people will be paying for housing at the expense of food and transportation. that obviously has to change. it echoes supervisor campos' comments about really any need to address the affordable housing issue in the mix. we will have to focus on that as we move forward and continue to press for communities that are doing something about affordable housing to get credit on the infrastructure investment side. because if we're doing our share and more than our share, we should be getting more money for infrastructure. that is nothing new, but it is a message that i think is worth delivering again. as you know, i spend a couple of weeks seemingly on vacation, but i was teaching a course in argentina on strategic planning for transportation investments. i came back with an invitation from the chancellor of the university there in rosario, my hometown, to try to open up an exchange program, and i will be pursuing those ideas a little bit further and will give you more of a report next month. it is very exciting to the topics are familiar to us, high- speed rail, parki

registration fee for transportation improvement program.rogram was established with passage last year, and the main source of information, which accounts for the program. the responsibility of these financial statements rests with the authority on this financial statements based on our audit. in the quarter -- we performed our audit in accordance with the generally accepted auditing standards. financial statements presented are without qualifications or exceptions and these financial statements are represented in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. it is the best type of reported auditing you may receive from an external auditor. in terms of the financial statements, i just want to highlight a few items. on page 21 and 23, the authority had asked us about the entity as a whole in the amount of $13.30 million, and in the sales tax program, the amount of $32.2 million. due primarily to its outstanding balance and the commercial paper notes, the authority has $150 million of these notes outstanding to pay for capital proj

as a student myself, i really experience the importance of affordable transportation. it helps me to be on time at school, focus on studies. therefore, please support free muni for all youth. >> i'm a district 9 youth commissioner and a father. i'm a strong advocate for free muni for youth. when i was young, my family struggled when my father lost his job. at times, -- we all understand we are in economic times -- difficult economic times. i would like to commend you on your work. if we could figure out where there is excess money being spent and figure out how to help youth. >supervisor campos: thank you to the youth commission. you can see that it is difficult for young people to be here during the day. they are in school. technology has allowed them to do that. >> i have to talk with other families every day about how hard it is to get access to muni. i think this conversation is very important. we are talking about a lot of money. our families now are being punished because they do not have enough money. we do not have a lot of clarity on how the money is being spe

people will be paying for housing at the expense of food and transportation. that obviously has to change. it echoes supervisor campos' comments about really any need to address the affordable housing issue in the mix. we will have to focus on that as we move forward and continue to press for communities that are doing something about affordable housing to get credit on the infrastructure investment side. because if we're doing our share

i think what we are seeing is that public transportation is transportation money, spending it on transit. we increase service. we can lower fares, and that is what this is about. we can take the new leadership at mta toward taking our transit first policy and having it serve the people that need it the most. this whole conversation is something that we are really invested in. every speaker up here has said that they are here for free muni for young people. if we take our transportation money and spend it on transit, we can make that happen and we urgently need to make it happen this year. we have already been cutting our school buses. kids do not have a way to get to school. they are asking to get on the bus even when they do not have a fair and based the fear of a police officer getting -- giving them a ticket -- face the fear of a police officer giving them a ticket. we do not have time to wait and we have a huge opportunity to do something for our people. thank you so much. [applause] supervisor campos: thank you. next speaker. >> [speaking spanish] >> good afternoon. i have two daugh

i was teaching a course in argentina on strategic planning for transportation investments. i came back with an invitation from the chancellor of the university there in rosario, my hometown, to try to open up an exchange program, and i will be pursuing those ideas a little bit further and will give you more of a report next month. it is very exciting to the topics are familiar to us, high- speed rail, parking pricing, bicycle lanes, how to deal with the density, all of the same issues we deal with here. i think it is an opportunity from all -- for all of us to learn. i spent a day on the way back from argentina in washington, d.c. our deputy of projects joined me there to have meetings with the federal highway administrator to try to sort out the final stages of the federal funding byrd is a vision for the second phase of the presidio parkway project. which, as the chair mentioned earlier, is nearing completion on the first phase, which will be open to traffic on -- in february, but we need to make sure we do not have a gap on the start of the second phase in the private-pu

. -- transportation authority. that we are able to hostess for the third time in a decade. i have the honor of introducing the official welcome to the city, edwin lee, the 43rd mayor of the city and county of san francisco. a former city administrator, former director of public works for san francisco. he was appointed unanimously as the successor mayor in 2011 to fill the remaining year of former mayor gavin newsom's term. as you know, former mayor newsom was sworn in as the lieutenant governor in january to 10 -- 2010. mayor lee is the first asian- american mayor in the city's history. 2010, mayor lee was appointed to a second term by mayor newsom. his appointment at the time was confirmed unanimously by the board of supervisors. as city administrator, he spearheaded reform that would be reduced the size and cost of government, from reducing the vehicle fleet, to consolidating departments, to saving tax dollars. he implemented the city's move to cleaner vehicles and infrastructure to support electric vehicles. ma

there's more information on our web site on the transportation plan. there is the lifeline transportation program change, which is highlighted here because of its significance. the lifeline transportation program funds have flowed from mtc to the condition management agencies and the different counties. the mtc is now proposing a change which would actually increase the amount of funding that goes to the counties, but it would direct a large amount to the transit operators, sfmta, and also increase the amount coming to the authority. we're talking about revenues of $11.7 million going to mta and up to $5.4 million coming to the authority. this is funding intended to deal with increasing taxes and mobility for low-income communities, and we have already had quite a bit of involvement with the program in the past. you can expect the requisite projects and the actions of the plans and programs committee in december, prior to the issuance considering some of the funding going to the program that commissioner campos has been spearheading. van ness brt relea

welcome to the san francisco county transportation authority. ross mirkarimi, chair. i apologize for the slight delay. >> >> supervisor avalos -- >> present. >> supervisor campos -- >> present. >> supervisor chiu -- absent. >> supervisor chu -- >> present. >> supervisor cohen -- >> present. >> supervisor elsbernd -- >> present. >> supervisor farrell -- >> present. >> supervisor kim -- >> present. >> supervisor mar -- >> present. >> supervisor mirkarimi -- >> present -- present. >> item number two, approval of minutes of the october 25, 2011 meeting. this is an action item. supervisor mirkarimi: any discussion? the seeing none. approval. second. public comments. seeing none, public comment is closed. roll call, please. >> commissioner at the lows. commissioner campos. commissioner issue. " -- commissioner carmen chu. commissioner:. commissioner elsbernd. commissioner farrell. commissioner kim. commissioner mark. commissioner mirkarimi. commissioner winner. it is passed. supervisor mirkarimi: please read item number three and four. >> item number 3, chairs report. item

he is doing great things for san francisco in terms of transportation. we're happy and grateful to him for hosting us today. supervisors go scott wiener. [applause] >> not for tall people. thank you. one of our goals in having smart parking policies is to make it as easy as possible for people to pay for the street parking. i think we have seen that when we make it easy for people to pay, the number of parking tickets goes down and revenue goes up. that is how it should be. people paying for parking and not being penalized and coming away with a terrible feeling. we're lucky in this area. this is one of the areas to get credit card meters first. we're thrilled that the castro is the first neighborhood to get paid by phone. we are really doing innovative work that will be a model for other cities and counties in the area and across the country. i am thrilled that we're doing this. thank you very much. [applause] >> the voters in 1999 created the mta and established a board to create policies such as this. to put policies in place like sf park better groun

how can hud, department of transportation, and epa work together? this is a different way of doing business, and it is a way that we are very proud of. i want to thank ophelia, as well. should not be here today, but she is the regional administrator. and leslie from the department of transportation today they're all sitting down together in some very large infrastructure projects. this is a $5 million project to develop a prosperity plan for the bay area. if you think of the billions of dollars that were spending on everything from highways to public transportation systems, the opportunity to come together and it rethink those as a sustainable communities package is with this partnership is all about. and it is a different way of doing business. it is needed at a time when we have less and less funds. it does it better for less money. we're proud to be a partner, along with hud and the department of transportation, and we want to thank them. i also want to thank and invite up mark green, president of the association of bay area governments, and the

supervisor mirkarimi: colleagues, this is my last meeting as chair of the transportation authority. i want to thank you all for allowing me to serve you for two years. as i look back over the last year, but in particular the last two years, i think it is important that we can all take pride in some major milestones that we were able to achieve together, such as the completion of the environmental impact report for the van ness bus a rapid transit line. i project this is poised to move into implementation, and one that i believe will change for the better, the way people see public transportation in san francisco. on high-speed rail, we spent a very productive year forging a unified san francisco position in the face of rapid change them in the policy environment both in washington, d.c., and in san francisco. i believe we will see caltrain electrification in high-speed rail kunduz san francisco at center than most people predict. we only realize the dream, the downtown high-speed rail terminal, but we're also known to show the way for the rest of the state. our coalition building wo

for us, public transportation is about the environment, equality, and [inaudible] we support the leadership of muni to ensure that resources are being used appropriately and we ask that the leadership of muni be mindful of unintended consequences that service cuts might have or will have. the first being the loss of employment due to people not being able to get to work in a timely fashion. if that happens due to service cuts, it has the follow-on effect of increasing welfare costs to the city and medicare costs to the city. people often use the emergency room -- low-income people often use the emergency room as their primary health care source. if you lose your job, you do not have health care. i ask you to be mindful of that. there are other unintended consequences. i ask that the board of supervisors be mindful of this and do what you can to make san francisco and nice place for all its inhabitants. >> good morning, supervisors. thank you for holding this committee hearing today. i am the community organizer for the jamestown community center. our youth group has been working on the camp

how did you get involved in transportation? >> well, i guess it is around the early birthday of mine. i got a truck when i was 2 years old. >> this truck? amazing. and i take you are an adult now? >> i play with these things. i call it that because i'm a designers in -- a designer and policymakers. >> where do we see them? there are so many on the highways, they seem to put out too much diesel excrement. sometimes they cut us off, and sometimes, when we pass them, we suddenly get blown off the road when the prevailing wind comes around the side of the truck and we are not anticipating it. >> we sort of have a strange love/hate relationship with it, because everything we have comes on that. a train does not pull up to the cul-de-sac of my house. something has to come by truck at some point. so we need our stuff. we need our medicine, our food, our diapers. our grass seed that we're going to do fall seating. unfortunately, everyone, though, needs trucks, and as our population grows, we need more. we're just going to keep needing

regional priorities, the regional transportation improvement program will be adopted.if you go to slide 5, these are basically the key findings to monitor how the congestion monitoring program network forms every number of years. you can see we basically have very flat travel speeds from 2009 to 2011 with the exception of amt freeways. there is a decrease in speed, and a number of reasons for that. we are positing that a number of people were deciding to look for employment coming out of the recession, perhaps looking for more regional head of freeways, and there could be many reasons, but that could be one of them. another reason to look at the congestion monitoring program is the transit, how it compares to auto travel speeds. we find that transit tends to be one-and-a-half times or two and a half times longer than a bottle crawlspace, particularly on the segments we are focusing, like the ad and a -- like the avenue where i could get up to as much as four times the amount of trouble as i could buy auto. this is all again to make sure that our investment portion and

but there is no document that says it must be transportation related.s language in that charter that says the mta needs to make sure the expenditures are transportation-related but it does not extend to the work orders. >> in deciding whether or not an expenditure is properly a work order, which is there a general guideline that you follow? >> what we do is we have a presentation later that speaks to the different types of work orders. we would have to pay that. as long as the mta is getting value from that, we agree to the work order. supervisor campos: does there have to be a connection to transportation? >> we make sure that there is or otherwise we would not be paying it. as to the services we get for that work order that assist the transportation system. supervisor campos: i wonder if the city attorney has anything to add. what's the requirement under the charter? what could be a proper expenditure? >> good morning. i'm from the city attorney's office. i'm sorry i did not come prepared to address that question. it is difficult to address i general