now we get to hear from one of the leading parking experts in the world, donald shupe is professor of urban planning at ucla, where he served as the chair of department of urban planning and as director of the institute of transportation studies. his research focused on how parking policy affects cities, the economy and the environment. his book "the high cost of free parking" has led to a growing number of cities to rethink how they manage parking more intelligently. dr. shupe. [applause] >> well, thank you very much for inviting me to take part in the event today. sirnly hope s.f. park will be as great a success as all the previous speakers said it will be. s.f. park could not have happened without the strong political leadership in both washington and san francisco. the federal highway administration did a wonderful job with this grant to san francisco. it's just the sort of research project that washington ought to support and in san francisco two mayors of the board of supervisors did the heavy political lifting. nathaniel ford of the sfmta board of directors worked hard to convi

donald shupe, our professor of urban planning at the university of irving-los angeles and worldwide expert claim on parking. we're also joined by m.t.a. director cheryl brinkman. and we're also joined by supervisor scott wiener as well as chairman of the transportation authority ross mercuriami. we're glad you're all able to be here with us. we're also joined by leslie rogers, regional administrator of the federal transit administration. we also have jose luis moss covitts of the transportation authority, jim lazarus of our san francisco chamber of commerce is here, along with red rifkin of the san francisco city of public works and melanie from the department of environment. we had a strong partnership. there was no way we could do this work without a strong partnership here within the city planning and the port of san francisco that had a strong partnership with us at s.f. park and agreed to participate in the pilot program. we have a great team of individuals at the m.t.a. who worked on this project for the past couple of years and i need to make sure we especially thank them and jape p