Interference and the board requests they be placed in the off position. Approval of the minutes of the regular meeting. Do i have any Public Comment . No, madam chair. Do i have a motion to approve . Second. All in favor. Aye. Aye. Any opposed . Hearing none, minutes are approved. Item 5 communications i have none for you for this meeting. Item 6, introduction of new or Unfinished Business by board members. Thank you. I would like to im sure you are all aware we lost a fellow commissioner, i believe it was last week. Shirley brier black passed away. And malcolm vicechair heinicke was the only one that served on this board with ms. Black. She was an inaugural member of the San Francisco m. T. A. Board. She was appointed by mayor brown in 2000. She served as a member of the board for 10 years retiring in 2010. The native San Francisco, she always used public transportation. She worked for sieu1021 for many years and president from 1988 to 1991. Having reached her centennial just last month she was known for her commitment to workers rights. Shirley always stood up for what was right so we will adjourn our meeting in her memory today. She will be missed by a lot of people in the agency and the city. Directors, do i have any new or Unfinished Business . No. All right. Seeing none. Thank you. Item 7. Districdirector report. Good afternoon, members of the board, members of the public and staff. Start by wishing everyone a happy lunar new year. Wore a little red to bring good luck to this board meeting. I do have a number of things to update you on. I will start with vision zero. Just one item of note. Last week the San FranciscoPolice Conducted a special enforcement operation that was focused on bike and Pedestrian Safety. And im told our very own chair brinkman was present during the operation, not issuing citations but just observing. Nor were there reports of her arrest. [laughter] there were 16 citations issued to drivers at the event. Which was the third in the series of seven targeting distracted driving. The police have issued 95 citations for people texting and driving at the three events held to date. Vision zero outreach staff were on site at the event and distributed materials highlighting the risks associated texting while driving. To drivers who receive the citations as well as the people walking through the area. This is an on going part of the education and enforcement aspect with vision zero. Funded by the National Safety council and will be continuing these efforts is and the goal is not to Issue Citations but to raise awareness and change behavior such that people are not letting themselves be distracted when theyre out on the streets, no matter how theyre traveling. Glad to see that work moving forward and thank you for being there to support it. That same day, muni riders, particularly those who use uni metro had a difficult time throughout the day getting in and around the city. I just wanted to give the board and the public an update on what happened. We had the Subway Service had four different incidents that impacted the service. First, we had a train control failure at west portal station, which impacted the opening of the rail service. This happened early in the morning. There was a cross over track near castro station that failed twice during the day for two different reasons. Which prevented us from being able to make Service Adjustments in the subway or send empty trains to crowded platforms. We often use that castro cross over to adjust service. And then the switch failed and the switch that allows the js and ms to branch off the main line to get up and out of the subway and back into the subway. So four different incidents all on the same day, all impacting the subway, which which know created a lot of inconvenience to our riders. So on the plus side looking at the incident, our field managers and transit supervisors worked to manage the Service Disruptions and the gaps where possible. Our signal maintenance staff resolved the Train Control Program before the end of the morning commute and they overhauled two switches and replaced another switch before the start of service the following day. So while the switch issues hampered us throughout wednesday, our folks worked really around the clock to get them resolved in time for thursday mornings commute. And we also had mobilized folks from across the agency, particularly our planning and communication staff to get out there onto the platforms so that we could direct people so we had a large showing o large amount o direct people where they can find alternative transportation or just to let them know what was happening. The service was running. It just wasnt running as well as it normally would. Despite what worked well as always in these incidents, look at things we can improve in the future or things that didnt go as well as they should have. We have reviewed and improved our emergency procedures as a result of this incident. One example is for an incident or series of accidents like this in the future, we will a point someone to serve as an Incident Commander who will be in charge of all aspects of the service. We didnt really have a single point of contact and single point of accountability for this series of incidents that we think would benefit us going forward. Not just to manage the service but to manage the communications about the service. Weve also been focusing on a number of vehicle issues that have exacerbated problems like this and did a lot of work this past weekend to make sure that we have the right number of vehicles available for service and we keep them in service. Finally, we normally have tighter communication with bart and bart control center when we have incidents on muni. Since a lot of people transfer between bart and muni that bart staff can communicate to their riders who might be our riders. The communication didnt happen the way it should so well tighten up that protocol as well. We apologize to our riders and everybody else who was inconvenience. It was an ex extraordinary confluence of issues that happened all in the subway all on the same day that were unrelated. But from a riders standpoint its a big difficult day. Hope we didnt spoil anyones valentines day. But one other thing happened on that day, one other unfortunate incident i wanted to let the board know about. We have had a construction inspector, this is uni transit supervisor who is assisting construction project and this is a service that we provide, not just for our own Construction Projects but for other agencies, public and private, street construction, projects in San Francisco that have an impact or require interaction with muni so we dispatched someone to get the muni buses get around the construction site and help coordinate between the construction site and the muni service. February 14th, they support a public works led project to replace some sewer pipes up at the northern ends of vanness, not related to our other large van he iness. He informed the construction personnel our overhead Line Department would be a arriving shortly and they couldnt they needed to wait until our folks to come and begin work. There was somehow miscommunication and a truck in the area started moving, struck inspector castenada and sent him to the emergency room with some serious injuries. The good news is that ken he has moved out of the intensive care unit and is showing improvement and is stable but will have a long path to recovery. He has had multiple surgeries and will continue to monitor his progress. Weve reached out to his family and our thoughts will be with them towards a strong recovery. But i wanted to let you know it happened. Well be working with the other agencies, public works, the contractor to review this incident to see what went wrong here. We have pretty expensive training from our staff. They were a full personal protective equipment to make themselves visible so this is certainly a preventable incident that we will work on preventing in the future. On to some projects, specific issues. Before i do that i should mention in terms of the incidents, one other one, which is happening now, late this morning. We had a Network Issue with the sfmt network that impacted Traffic Signals in a large part of the city, largely concentrated in the south of market area. Those signals are largely in the process of being restored by the end of the meeting they will all be fully restored. Weve not yet determined what the root cause of the issue is. Our signal folks and our i. T. Folks were on this quickly and were quickly on the path to getting those signals back into operation. In case you are getting messages about that as were sitting here, i wanted to give you that update. On a couple of projects, at our last meeting, we were requested to provide an update on the sixth street Pedestrian Safety improvement project. This is a project that has been before you in a number of times over the years. So, we continue to conduct proactive Public Outreach for this project. Weve gotten recent feedback from organizations north of Market Street as well as the chamber of commerce, the San Francisco travel, San FranciscoHotel Council and others not right in the media vicinity but concerned about some of the traffic impacts associated with the original project design. So as a result of that feedback, we are exploring modifications to the project as originally proposed, which you may remember, would take the four lanes of traffic and reduce it to two widening out the sidewalks. So based on some of the feedback that weve gotten, were exploring some modifications to our proposal. Recognizing that any modification we would make on sixth street, given how important the corridor is for vehicle circulation and recognizing its very high level of pedestrian activity. Those are the things that well need to balance what we can do to make the street as safe as possible without creating an untenable burden on on traffic flow. Its been part of the high injury network. Its seen disproportionate amounts of pedestrian crashes so whatever we do, well need to make sure that we keep the integrity of the safety improvements intact as we move forward. We have been taking a number of steps waiting for this full project to come to fruition. To address pedestrians safety in the meantime, such as new signals, painted safety zones and removing peak hour tow away which opened up the pipe and we think perhaps led to speeding. There have been a number of changes that we made but were still seeing safety issues out there, were still seeing people get hit and hurt by cars on sixth street so were committed to engaging the community on ways we can improve safety as quickly as possible. So we are still working towards bringing a recommendation back to this board. That has community consensus, that will fix the issues on sixth street but will continue to work with various stakeholders in the meantime. Moving on to another project, i think that the board may have seen some communications about this. One of the benefits we get in this agency of having the traditional transit functions and transportation functions together in one agency, as we have here uniquely at the sfmta, is the ability to really redesign our streets so they work for the safety of pedestrians and the general flow of traffic. But for the safe and reliable operations of muni, one tangible manifestation of that is that Traffic Circle on mcallister and lion that is part of the five rapid muni forward projects you all legislated probably a couple years ago now that construction is happening and the Traffic Circle is complete at this point. We had seen issues regarding the Traffic Circle, while it was under construction. In part because of the the way the barricades were placed and in terms of the timing during which they were removed and striping and signage was put in place. But well monitor this change carefully. Theres more coming on that corridor and there is others coming in other corridors and these Traffic Circles came up to propose Traffic Signals that wid proposed here. Well monitor this to see if its safe and its having a muni reliability benefits. I wanted to to know its out there. You can check it out mcallister and lion and the next is mcallister and steiner will start soon. In terms of activities at the federal level, last week was a big week in terms of the news coming out of the federal. First is that the administration has nominated a woman named thelma drake, to be the federal transit administrator. The f. T. A. Has been without an administrator for a year now. So welcome news to see someone appointed and nominated. Shes a former republican member of congress from norfolk, virginia. She was a member of the Virginia House of delegates. Head of virginias department of rail and Public Transit department. And her nomination seems to be so far being well received by the industry, she seems like a professional who has good experiences that will bring much needed leadership. Its been since january 2014 since the fda had a confirmed administrator when the previous administrator left there was an acting administrator towards the end of the Obama Administration and continuing acting administrators and the last year. So hopefully the f. D. A. Will have leadership in place soon. Which would be good for us and the rest of the country. Also last week, two major pieces of Initiative Came out of the white house. The infrastructure package and the proposed federal budget. I wont go into a lot of details. To give you a high level view of the infrastructure package, it was proposed 1 trilliondollar package of which 200 billion would be direct federal funds, although a Funding Source was not identified. The idea is those federal funds would leverage the remaining 1. 3 trillion from private sector investment. There are some the range of Infrastructure Projects is not just transportation, it could be for the Energy Sector i it could be the hospital sector, the technology sector. Its very broad based. It does make some specific proposals in terms of how funding would change or how the rules would change. Such as changing the amount of federal share such as requiring Value Capture financing as a condition of receiving funds from the Capital Investment grant program, though in the other budget, proposed to cut the Capital Investment grant program. As a bunch of Environmental Review streamlining, but basically doesnt address the larger funding issue of the Highway Trust Fund which is you know funded from federal gastaxes which have not been increased since 1993. Congress has suggested passing any kind of legislation like this would be difficult without identifying Funding Source. The democrats, the Congressional Democrats released their own proposal which they called a better deal to rebuild america. Which includes stabilizing the Highway Trust Fund and much more federal direct investment to infrastructure as a federal has traditionally done. With regard to the federal budget, the president also released a proposed budget for the following fiscal year. Fiscal 19 although the fiscal 18 budget has not been addressed. On the fiscal 18 budget, the Congress Passed yet another extension. This time through march 23rd. So they will still have to deal with finalizing the budget for this year. They did with this extension, with this continuing resolution, agree on some spending caps for the next two years as well as deal with other issues like the debt limit, the debt ceiling which should smooth of chances of passes of the fiscal 18 budget if not the fiscal 1. Its potentially good news. But then the president s fiscal 19 budget came out and has a lot of inconsistencies with the action, bipartisan action that congress took. The good news in the president s budgets is it supports the fast act funding levels for the core Transit Program or transportation program. So these are the formula funds that we, as the sfmta use for state of good repair investments and our Critical Infrastructure and fleet. So that is fully funded in the president ial proposed budget. But it includes nearly 20 cut in the discretionary grants that come from the u. S. D. O. T. Including any future grants under the Capital Investment grant program. And so if you, this is the program that funded big chunk of this central subway that is funding a big chunk of cal train electricification that would in the future be funding the extension of cal train and high speed rail to trance bay transit center, the final extension of bart to san jose. Portion of better Market Street and gary d. R. T. The extension of the smart train to larksbur so a lot of projects within this region, if things continue as they had been would result in a lot of federal money to support these Major Projects that leverage or are leveraged by local and regional dollars. Th