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Committee reviews SFMTA quality report: ridership rose, absenteeism and maintenance staffing remain concerns
Summary
Nelson Nygaard's biannual quality review for the SFMTA covered FY2007'FY2008 and found improved ridership and some service-delivery gains but continuing problems with unscheduled operator absenteeism and maintenance vacancies that eroded equipment reliability. MTA officials said they agree and are addressing staffing and budget issues; the committee filed the item.
The Government Audit and Oversight Committee reviewed the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency's biannual quality review for fiscal years ending June 30, 2008 and heard follow-up data through 2009.
Bonnie Nelson, president of Nelson Nygaard, summarized the audit: data collection and reporting were generally accurate, nine performance standards improved and four declined during the audit period. The report credited Muni with a rebound in ridership—a rise of over 6% to roughly 220 million boardings in the audit period—but said on-time performance remained below the charter's 85% goal during the audit period even as improvements emerged afterward.
"Most importantly, those areas where improvements were noted were the kinds of things that customers noticed," Nelson told the committee, citing improvements in service-delivery measures and mean distance between road calls for the light rail vehicle (LRV) fleet during the audit period.
Nelson said the audit continued to be concerned about unscheduled absenteeism among operators (which rose to about 14'15% in 2009 using the newly defined measure), and about maintenance staffing and equipment reliability. The LRV fleet showed large gains in mean distance between failures during the audit period, which Nelson attributed to maintenance campaigns and filled maintenance positions; those gains diminished later as vacancies in maintenance rose to about 16%.
Judson True of the SFMTA said the agency agrees with the Nelson Nygaard recommendations and is implementing many of them. True told the committee that MTA leadership is committed to maintaining adequate maintenance staffing and that preliminary second-quarter FY2010 numbers show operator absenteeism declining to about 12.9%.
Supervisors asked technical questions about how goals are set, the difference between reported and goal lines on charts, the causes of LRV reliability swings and whether MTA has pursued pilot projects to improve schedule adherence. MTA staff said they are continuing TEP (Transit Effectiveness Project) efforts, signal-preemption and other street-priority measures; they also described work to rebuild LRVs using stimulus-funded contracts.
Public comment echoed earlier calls for broader fiscal and management audits of transit and health agencies. The committee closed the hearing on the SFMTA review and filed the item without objection.
Next steps: MTA said it will continue implementing Nelson Nygaard recommendations and address maintenance staffing and absenteeism in the agency budget process; committee follow-up was signaled through the budget process and future oversight hearings if needed.
