Were watching up on some of that work as well as completing the westportal cross over that the former director advocated for. We should be able to complete the westportal cross over in time for the restorative rail service allowing us to be able to potentially offer threecar shuttles in the subway between westportal and embarcadero stations. Were also moving forward rapidly on the van ness Improvement Projects and the lack of transportation on van ness avenue and it has been able to allow the crews to accelerate the sewer and water work thats been the source of so much of the disruption on that street and that work is continuing quickly and it means that well be able to start the sfmta portion of that project and the transit portion starting this spring. Ill remind you all, that while the sfmta is in the lead of the brt project, none of our work has started yet. The work for creating the bus Rapid Transit line so were very much looking forward to that work getting moving and many of you also know about the cal trans 101 deck replacement. Cal trans replaced the bridge deck of 101 and as they have done before, thanks to the innovative contract structure that offered significant bonus for the contractor to finish early, that project happened extraordinarily quickly and it happened several months ahead of schedule taking advantage of the fact that traffic is so light right now. Were very happy with our partners at cal trans and their contractors for taking care of that critical projects so quickly. Were also moving forward on the geary rapid project and over memorial day weekend, this coming weekend, well be demolishing the pedestrian bridge at geary and steiner and that will cause disruption as most of you know, that pedestrian bridge is very steep and it does not need the american with disabilities standards and so instead we will be replacing it with an atgrade standard crossing helping to turn that portion of the geary boulevard back into more like a street than of expressway that it was conceived of in the 1950s. Were also moving forward rapidly with the project and that will continue to will end with better speed and reliability on the altera dock. I wanted to let you know we have carefully been watching how other cities around the world have been responding to covid19 since the very beginning of the crisis back in january. We had seen that the increase in covid19 transmission tracks very well by timeline to what we were experiencing as well as what the impacts would be on the Transportation System. We are now following the cities that have been most successful in crushing the curve and where transportation in particularly Public Transit is leading in the recovery effort and though the cities that were most inspired by for transit, has been sole and taipei. So two weeks ago, our departmental Operation Centre met with all of their equivalent, the city of taipei and taiwan, including a surprise visit from the mayor of taipei and we learned a lot about their visions as well as all of their operational details of what theyre doing in order to position transit to be a primary force in reopening the economy. Including realising that six feet of social distancing at a certain point simply does not work in Public Transit and so learning from them about how they had done things like ridgedly enforcing the facial covering standards, doing various contact tracing, doing very strong testing of their operators, doing te temperature checking of the members of the public having thermal standards at key rail stations has allowed them to analyze the risk factors, the mitigation factors, the time factors on Public Transit and compare that against the value of the activities, allowing them to create the case that full restoration of Transit Service was a relatively low risk and extremely high return activity. I would like to close with some gratitude. Gratitude to the entire sfmta staff who have continued to work excessive hours. As all of you know i. Spent my career in the private sector and i have never seen harderworking, more skilled people than im seeing throughout the entirety of the sfmta. This team has come together beautifully during this crisis, knowing that the public is completely dependent upon what we do and we need to get ahead of the problems that are facing us. Their strong effort has meant that the sfmta has one of the lowest covid19 transmission rates of transportation agencies in the country. Weve not had a covid19 positive case in two and a half weeks now and our total covid19 positive cases stands at 12. Which for 6,000 employees, while its too many, it is a very low rate, particularly for frontline workers. This is do you to the fact that all of our workforce are following the guidance and taking care of them sells, each other and their families to reduce transmission and we are continuing to have our staff maintain this Strong Health record. Im grateful of course to now former director rubke for her leadership, compassion, practicality and the deep experience she was able to lend to this board to help us understand the specific needs of people in wheelchairs and her experience will be deeply missed. To senator torres, another thank you to you as well. Your advice from deep experience, the way you bring both a sense of fairness and justice but also reasonableness to your leadership at the board, i cant think of anyone better than you to help the uc board of regions also get through this deep financial crisis with a sense of fairness so thank you again for your service. You are an inspiration to me and with that i will close. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you director. I want to say theres an echo but i want to say thank you to you and staff for all the hard work during this really difficult time and just all the efforts that youve made to keep everyone safe and to keep our population safe so i wanted to reiterate that at the end of your comments. At this point im going to allow directors to ask questions of your reports and then ill open it up to the Public Comment so maybe some of the questions of the Board Members ask might answer some of the questions that the Board Members are going to talk about. So director brinkman. Thank you. Thank you very much. What you said at the end of your report, thanking directors rubke and torres. Ive been so impressed with how the staff has managed to work through so many issues on this. I think its sort of like the duck analogy, where it lukes all serene on top of the water but under theyre paddling furiously because we cant see everybody and people arent working together and we dont get that glimpse of it. Its really impressive what theyve managed to do and i have been, im a huge open streets proponent but what ive seen on page street and lake street has just take not my breath away with how quickly people have come out to enjoy those streets. I just want to say thank you to all the staff. Im sure you and everyone in the agency are working so hard and just because we dont see it doesnt mean we dont notice it. Thank you to all the staff, thank you so much. I know the challenges you are dealing with working remotely and childcare at home and uncertain Financial Times all around us with your partners with your spouses and your families. So thank you all very much. Its much appreciated. Thank you, director heminger. Thank you, madam chair. Jeff, a question on the next wave of transit funding that might be coming from washington. My understanding is in addition to the total dollar amount being 10 million smaller the formula under credittatio considerationr allocating those funds around the country is quite a bit less favorable to the bay area. Maybe in part to make up for the fact that new york didnt do too well in the first one. Can you just give us a sense of where that issue is and whether we might be able to make some progress on it . I think its exactly right. So, the previous formula did quite well by the bay area and new york, which has a huge share of the entire countrys transit ridership did worse and so i think the the chances to make up for that problem while also helping all the rest us continue to survive in fiscal year 2021 so weve got we will get some money probably about 30 of our allocation will be available for the next fiscal year but that will not get us through without very deep cuts to the Transportation System sometime in the coming fiscal year. Does that conclude your questions director heminger. Yes being maam. Director torres. Thank you, very much. Thank you, jeff. I was honoured to serve on the Search Committee with steve and amanda, the chair when we recommended you to the full board and thats the decision i have never regretted. You have fulfilled, beyond expectations the challenges that are there. I most admire the fact that you get out of your sacrifice to run this agency and translate to San Francisco and part of leadership and always reach out to those people who are your constituents and employees so let them know that you are a stakeholder too and you are in this with them together. Its very, very commendable. And their planning and my work is never done were having a meeting to discuss how i can be of help to the staff. My hat is off to the entire staff of this agency. They are committed, they are making tremendous sacrifices, especially our drivers of the constant harassment theyre getting from people who dont want to put on their mask and dont want to abide by the orders in this provision. Good luck and im sure i will talk to you soon as a region of transportation issues. Thank you. Director eaken. Thank you so much. I just wanted comment as well on this programme. And agree with director brinkman, its just really just been remarkable how transformative these couple of sandwich boards and bones and barriers have been to neighbourhoods. I wanted to echo i think theres a lot more appetite. Were surprised by how much more appetite there is for these when people have gotten a feel for them. And i just know in los angeles, theyre taking a slightly different approach and theyre asking communities to step up and apply to host the slow street and in one woke theyve gotten 120 applications from communities for slow streets and so i just hope that we can find someway to allow communities and neighbourhoods to express where they have preferenced for more of these slow streets because i think theres a lot of excitement and interest out there. So for anyone wanting to express interest in slow streets, please go to sfmta. Com covid and click on the link for slow streets. Were still accepting requests for phase 3 of our experiments. And yearly looking forward to making sure that we are trying this in all corners of the city, particularly the corners in the city that have the least access to public parks and that are farrest from essential Services LikeGrocery Stores and pharmacies. Were also needing to recognize for some neighbourhoods, particularly the tenderloin, we need to do more that its important for us to collaborate with communitybased organizations to make sure that social services are included in those and they work and that theres a higher level of management given the great need in neighbourhoods such as the tenderloin so those places are unfortunately taking us a little bit longer because were needing to do the additional collaboration that is necessary to make sure they will be successful. Great. Did you have anything else. I will just close out, im thrilled to see that you are accepting more slow streets. Theres a lot of interest, i hear every single day, and i seem that north Beach Business Association voted to close a portion of their street and i know haze valley is working so im hoping that do these people go online and apply at the slow streets that you mentioned, yeah, o jeff . Whats the best process for jeff . What is the best process . Getting more requests than we have capacity to deliver. Another thing that is effective, in addition to putting the question orequest on our websitg through neighbourhood associations and through your board of Supervisors Office that is a really helpful were delivering those in greatest need and those that are suitable. We look for low volume residential streets that are not Emergency Response routes and where theres not special activity that needs truck delivery and we also like a fair amount of con census and we have limited resources so its in our best interest to make sure were delivering the streets where theyre most welcome. Great. And then i had a couple other questions. Its great weve escalated projects including van ness vrt which is very important. One of the questions that people asked me is about our street repaving and i know thats not really our function, its more of i department of public works and i was it came up yesterday i saw a person on my street that bit it whether or not theyre taking advantage of the work related to the streets and the other projects were talking about but any street repaving work if we talk about slow streets and some of the obstacles to using the streets are the fact that they are very not well paved and and if you are on a bike or a scooter and in a wheelchair its uncomfortable to be on some of these streets. Dpw is accelerating their paving programme again. Were coordinating closely with them. Theres been another some of the moving around of corridors weve done have been a result of coordination with d. P. W. Great, and the other question i had, you mentioned this mtc past force for recovery and you talked about for the next town e money and focusing on the core it needs and not on some new programme related to working together. I just wasnt clear on that. So all the operators have been really clear. Look, we just need our money. There is an existing sta formula that works well at divvying it up. And it should be tied to financial losses. As you go into the details, there are questions about the margins of should you get this much money or this much money and so there is theres some discussion about how traunch 2 gets divvied up but it will be directly tied to our actual losses. The task force, however, will continue well beyond when the last of the cares act funding is distributed. Im really focused how we establish priorities for transit for the whole region and how do we help make the system more seem less from a user perspective. You know, and opening up many questions in that regard and i think theres so much we can do that is relatively lowhanging fruit. If we had a good forum for helping to make that happen. Great. With that ill open it up to Public Comment. This is the time for members of the public to have the line open so they may ask questions of the directors report only and obviously the related comments the directors have and questions to the directors report. For members of the public who are watching this Meeting Press 1 and then 0. For members of the public who are watching this meeting, who wish to address the board on topics that were discussed by director tumlin or commented on by members of the board, please call 8888086929. Then you will dial 9961164 and then finally, 10. And moderator, please let us know if there are members of the public. You have two questions remaining. So, members of the public, when its your turn to speak, the system will prompt you automatically and so please give us your name, your two minutes will start when you Start Talking. First caller, please. My name is zack. And i am i the first caller. Im disturbed with the way that sfmta is manipulating the covid19 pandemic to weaken the Drivers Union to cut back driver contracts and jobs and programmes that have helped drivers on the back of the bus is helpful for social distancing and as a person who uses a wheelchair on the front of the bus i do not want all the public running past me. It doesnt help social distancing for those at the highest risk on the front of the bus and theres no discussion about reducing the sixfission salaries that administrators and Communications People have at sfmta or other measures that can reduce the cost lowering or canceling expensive Construction Projects or other things and its very, very concerning to see that this is being used and manipulated to weaken a union which has always been the goal of sfmta and im very concerned about that and additionally, when people keep commenting about the work the previous director did for wheelchair users, i imagine theyre not wheelchair users and its a real slap in the face to those of you who have had to face tremendous discrimination for sfmta for being in a wheelchair and i would really ask that people stop making comments like that because it shows that you are not even listening to us or taking our concerns seriously and its hurtful. I really hope that sfmta will consider other measures instead of punishing contractors and drivers who only make 26 an hour driving muni buses, its very low pay for the hard work they do and the amount they have to put themselves at risk during the covid19 pandemic where as many people in administrative positions do not and earn a lot more money and there should be things talked about for relocationing funds that way if needed. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Next speaker, please. You have four questions remaining. So this is an opportunity to comment on topics raised during the directors report when you give us your name we will start your two minutes. Next caller. Hi, this is eric roseel. Im a resident of the tenderloin. I would like to thank the board of districtors and director tumlin for your efforts in see during more slow streets and support of that. As a tenderloin residents for over 15 years, theres a growing need here, a desperate need to be quite honest for open space to be provided and i am a little confused as to why on the most recent map that was provided showing projects that were being considered why the tenderloin was deferred to the tenderloi td so it seems to be a back and fourth and uncertainty as to who is going to be assisting tenderloin and residents and securing slow streets or projects, community streets, whatever they may be called. Since theyre not the same. But just kind of curious as to who really is overseeing that project and who, we as a community, can lean into as the mta to provide supp