also honored to be joined this morning by cyclists region nine, jared bloomenfeld. [ applause ] >> additionally i would like to recognize and thank the following elected representatives for their support of this program. supervisor john avalos. and san francisco, supervisor and commissionerer scott weiner. [ applause ] san francisco supervisor jane kim. [ applause ] sfmta board of directors tom nolan and cheyrlbrick man. >> and the mayor and director transportation policy, jilian gelet,. >> and mayor district, executive director jack broadbent.

department of environment, melanie nutter. sfmta, bon ye. san francisco bike coalition, kit hodge. [ applause ] sfcta deputy director for policy and programming ana lafort. sfcta interim director maria lumabardo. and san francisco police chief greg sure. [ applause ] >> so how do we get here? as early as 2009, tda ban working towards a bike sharing program in santa clara county intended to address the bike issues on cal tran and provide the connections to the light

rail and bus services at the same time, there was a growing interest from other bay area agencies to pursue and expand bike sharing on a regional level, as a recall, with the support from the partners represented here today from the bay area, air quality management districts, board of directors, the district submitted an application to the commission for an innovative climate protection grant to conduct a regional pilot system. and just so all of you know right now, in many of the cities, there are also law of events occurring including in my city of san jose. to date, the pilot project has been awarded more than 11 million dollars in public funds, including a 7.1 million dollar award from mtc, matched by 2.8 million in the bay area district and 1.3 in the partner agencies. and as a result of these

grants, today, we are celebrating the availability of more than 600 bicycles and 64 stations. that within the next few months, it will be expanded to 700 and by early, 2014, will be expanded to a total of 1,000 bicycles and the main goal in the regional pilot program would be to evaluate the potential to reduce the traffic and improve the local air quality, as a result of these grants, actually this program, could not have been achieved, without the strong commitment and partnership from the transportation commission, the bay area air district, the transit district, the county of san mateo, and the city and county of san francisco transportation authority and municipal transportation agency. the valley trans,

transportation and cal trans. and now it is my pleasure to welcome ed lee the mayor of san francisco to the podium and before mayor lee takes the podium, i would like to introduce him, properly. and mayor lee was elected in november of 2011, following an appointment as interim mayor earlier that year. as mayor, he has aided in securing more than 21 million in grants from the united states department of transportation for muni including the new bio diesel, electric buses to optimize the services and he has also helped to implement the move to cleaner vehicles and the vehicles and green city government and i know, him to be a great advocate regional for transit infrastructure and for clean air, mayor lee? [ applause ] >> thank you, for that, introduction, and welcome everybody to this launch. i am so glad to be joining our supervisors and scott, and

jane, our very strong advocates for our bike program. and supervisor avalos as well. and as well as the rest of the supervisors and i want to thank all of the agencies working so hard to get to this and i know that i get to ride with chief sir today and loftus as well. and you know, but i want to thank everyone because jared and i are sitting there and we are asking ourselves why did it take so long? this is about our air, our air quality and we need to do a better and we need to do it faster shs but we are glad that we are here at this time, to launch a bay area, effort, to reduce our emissions, and by signaling to our regial partner and whether they are san transor our own mta or mtc and or whether it is redwood city, or santa clara all of our

partners want to act together to make sure that we do the right thing and by starting a regional bay area bike share program, it is exciting because we are already thinking not just within the boundaries of san francisco, but we get to share this opportunity to share the bikes, and to drop them off at different locations with ease and to make sure that people get used to it and then our jobs within the city is to make the cities safe and make them efficient and to make a dedicated bike lanes so that the people can get around the city safely and efficiency and we will continue to work on that but this is exciting with the first phase of over 7 million dollars of grants, and thank again to mtc and the air district for being great partners and i am excited to do this and we are going to have more safer lanes throughout the city, the city of san francisco is already completed over 217 miles, bicycle lanes, where we

are putting hundreds of bike racks up and we are getting facilities, situated where the people need them and it should not be a big surprise that south of the market area, where jane kim represents, that that is the hottest area of bicycle use in all of san francisco. and it is concentrated in that area because that is where a lot of our technology workers and new small business workers are working and they need the state routes between the home and cal train and downtown and all of the areas and so we are working hard on that so this is a great exciting news and finally a bike sharing program that our mta is proud of. and the pass mayor, continued to call me up saying where are you getting my bike share program started? and so, of course, the governor we get to say that we got it started, now we are into expansions already. and i can't wait to get on this bike and see how the stations work. and see how the service gets

done. and then to see so many people join this effort and so thank you again for all of the agency and all of your cooperation for getting this done, congratulations. >> thank you, mayor lee for your leadership and offering to host this great event in your city. and thank you, supervisor kim for also hosting us we appreciate it. >> now, i would like to introduce amy wine worth the city of the mayor and mtc chair. and amy has served on the city council since 1998 with the terms of mayor in 2000, 2005 and this year, 2013. she was first appointed to the metropolitan transportation commission governing board in 2007 and served for the past two years as the commission's vice chair before becoming chair this year. push [ applause ] >> thank you, thank you, and mayor lee, it is such an honor to join all of you today in celebrating this great day in

the launch of the bay area bike share. you know on behalf of the metropolitan transportation commission and along with the air quality management district, and all of the other partners i am thrilled to be part of this celebration and this launch today. and i took bart over from the east bay and the cars were full of bicycles and it just illustrated the tremendous potential that this program has for the entire bay area and i also wanted to give special recognition to my colleague on mtc, scott weiner who has been a tremendous advocate for this program, and that has been launched today and he is a great bike share advocate and helped us in this last year of moving those funds to enable this to all happen. and i also want to thank all of the hard working staff for making this day happen. and a special thanks to the air district, staff and our partners at sfmta, dta, and you

know the beauty about launching this program in san jose and san francisco we are going to learn a lot. we are going to learn about how bike share works in the hills and on the flats and so we will be able to take that knowledge as we expand across the bay area and i want to extend a thanks to congratulations to the bicycle coalitions who are such incredible advocates for this program and we look forward to your help in expanding bike sharing throughout the bay area and as he mentioned, the bay area's single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions comes from transportations that represents about 40 percent of the ght in the region. and so in response to this, in 2009, and mtc created, the climate initiatives program, which includes a 33 million dollar test bed for innovative strategies aimed at reducing transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions. and this amount, and mtc is

allocated over 7 million to the bay area bike share pilot program and is committed to making this program a success. and this pilot not only offers the last minute solutions for computers, in san francisco, san jose and along the cal tran corridor and also provides a fun alternative to driving around town, bicycling is also, incredibly healthy. and the us, and the surgeon general recommends 30 minutes a day. and finally the bike share, pilot program is one of the first multicity bike share systems in the nation, and so proven successful this system could expand to other cities in the future. and to all of the current and future cyclists, pedal on, and so again, at mtc, we are thrilled to bring bike share to the bay area, and i am looking forward to seeing all of these

beautiful bicycles around town, there you go, and so i am pleased now, to again, thank you all for the opportunity to join you in this great celebration. thank you, with that funding from mta and leader without from your commission we would not be celebrating this occasion, and the partners have played such a critical role in launching this program, speaking of partners, i would like to now, introduce, jes g, the vice mayor and the sam transvice chair, and he was elected in 2009 and currently serving as vice mayor. and as a council member, he has focus on the economic development as well as on the high speed rail and the rail corridor partnership, and additionally, mr. g is the chairman of the san francisco airport roundtable and the congestion and the relief

alliance and was recently selected to serve as the vice president of the board of directors for san trans. [ applause ] >> councilman, thank you very much for that warm introduction and welcome. like so many of us, we all wear many hats and that is the vice mayor and the vice chair for the directors of san transand many of us said, through these regional partnerships like this one, we can find solutions towards the twin goals of increasing the public transit usage and reducing the congestion on the roads and already, in the county alone, the cal train, the shuttles and all of those together, last year we gave over 45 million rides in the county alone. representing over 500 million passenger miles that we kept off of our roads and freeways in the county. and i am honored to be part of this regional effort to find effective ways to address what we call the last mile connection, making that trip

from the final transit stop to your actual destination. and we have many individuals, who want to take the train, and then jump on their bikes and take that last mile to work, or to get home. and with the cal train operating many of its trains, full, at more than 100 percent capacity, we have to find enough space for customer and their bikes and that is always a challenge. as rider ship the system continues to grow, we are working hard to find new ways, to expand the number of people that we can comfortably and safely serve. having a bicycle option, available for transit users when they get off of the train to reach their destination to keep the trains and buses full by allowing the people a quick and easy solution for solving that last mile in my community, of redwood city, i want our residents to know that the workers can get off of the transit center and get on a bike that will take them to the place of employment downtown

and i want future residents to know that they can live downtown without having to rely on a car. >> we want to have answers, how can i get to work and how can i run, errands and can i live downtown without owning a car or having one car for my family. we believe that the bike share is one of the answers to those questions, it is a convenient and affordable way to encuresage the use as driving alone, abehalf of the city county, supervisor, and the chair of the san transand the board of directors, and our county, transportation authority, we believe that the bike share program encourages people to take transit, and cut their carbon footprint and make a healthy alternative for all of us and as the council member said i want to extend a personal invitation when to

come to the city when we launch our own bike share program thank you very much. [ applause ] >> thank you, so much, jeff, although that san francisco and san jose get a lot of the attention, it would not be successful without the regional partners up and down. they play a critical role in the success of this program. i now have the pleasure of introducing bicycle enthusiast jared bloomen field. he happens to be the administrator for the pacific south west region nine. he has spent two decades on the front lines of environmental production at home and internationally. he is an avid biker and has led bike tours in los angeles and hey hawaii and washington, d.c. and london and looks forward to participating in the bay area bike share program. jared? [ applause ] >> thank you, this is a real today, and the people behind

me, they really did take a village to make this happen. and the work and the effort is paying off today and i am thrilled to be here and i bike to work every day and i was lucky enough to try one of these in washington, d.c., and i have tried one in london, and i tried one in paris, and these things work. and you will get all kinds of people saying this is the best thing that you have ever seen and all kinds of people saying that this is the worst thing. in a few months from now everyone will want to be on one of these and the program is going to expand. president obama recently came out strongly and said that we need to take action on climate change and we need to do that soon. here in california, 50 percent of greenhouse gas emissions come from vehicles. not from this vehicle, we spent a lot of time when ed and the mayor and i got to work with each other we spent with the time on the fuel cell vehicles and the cng vehicles and the electric vehicle and this

happens to be the world's most efficient vehicle. by far. and it was invented a long time ago and does not take batteries or electricity. and you just get on it and it moves really efficiently. if you, think about the bicycle, and one of the things that the mayor and folks in redwood city and the entire peninsula have done is invest in bike infrastructure and this is the last crowning achievement of that. and the more people that ride bicycles every day, and this is proven by science, the safer it is to bicycle. and the reason for that is the cars get used to bicycles and the people build more infrastructure and so these beautiful, bicycles will help the streets become safer. and the other amazing fact in the introduction is that i did go on the bikes with both the mayor of la and the mayor of

honolulu. la is number one congestived and honolulu is number two and the san francisco bay area is the third most congestived area. if three percent of the people driving their cars went on bicycles just three percent, you would reduce congestion by 30 percent and so it really could have a huge impact on air quality and the air quality, management district, here in the bay area, and jack deserve a huge degree of credit and they have really championed this with many of the other partners here and the final thing, here and in all of the cities that are going to get this and is that they are going to get an economic boost and what the ride share and bike share in new york shows is that businesses adjacent to new bike lanes and the bike share programs do better because people can get off and go shopping at this safeway and go into the cal transand it is

much easier to park my big reason for biking is that you don't get a ticket. there is no license plate on a bicycle. and you don't pay insurance and as was mentioned, you get a lot of great exercise. most importantly, it is really fun, these are great bikes to ride and they have seven gears unlike the ones in dc, and only have three, this has 7. and so at least twice as good as the dc bike share program, and they have gps so you can't steal them and they have a great little thing in the front to put your bag in and as you are going to see you can wear a suit. so when i bike to work, a lot of people take their bikes on the cal train and then they are stuck at the other end and they want to go and work and they do work at google or apple or any of these places and they don't know how to get from one place to the other and so this will provide that solution and everyone should try one. and a lot of people think that they are just going to be for tourists but the reality is that they are going to be for

all of us and we are going to have a lot of fun on them. thank you for making it happen, i can't wait to ride mine in a few minutes, thanks. + [ applause ] . >> don't give the mayor any ideas for generating revenue, we don't want to see any tickets on the bicycles any time. in addition to your great work, it is motivating to hear you and hear you talk about the personal benefits of biking in your own life and how you translated that into a public policy and created and motivating all of us to ride bikes, and bike sharing as you heard from our wonderful speakers is truly a win/win for the bay area, as a resident of san jose for 30 years and a city council member being a san francisco is one thing and it is dense and it is urban, and san jose is sprawled out and the chance for the people to use public transportation and get on the bikes.

i am happy that our 16 bay area bike share stations will join a network of 280 miles of completed bike ways in san jose. and they continue to expand at a rapid pace, they completed 500 bike way miles in the city of san jose over the next few years and as i speak, we are under construction of the green bike lanes project which directly connects several of the bike share stations and ultimately connect us all throughout the bay area. and all of these bike facilities create great places for the people to ride or on their own bike, the benefits are many, and bike sharing as a option will continue to grow from this point forward as you demonstrate how healthy and fun and convenient it can be. thank you for your attention this morning and i really do

want to thank jack from the district and our staff for leading this effort in conjunction with so many partners at this time, i would ask the ceremony speakers to join me in the front for the ribbon cut and before they do that, i would like to encourage everyone watching listening or reading about the share, to take the time to register to be part of the program, in fact, sign up today and find it out for the compute tomorrow and especially with the bay bridge closed. there are a lot of people on the bay with our bikes and having the fun with it over the long holiday weekend and it is easy to do at bay area bike share.com. bay area bike share.com and so now let's go over and get some ribbon cutting down and launch this program and get on the bikes and follow me through the station, thank you everyone for being here this morning. [ applause ]

♪ ♪ >> hello, welcome to the meet your district supervisor. i'm nona melkonian and we're here with supervisor katy tang for supervisor 4 which includes central and outer sunset.

supervisor tang appointed by mayor ed lee to serve as district 4 representative replacing previous supervisor carmen chu after she was appointed assessor reporter that same month. before her appointment she served as legislative aide to supervisor chiu. today you'll get to know her and the issues facing the city. welcome, supervisor. thank you for join using us. >> thank you for having me. >> let's start with a little about your background. where you grew up, went to school and what kind of jobs you had in the past. >> sure, i grew up in the sunset district. still live there. spent about 20 years living in the sunset district and just am so proud to be able to represent the district that i grew up in and where my parents still live. i had gone through the public education system and went to neighborhood schools throughout the sunset district. so, had gone to francis scott key elementary school, hoover middle school, lowell high school and am just so proud to be able to come back full circle to support a lot of those schools that i went to

and be part of that community in a very integral way. >> so, you spent most of your life in san francisco. why did you choose to live in the city? >> well, first of all, my parents decided to move us to the sunset district because they really wanted my brother and i to have a really good and safe r growing up. there were a lot of children and families in the sunset district and i think they felt like it would be the best environment for us to grow up. so, we ended up staying out there and fell in love with it and have a lot of pride after especially working for the sunset district as the electricity i have aide to supervisor chiu for over five years. and working with -- very intimately with a lot of community members, the merchants, our local residents who have, you know, interest in things such as public safety or public transportation, our school communities, our parks and play grounds, just really been such a wonderful experience working with them. so, i just really enjoyed that work experience as well as my

own experience growing up there. >> how has your experience as aide to supervisor chiu prepared you for the board of supervisors? >> i think that i probably don't have a learning curve on having worked in the district so long and having grown up there. i think that it's been really beneficial knowing who to go to to ask certain questions, or, you know, learning how to read pieces of legislation, for example, knowing what the issues are that the city has faced. i think that those have all been really helpful experiences during this transition. >> what motivated you to get involved in politics? >> i've always wanted to be involved in whichever community i'm in. for example, what ix in school i was in student government and, so, working in city hall was one of my first jobs, actually, out of college. and, so, i have been doing -- i have been working at city hall for over six years now and i just feel very much pride in working for the city that i live in. >> where do you place yourself

on the political spectrum, are you progressive, centrist, or more on the conservative side? >> i think i'm probably more of a moderate person. i think that our district, again, lots of families and children, seniors, immigrant community, and i think that we tend to be more classified as, you know, fiscally responsible, i would say. and, again, having my experience in working for the mayor's budget office, for example, prior to working for the board of supervisors, i think that gave me a really great background in terms of how the city works, how the city's budget is put together. and those really -- that experience has really influenced my decision-making process. >> and speaking of the city's budget, the city just enacted a two-year budget and it seems the city is always dealing with complicated issues including whether or not to raise taxes and fees. how will you approach these tough choices? >> i think that when we talk about raising fees or taxes, we always have to come at it from a very balanced approach. we have a lot of homeownerses,

we have a lot of tenants in the city. and, so, again balance is really key. i think we also have to approach the budget and some tough fiscal issues looking at the city-wide budget as a whole and not just looking at specific sectors or issue areas that we real have i to look at the city's financial standing as a whole for the long term. that's really important and that's definitely what drives a lot of my decision-making process. and i think it's also tougher in san francisco because we really are held to a very high standard where we have to balance the budget every single fiscal year. we cannot run into a deficit in the new fiscal year. we cannot print more money. we are held to a high standard by our charter and, so, i think that's why these tough decisions are made every year rent. >> what other issues do you feel are facing san francisco? >> i think for san francisco and also elsewhere, one of the biggest issues right now is really how do we ~ attract economic development and spur job creation. and those are two things that

really go hand in hand and really is what makes the city vibrant and a place where people want to live and can afford to live. and i think that keeping those city-wide goals in mind, to really want to try to also make sure that locally we support our small businesses and all merchants, for example, give economic benefits and help create jobs as well. >> what are your thoughts on the city's economic development? do you feel we're on the right track? >> i think we're on a very exciting time right now in san francisco where we have a lot of energy in terms of businesses and especially the tech industry wanting to locate in san francisco and that's something that we really haven't seen as much in the past after the dot-com boom. and, so, we are in a very exciting time and we really see a transformation going on in our city because of that. >> what would you like to see change about the city's approach to developing its economy? >> i think that really depends on the changing times. and there isn'rt