director heinicke? director heinicke is anticipated. director lee? >> present. >> lee present. director ramos? >> [speaker not understood]. >> ramos present. [speaker not understood]? mr. chairman, directors, you have a quorum. item 3, [speaker not understood] producing devices please be advised that the ringing of nuisance cell phones, pagers, any electronic devices are prohibited at the meeting. any person responsible for one going off in the room may be asked to leave the meeting. any person -- any cell phone that is set on vibrate does cause microphone interference so the board respectfully requests that they be turned off. >> thank you. >> item 4, approval of the minutes of the january 15th, 2013 regular meeting and the january 29th 2013 special meeting. >> thank you. is there a motion to approve the minutes? >> motion to a preform. >> second. >> any discussion on it? erctiontion all in favor say aye? >> aye. >> so ordered. okay, thank you. >> item 5, communications. mr. chairman, i know of none. >> well, i would just like to -- members of the board, like to mention the wo

director heinicke, all of you, director heinicke in particular, spent 7 years of his life trying to, trying to turn the cab business into an income stream for the public good and succeeded. we were expected to get a lot of medallion dollars out of. thisiest mate in one year you won't be able to sell a taxicab if this is allowed to continue. sheriff brinkman, late november you were very gun hoe about putting funds into the taxi services [speaker not understood] new investigators. somebody [speaker not understood] that process. somebody in the mta is making sure that does not happen. [speaker not understood] is hardly adequate. it's not happening. and i wish you would look into it. i also think if you have influence with [speaker not understood] and anybody else like that, that you should be stressing this. i don't think you have any [speaker not understood] of the potential disaster he's creating with all these uninsured riders and cars on the street. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> paul mcmurdo followed by mary mcguire and barry corn gold. >> good afternoon, mr. mcmurdo. >>> go

heinicke. >> thank you for a very good report and very comprehensive and to the point. i want to make sure i understand it and clarify for emp. there are two aspects, one is the [kpwh-upbgs/] and in particular the public address systems and in the past i have talked about letting our customers know what is going on, especially in the event of a service disruption of it's just very helpful and there has been a lot of progress on that in my term. i see this helping that as well. but this isn't just about communications. i mean, this project will also address some of the issues that we have had that have caused metro service disruptions. am i understanding that correctly? >> that is correct. it is primarily communications, however. and of course, communications a viable link making sure that we have a viabling alternative way to make sure that he with do communicate between central control and in particular the subway. the uninterruptible power supply is critical, in case those systems do go down. >> right. so i guess what i'm trying to say, we had one very serious service

director heinicke. >> i have a question for staff. i wanted to make sure this is kind of the first piece of the ramp program development. my understanding is this is really to address the concern of the folks who have a ramp medallion now and how those folks interact with the way -- with the changes we made to the transfer program. >> so, correct. so, the ramp medallion holders did not have a transferrable permit, so, this is trying to create a path for them to move into that kind of transferrable permit environment. but it was also driven by the desire to improve the service that's for ramp taxi customers which as i mentioned has been quite uneven. our staff report said, as speakers said, there are some excellent ramp taxi drivers in the city who had outstanding records. but as ms. mcguire mentioned, even a threshold of 8 pick ups per month which is, frankly, pretty low, we had many drivers that are not meeting that very low threshold. so, we're really trying to address both the situation of the current ramp medallion holders, but al

might be able to revisit or put a bit of sense of urgency on the [speaker not understood] director heinicke had mentioned with respect to the bicycling funding and getting the strategy for that on the way. some point as soon as possible, i mean, i thought that there were some pretty blah consensus among everyone at the retreat that we probably should address it as soon as possible if that's all right with the chair. >> if the members consent we'll ask mr. rifkin if we can get a report back on that at some time in the near future. >> sure. i guess what i would say, and i may have mentioned this at the workshop, we have gotten to a point where we're now developing good cost estimates at least at a high level of what the needs would be. we're not entering into a new fiscal cycle for another year now. so that maybe -- we may be somewhat limited in terms of what we can substantively be able to bring to you in the next month or two. we are -- i am beginning to discuss with the mayor's office the scoping of the task force that he announced at the state of the city address and hopeful that we can b

director heinicke? director heinicke is anticipated. director lee? >> present. >> lee present. director ramos? >> [speaker not understood]. >> ramos present. [speaker not understood]? mr. chairman, directors, you have a quorum. item 3, [speaker not understood] producing devices please be advised that the ringing of nuisance cell phones, pagers, any electronic