Often times pair tra pair para transit is late. They are back at the door saying if you dont get on now you will miss your ride. You have to call in and wait for three or four hours to get picked up. The other thing is the paratransit card that you get where you pay 18 for taxi vampers. Paratransit will match it so you have 90. The problem is if your paratransit card is empty you have to go to the off office. There is no online way to load the cars. They go to the office so they can acquire the paratransit card to get reduced tax fee. I think that paratransit needs looked into, it needs to be on time. It means to be more thoughtful about the patients. In an emergency you can book within less than 24 hours if you are going to your healthcare provider. I think the paratransit card should be able to load it online versus going to an office somewhere. You are saying and it struck me and tell me if this is wrong. The cash fare is 3 with the clipper card it is 2. 50, is that right . So i will say this what she just said is why they are working with m. T. C. On a discounted day pass. Currently they only have a discounted monthly pass. They could pay 5 bucks cash and have a discount good for a day. Would you be able to do that without the clipper card . I am hearing like it occurs to me and i have a clipper card tied to a visa card. I swipe it. It gets more money when it needs it. I can do that. People pay cash so they may twice and we have to come back because they cant get a pair granted. It trials me i know why muni is moving away from cash fairs. It is affecting certain communities in ways that may be werent considered at the time that the decision to move away there the cash fare was made. Commissioner compton. I want to bring up a point. I guess s. F. M. T. A. Is working with the hill and the southeast hill center in the Choice Program. That program is going to take 25 of our patients and 25 of the patients apartment Southeast Health who dont qualify to have flywheel doctors. This problem is so long standing to only have 25 patients to be admitted to that program is not acceptable at this point. I wanted to make that point. I think it needs expanded already. Thank you. Commissioner compton. I have a question. My question was about the 53 line. Before that was i guess discontinuesed, did people have to take four buses . To the services. Well the 53 bugs buses were re buses were removed that bus went from 16th up to the hill all around. Many people who lived up on those hills could not get to the doctors appointment. That is a new housing development. We built it. I guess it is always taken two or three buses. You have to take a bus down the hill and the t train then you have got to walk. So is there a solution currently to paratransit . The choice that you were talking about. They are offering 25 patients who do not qualify for paratransit to get to and from. I believe southeast has 5,000 patients. We are in district 10 where some of the most vulnerable and lowest income residents leaf in 25 people in a Choice Program to get to the doctor is not adequate for 5,000 patient. That is not adequate. I would say to the muni access to healthcare in district 10 needs reevaluated. This is not the first, you know, you are like the period person today to talk about access to healthcare and the negative impact can be fatal. We are talking about peoples lives and there must be a different solution than the scope gap measures described in the Choice Program. It also sounds like there are enough people in need of public transportation. There should be a wider solution. I dont think it should wait 18 or 12 or 6 months. It seems immediate and urgent. Last thing i wanted to add is that San Francisco has the worst mortality rate for africanamericans in the nation. We lived in San Francisco that any other city and the average income of a plaque person is 29,000. The average income of their white counterpart is 110,000 per year. With this being said that many of our residents are dying because they dont have it with the transcript. We are innovative. It is not acceptable. We need change and we need it now. Thank you. I understand we have no other commission questions or comments. Thank you. I understand we have representatives here from sf paratransit. We will add that to the list. Come on up. We will take all comers here. Good evening. I am with transit of north america we manage the sfmta Paratransit Program. I have been listens to the comments. I want to make a few clarifications. The sfmta Paratransit Program has many moving parts. The van transportation, which is approximately about 60 of our service, is guided by all of the provisions of the americans with disabilities act. The scheduling ahead of time referred to in the previous speakers comments is day ahead you call to schedule a right. The ada prohibited priority to medical trips. It doesnt matter medical, work, school, recreation, it doesnt matter. There are no provisions for prioritizing trips. Same day trips have preference to medical needs. If a rider has an Urgent Medical need, they can try to schedule for that same day and priority in that case is given to medical needs or if, for example, a Service Animal is ill that qualifies as well same day. 40 of the service is taxi. Just to clarify on the way the taxi paratransit works it is for every 30 worth of value you add to the card, you get we charge 6. For every 30 you pay 6 that gives you 30 of taxi rides. Those dont require day ahead. Those are on demand the day of service. That works for many of our patrons. I also wanted to mention that on the Choice Program, i think she said it is 25 patrons. It is 75. That is the way the pilot is to start with 75. We have been work was the department of health on that programming. It is not to say it wont need more resources at some point, but it is to start next month. We will see how that works out. I am sure m. T. A. Will be closely in communications with dph on the resources to be added. I want to mention on the taxi card we did launch by telephone. You can call if you have a credit card you can call and add value to your paratransit debt card. Online access is being pilot tested right now. You need a credit card to Purchase Online that is being tested by the pilot participants. It is a soft launch for the general public using paratransit. Those are the things we have been working on. I wanted to mention that i heard julie talk about the chronic operator shortage. We had a similar short age earlier this year. We have resolved that. Never totally resolved you are always recruiting for operators. We have addressed it, our on time performance is over 90 on the van service. That is with a five minute before and 15 minute after promised time, performance window. Our drivers are delivering the on time performance. That means nine out of 10 rides are on time within that performance window. We expanded the dedicated fleet by 18. 18 new vehicles. We conducted the Satisfaction Survey for 2019. This is statistically significant sample on the taxi side, van side, Group Transportation side and there was a overall 81 were very satisfied or somewhat satisfied with our services, 90 satisfaction with the trip and the program. Those are just a few things i want to mention. We did launch new incentives for ramp taxi operators who are transporting wheelchairs in ramp taxis to make the initiative more attractive for our drivers. I wanted to make those remarks. Director davis. I want to say as we think about partnership with sfmta and muni what it looks like to make sure everyone is clear on that. That sharing the clarifying remarks here may not change where or how community communicates that information to the people that they meet or they work with at the clinic. It is how they get truth in what they experienced versus what we say is on paper because a lot of times people take advantage of folks not having in hand. They are told something very different. That is why these things get perpetuated. They call and somebody says for whatever reason. I think there is a need to be in community and sharing and have the pieces of paper so people are not just doing it by word of mouth. We work with the sfmta staff on a relaunch of the website with more Accurate Information for riders. We will continue to focus on those issues, commissioner. You do this under contract with sfmta . What is the length of that . It is five years. We are in year three on our way to year four. It does have a five year extension option. The maximum is 10 years. Is this the first term of the first contract . No that was april of 2000. I have been here managing the sfmta Paratransit Program since april 1 of 2000. I have seniority. I am curious, what percent do you have a good sense of the users . Generally. What is available to them. What percent of them use muni, do you know . I know that was a question in the survey. I didnt bring all of the survey results. I can provide you that information from the survey. Every year we survey our riders in a significant way. Do you have a sense what percent of them have access to a mobile device . That is in the survey. We have been asking that since 2015. We have seen upward click. It is pretty impressive the wayne it has grown in terms of access. Is the survey published . It is available through the m. T. A. They have executive summaries. Is that on the website. I dont believe it is on the website but it is available. I would be interested to see that data. I wonder as i am hearing this, as i am talking about the fact not everyone has a mobile phone the fact you can get uber lift, not sidecar any more but ride sharing. Do you have any interface with ride sharing platforms . Well, we have the flywheel app. Which is a taxi. It is for taxi. We have relationships with taxis, not tncs. We have worked closely with the app developer to make it easy to use by riders in wheelchairs so they can access ramp taxis quickly. It is something they feel strongly about. We are always trying to improve that out. Are they able to pay seamless . You would present your debit card to pay for the trip. Do you have a sense of what premium is paid for a tax see as opposed to using it. Those are your lifts and ubers. Transportation network companies, tnc. Actually the paratransit rainedder that uses the app did not have to pay. It is totally free to end user. They will not pay extra because they ehailed a taxer. If one did, taxis are more expensive than tnc, correct. It depends. They dont have search pricing and so forth. It depends. I dont think a study is done on that yet. Maybe since you have users who have access to technology you are working towards incorporating the payment module into the technology. That would be the next step. There are carpool opportunities available through the app as well and that may be away for someone with extra time to get somewhere with a card or voucher to open up opportunities to people assuming they have the device that arent open today. Whenever we go back to vouchers. Everything is now electronic with the card. That gives us a lot of data that is very helpful in terms of planning. If the m. T. A. Says they want to install a speed bump between this block and this block on this street, can you tell us how many paratransit riders are using that particular block . We can tell them how many taxi riders are using that particular block. The card is the way to go because it gives us a lot of data. I recognize this as maybe outside of your area of responsibility. Since you love the app and are making it more accessible for people with transit constraints, i am curious if there is any contemplation the functionality to request a taxi with a car seat. Car seat . Yes. Like a child car seat . No, we hadden contemplated it. When we get feedback from our riders that is not something we have heard. I will look into it. If you work with populations that have a large cohort of expecting mothers. Access to a car seat is in high demand. I need to go look at this. If i remember the rider policies for paratransit, we do tell the riders if they are traveling with the child they provide the car seat and the drivers will assist with setting it up. Commissioner compton. I have more of a comment about the tnc. They are largely unregulated because they are personal cars they generally are not accessible. That is a major drawback with them. That is something we need to be cognizant of, it is a problem, in addition to their vetting processes, limited background checking, etc. It is not advisable to include them at this stage. I am glad you are doing flywheel. Thank you. Other questions for the speaker . Thank you for joining us and thank you for stepping up. Thank you, commissioners. Director davis. I wanted to piggyback on the commissioners comments. There is a working groom with supporting, i dont know if you want to say it quickly. To clarify the challenges and concerns with the tnc or ride share apps. Mayors office on disability and sfmta are currently engaged in rule making process with California Public utilities on the tnc access for all act, which is mandating Wheelchair Accessible transportation by 2024 across the state of San Francisco. In San Francisco uber has a pilot contract with the vehicles through a provider. Lyft has a similar program. As they are trying to lay the groundwork for equity around uber and lift transit. The ride costs are the same as the standard uber cost right now. We are in a very engagable making process providing comments to the c p. U. C. To regulated to help give guidance on how best to implement this by 2024. Thank you. That is the end of the list of speakers on the agenda. I have a number of speaker cards. I will go through this now. Any other representatives of organizations that had been invited to speak but havent yet come up. Okay. Erin good man again. Good evening, commissioners. I did work on the San FranciscoHousing Authority and sunnydale project and that was one of the prime issues we pushed with sfmta is the future vision for connectivity especially in 10, 7 where it is going. I was on balboa park for a couple terms. We looking at city college. Before that it was the 19th avenue transit planning issues. We have just seen sfmta start back up the initial stuff on the connection. I hope this committee can get out of the weeds of smaller issues and look at the bigger issues of Transportation Planning in the city because there was back in 2000 i will give you maps to circulate between you. This was in 2000, sf chronicle an article by the 30 year plan where we would be in 30 years. We are at 2019 and nowhere near a sufficient network from the transit riders to suffice for the amount of people boarding these trains in the future. There were maps in 2016 in the San Francisco subway vision. There was a transit exsubsidy which talk about the areas that need Transit Connect activity. I worked on the sunnydale facility that came in under budget on time which was great. There were also others that we helped start working on. There are definite solid moves that can occur from sfmta to get people to hospitals. There are links and loops that can occur on bus transit. It could go south and connect to is t line. There are ways to link the major hospitals. Sf general, c. P. M. C. So that people have more direct access to these areas quicker. We are not just relying on agreements. We have some actual hard track being laid. When we have new lrvs there is track they run on. We hope you can look at that as you get out of the weeds to get a more birds eye view of transportation issues. Next eileen spoken. Coalition for San Francisco neighborhoods here on my own behalf. The great light rail vehicles have been inse service for over0 years. They are easily accessible in the tunnel they are not easily accessible in the neighborhoods. When the m. T. A. Was working to design the new lrvs they both have the opportunity to fix these equity issues. Both of them failed to do so. Had most respects the cars are the same. By using the same basic design the m. T. A. Will be locks us into another 20 years of the same equity issues. More than two years ago the community urged the m. T. A. To move forward with low floor lrvs. They are easier for seniors to board and some manufacturers have on board wheelchair ramps to create wheelchair access system ride. The m. T. A. Is in phase two of procurement. I urge you to insist they use this opportunity to address exissues for seniors and disaged by purchasing low floor lrvs. Another equity issue is elimination of lrv stop in the neighborhood. On tara vim, they have eliminated a significant number of stops to create equity issues for seniors. They need to walk additional blocks to catch the lrv. In district four they have the entire city. When the m. T. A. Eliminates stops, it impacts certain communities disproportionatesly. Thank you. Angelina ro romano. Good evening, commissioners i am a School Social worker and immigrant supports and immigration program. I want to thank you for holding this hearing on transit equity. My tram is charged with supporting refugee and immigrant students, we are committed to racial equity. I want to state that we know our black students and families are disproportionately impacted. Especially because of the use of criminalizing enforcement issues on the transit an and those goig across town to the northwest section of San Francisco. We believe the needs of black youth are strengthened. I will talk in the next minute or so. We found the system for obtaining the cards is inequitable leading to true and see and harassment. The clipper card is easy to fill out. It asks for nothing but verification of age and signature. It is still difficult to access assuming they know about it. Particularly for the newcomer families they dont know this the an option. It takes weeks for the cards to be approved and mailed to their addresses. They have to choose to not go to school or risk getting ticketed by sfmta. I get calls stating families are worried about free clipper and public charge. Caregivers keep little ones home because they have no bus fare for school. If you dont have bus fare you can get a ticketed. Undocumented families are afraid they are on a list