemic, and riders are more satisfied with muni then they ever have been before. our express buses including the 1x and the 14 and our new rapid bus lanes on geary boulevard and on van ness boulevard and other locations had lead to a more relyable and quicker opportunity to get to the locations so many people are getting to. let us all remember, there are people who love muni, there is

also people who completely rely on muni, and those seniors or those kids trying to get to school and everyone in between, you know, we want to make sure that every single day what we are doing is improving the system to serve you. and the people here with me today are the folks who take a lot of pride in the work that they do. so, i am happy to be here celebrating some good news, because often times there are lot of folks trying to count our city out. they are trying to define our city when they are maybe journalists who don't live here or people who have never stepped foot on san francisco and we are here to paint a different story of san francisco. one that celebrates our diversity. one that celebrates our accomplishments and one that really celebrates the resiliency of our city and what we represent and muni is a very important part that. our transportation infrastructure is a important part that, and the people that

represent that transportation infrastructure are critical to its success. so, at this time i want to introduce jeff tumlin to talk in detail about the exciting numbers and changes to muni and to say thank you to all the folks joining us here today. [applause] >> thank you mayor london breed and thank you for everything that you have done over the last 4 years in order to a stronger muni. it is no secret that muni is facing challenges. we are still in the worst financial crisis that this agency has faced in entire history, over a hundred years. we are also still suffering from the fact that there is no city in the world more impacted by covid era work from home policies then san francisco. at our downtown rail stations like montgomery and embarcadero, the ridership is only at 35 percent pre-covid

level but thanks to the talent of all around me, we succeeded retooling muni for today's current travel patterns and the results are far more successful then we had thought possible. we have had a relentless focus on making sure that muni is fast, frequent, reliable, safe, and clean. we made muni faster and more frequent because investing in transit priority. over the last 4 years we built more then 25 miles of new transit only lanes and other transit priority treatments. making our main lines like the 49 van ness up to 30 percent faster then they were pre-covid. in fact, i still get complaints from 49 van ness riders that they are arriving at their appointments too early for or missing their stop because they look down at their phone and the bus is moving so fast that

they are missing their stops. we focused making muni more reliable investing in maintenance. i am so incredibly proud of all of our maintenance crews and what they have been able to achieve and making both our buses and trains more reliable. they are not breaking down as much. we have eliminating astonishing 75% of all delays in the subway thanks to the work our maintenance crews have done during fix it week. you recall-exactly we do not think this was possible. you recall pre-covid, if you rp on a train heading from the west side, that your train would get into west portal and get into the tunnel and it would shutter to a stop and lurch forward and shutter again and finally get to the station and stops and not able to get off the train until it lurched

forward 5 times finally letting you off the train. you notice our trains don't get stuck anymore. you get on the train, you get into the tunnel, it goes straight to van ness station, you get off, people get on and on it goes dramatically reducing the delays thanks to our extraordinary maintenance crews. you also notice that pre-covid if you were waiting for 14 mission, those buses supposed to come every 5 minutes but instead of one bus every 5 minutes, you would get 5 buses all together every half hour. thanks to the extraordinary work of our operators as well as our planners and the folks managing our transportation management center, our buses now come all most exactly as frequently as they are supposed to come. what this has meant, the combination of faster and more reliable together is san franciscanss are making transfer. i notice in my life.

i go to japan down, even though the trip always requires a transfer from the 24 to the 38 or 49 to the 38, but when i change buses at van ness and geary, i can always see the next bus coming, because of this improvement in reliability. i also have to pgive a shout out to our extraordinary car cleaners to our crews managing our shelters and custodial staff who made our buses cleaner then i remember them in the 30 years i have been taking muni every week and particularly our stations that are just gleaming. i am so proud of the work our hardest working people are doing in order to focus on the customers. i am also incredibly proud of the work the transit fare inspector, ambassadors i security teams are doing to make muni safer. it is no secret san francisco is experiencing a increase rate

of mental health and untreated addiction issues on our streets. we are focused making sure our riders feel safe and secure and the work that track the 11 cameras on every transit vehicle and the up to hundred cameras in every one of the stations, in partnership with the san francisco police department and with the district attorney's office, we are making sure that every crime that is reported on muni is investigated and are prosecuted and thanks to incredibly strong evidence we are able to provide, those cases are being convicted. as a result of all that, our reported crime rate on muni is now a quarter of where it was 10 years ago. we still have a lot more work to do, but we are proud of the progress that we are making thanks to the efforts of mayor london breed and all the other departments. i could not have done this

without the extraordinary crew across all of our muni divisions and to speak more about that i'm proud to introduce the sfmta director of transit and muni general manager, julie cursebalm. >> thank you director tumlin and mayor breed for all the support you have shown for the amazing staff. the folks behind me and throughout the system are really what make muni the amazing service it is and collectively we are so grateful to your leadership and support of muni. muni is safer, cleaner and more reliable thanks to the creativity and are commitment of our incredible staff. every operator has been trained

on customer service to help guide visitors and locals alike and trained on de-escalation techniques to enhance safety. operators who are-operators, wave operators. fare inspectors. transit ambassadors, station agent and security staff here today all work together to make the system safer and more welcoming to everyone and to prevent and deter crime before it happens. if someone breaks the law our sophisticated camera system and our close partnership with the police department and the district attorney's office will hold them accountable. as you heard today, our vehicles truly sparkle and it is because our car cleaning crews run a 24/7 cleaning operation with the highest industry standards. they inspect every vehicle

before it returns to service to make sure that you have a clean experience. our transit operators make constant adjustments to make sure wait times are minimized and they now have better digital information so they can see how close they are getting to the bus in front of them and make small adjustments to reduce vehicles bunching up together. our mechanics have dramatically improved fleet and performance by using data to fix things before they break, and with that, they are keeping even our oldest vehicles running like new. the teams that maintain our subway are more efficient and effective. they are using fix-it weeks to do thousands of hours of extra maintenance and thanks to their work and our wonderful new muni fleet, subway service is more reliable then it has been in decades and this has been a huge boost as we all focus on

our downtown recovery. and finally, our capital program and construction staff are delivering projects on time and on budget by being more proactive, responsive and accountable and building close partnerships with our construction partners. muni is better. it is safer, cleaner and more reliable. behind every statistic, improvement, reform, good idea and act of service is a person. it is the committed public stewards who work day and night to move muni forward. to get you to school, to work and home. so, thank you so much to the amazing staff that runs muni. i am so grateful for them and i know director tumlin and mayor breed join me in their extreme gratitude for this work. and to hear from our staff directly i am really excited to be able to invite up jacqueline

berry, one of our distinguished muni operators and has the incredible record driven entire 10 year not just at muni but throughout her career without a single collision. it is that sort of commitment to safety and commitment to our customers that we are so incredibly fortunate to be blessed with and excited to invite her up. [applause] >> thank you. i appreciate your kind words. okay. today i feel very honored to be here to let you know about our services we provide for the patrons of san francisco. i am also a san francisco native born and raised in san francisco from the western addition, grew up in bayview district. my job is very important to me. i provide the best safety to

the seniors, the mothers, the elderly, just the people getting to go back and forth to work every day. i drive a tough run, the 7 haight. it serves san francisco. the better part of san francisco, the better the worst, but i do a lot, i meet a lot of really nice people. they never complain about the service i provide. they always are happy getting on and off the bus and happy with my time performance and my safety. our buses are getting cleaner. they are much better. the performance of everybody that make muni run the way it is, we are proud of it. the cleaning crew are on time. if we have something that isn't right they take care of us. our safetyness is improving, because it is what we do. it is what we are trained to do. i'm proud of what i do and my coworkers and what they do and

how they perform. we make this job work for us because we have to provide for our families. we have homes. we have children that we have to take care of, so we make muni work for us and we make it work for the public. the public is our main safety service. every since the pandemic the ridership was down a little bit, but now the buses are over-crowded. people are coming back to us and they are being just grateful that we are here and that we can get them home safely and we know that we appreciate our job and what we do. i am thankful for the mayor, to julie, for jeff for having me up here to let you guys know, that muni is a wonderful place to be. it is wonderful job. we have great times here. we are family. everybody might not get along all times, but at the end of the day we are still family and

we know we have a job and service to provide. i love serving san francisco. i love my job. i have been here 16 years and no other place i would rather be. [applause] thank you, you guys have a good day. >> now, for the very exciting part of the bus wash demonstration, we like to invite all of you to join us over here and we will look at the new technology that is helping to make muni cleaner and more reliable then ever before. thank you so much for joining us.

. >> my name is dave, and i play defense. >> my name is mustafa, and i am a midfielder, but right now, i am trying to play as a goalkeeper, because they need a goalkeeper. >> soccer u.s.a. is a nonprofessional organization. we use sports, soccer in particular to engage

communities that can benefit from quality programs in order to lift people up, helping to regain a sense of control in one's life. >> the san francisco recreation and park department and street soccer u.s.a. have been partners now for nearly a decade. street soccer shares our mission in using sport as a vehicle for youth development and for reaching people of all ages. rec and park has a team. >> i'm been playing soccer all my life. soccer is my life. >> i played in the streets when i was a kid. and i loved soccer back home. i joined street soccer here. it was the best club to join. it helps me out. >> the tenderloin soccer club started in the summer of 2016. we put one of our mini soccer pitches in one of our facilities there. the kids who kpriez the club team came out to utilize that

space, and it was beautiful because they used it as an opportunity to express themselves in a place where they were free to do so, and it was a safe space, in a neighborhood that really isn't the most hospitalable to youth -- hospitable to youth playing in the streets. >> one day, i saw the coach and my friends because they went there to join the team before me. so i went up to the coach and asked, and they said oh, i've got a soccer team, and i joined, and they said yeah, it was he for everybody, and i joined, and it was the best experience ever. >> a lot of our programs, the kids are in the process of achieving citizenship. it's a pretty lengthy process. >> here, i am the only one with

my dad. we were in the housing program, and we are trying to find housing. my sister, she's in my country, so i realize that i have a lot of opportunities here for getting good education to help her, you know? yeah. that's the -- one of the most important things that challenge me. >> my dad was over here, making some money because there was not a lot of jobs back home. i came here, finish elementary in san francisco. after that, i used to go back to my country, go to yemen, my country, and then back here. last time i went back was a couple years ago. >> i came here six months, i know nobody. now i have the team has a family, the coaches. amazing. >> i'm hoping for lifelong friendships, and i'm super inspired by what they've been

able to achieve and want to continue to grow alongside them. >> i love my family, i love my team. they're just like a family. it's really nice. >> street soccer just received a five year grant from the department of children, youth and family, and this is an important inreflection point for street soccer u.s.a. because their work in our most important communities is now known beyond just san francisco recreation and park department, and together, we're going to continue to work with our city's most vulnerable kids and teach them to love the beautiful game. >> i want to tell everybody back home, i hope you all make it over here and join teams like this like street soccer u.s.a., and live your life. get a better life. >> right away, just be patient,

and then, everything will be okay. maybe janine, since you're both going to, i believe. exactly. are we good to begin? all right. just the ten after. good good. came out like that. like thank you. good afternoon. and welcome to the meeting of the arts commission on monday, march 4th, 2024. i'm now calling the meeting to order. um commissioner. secretary dhaliwal