and i believe we have julie kirchbaum from the sfmta. >> i am so glad to be here to be talking about award of the mid life overhaul contract. it is the accumulation of a decade of work to bring our fleet back up to repair, particularly focused on preventative maintenance, fixing things before they break so customers don't experience delays. next slide. this investment has clearly paid off. if you look at our fleet from the 80s or even the early 2000s, we were breaking down once every couple of weeks, once every month or so. now it is rare that a muni vehicle breaks down in service, and we are exceeding 10,000 miles on this current fleet. next slide, please. none of this would be possible without the amazing sfmta maintenance crews, supported by our engineers who have formed the work that i'm bringing you today. next slide. no amount of maintenance can keep systems going reliablely after they pass their useful life. the shell of a bus, the frame, the seats, that has a useful life of about 12 years, a little bit longer for the trolleys. but the operating systems, they start to breakdow

and i believe we have julie kirchbaum from the sfmta. >> i am so glad to be here to be talking aboutward of the mid life overhaul contract. it is the accumulation of a decade of work to bring our fleet back up to repair, particularly focused on preventative maintenance, fixing things before they break so customers don't experience delays. next slide. this investment has clearly paid off. if you look at our fleet from the 80s or even the early 2000s, we were breaking down once every couple of weeks, once every month or so. now it is rare that a muni vehicle breaks down in service, and we are exceeding 10,000 miles on this current fleet. next slide, please. none of this would be possible without the amazing sfmta maintenance crews, supported by our engineers who have formed the work that i'm bringing you today. next slide. no amount of maintenance can keep systems going reliablely after they pass their useful life. the shell of a bus, the frame, the seats, that has a useful life of about 12 years, a little bit longer for the trolleys. but the operating systems, they start to breakdown

thank you, director kirchbaum. >> chair mandelman: thank you, supervisor mar. i'm wondering how that is related to the experience -- if that is related to the experience that people have been having lately. my own experience, anecdotal, lately, is man, i've been waiting a long time for this train. i wonder if you could speak to that, if that's more connected to the current experience of riders or if it's more related to the staffing challenges that came on during the pandemic, remained throughout the pandemic, and after the pandemic. >> thank you for your question. we had unprecedented reliability last fall in past because, as you know, we had really simplified the service and because we had made such a significant investment during covid. we are seeing some of that come back, so it is my hope that you'll start to see the frequency and improvement in rider experience. we're also not where we need to be with the predictions, and so sometimes what you're hearing is happening is actually worse than what's actually hap

. >> supervisor safai: so one of the questions that i had for you and miss kirchbaum, some of the newer trolleys that were purchase when had we got into the conversation about the braking, does some of this also deal with the wear and tear on braking mechanism and how that's being dealt with? >> the issue that we had with the light rail vehicles related to the braking system is really, i think, unique to the heavy weight of the train. >> supervisor safai: it was also the manner in which they were being trained to use the emergency brake. not to cut you off, but you said the newer trolleys that were being purchased have a newer braking system. is this something that's different? >> no, they're unique to the trains. >> supervisor safai: thank you for that. i just wanted to say in follow up that i think this is an important part of the our infrastructure. i appreciate the sfmta getting answers to our questions. i think the majority of the sources are formula and state and federal funding, and i think it's important to understand when we do do these larger development projects, that there a

thank you, director kirchbaum. >> chair mandelman: thank you, supervisor mar. i'm wondering how that is related to the experience -- if that is related to the experience that people have been having lately. my own experience, anecdotal, lately, is man, i've been waiting a long time for this train. i wonder if you could speak to that, if that's more connected to the current experience of riders or if it's more related to the staffing challenges that came on during the pandemic, remained throughout the pandemic, and after the pandemic. >> thank you for your question. we had unprecedented reliability last fall in past because, as you know, we had really simplified the service and because we had made such a significant investment during covid. we are seeing some of that come back, so it is my hope that you'll start to see the frequency and improvement in rider experience. we're also not where we need to be with the predictions, and so sometimes what you're hearing is happening is actually worse than what's actually hap

thank you, director kirchbaum. >> chair mandelman: thank you, supervisor mar. i'm wondering how that is related to the experience -- if that is related to the experience that people have been having lately. my own experience, anecdotal, lately, is man, i've been waiting a long time for this train. i wonder if you could speak to that, if that's more connected to the current experience of riders or if it's more related to the staffing challenges that came on during the pandemic, remained throughout the pandemic, and after the pandemic. >> thank you for your question. we had unprecedented reliability last fall in past because, as you know, we had really simplified the service and because we had made such a significant investment during covid. we are seeing some of that come back, so it is my hope that you'll start to see the frequency and improvement in rider experience. we're also not where we need to be with the predictions, and so sometimes what you're hearing is happening is actually worse than what's actually hap

should pat yourselves on the back for allowing us two minutes to speak while you're praising julie kirchbaum for keeping us on hold. last month, i asked questions, and still, no answers provided. when signs aren't in english about covid, that's dangerous. title 6 requires that you put warnings in all languages, and that includes english as a primary language. also, the board has demonstrated its utter ignorance about riding muni. has tumlin ever tried to approach a driver to see the badge number on his or her sleeve? you can't see it. it's absurd. and the masking policy, if you rode muni, you'd see none of the employees wearing masks. i call 311 and report them every day, so i want to know what you're going to do about these issues. i want you to challenge them. >> do you have anything else? >> i want the answers to this. >> this is not a question-and-answer session. staff will get back to you later. >> how will they get back to me? >> unfortunately, items are not agendized on the calendar, so we can't address that. next speaker, please. >> operator: there are no more callers. >> thank you.