it's an honor for me to introduce to you hillie talens, who is a great professional in the netherlands about biking, biking infrastructure, the safety of biking. a lot of experience. i would like to give you the floor. hillie! [applause] >> ok, good morning. thank you for the introduction and -- i'll be leading this think bike workshop and for all of you to get an understanding of cycling in the nether land i've prepared a presentation for you all and then we work things out in detail in the three groups i'll introduce to you later. cycling in the nether land, that's what this is all about and i'm not here to you -- we netherlands you need to do in the u.s. and in san francisco specific, but just pick out the things that are useful for you and translate them into u.s. opportunities in san francisco, new opportunities. it's not my task to say you must do it like we do in the netherlands. i'll just show you what we do in the netherlands. and about myself, my name is hillie talens, as you were already told. i work for krowell, which is an n.g.o. and not for profit company, and i work as a

and about myself, my name is hillie talens, as you were already told. i work for krowell, which is an n.g.o. and not for profit company, and i work as a bicycle ambassador for the dutch cycling council. on this slide you can see are my hobbies. my greatest passion are turtles. i've checked them since i was a little girl and i can be very philosophic about it but that is for lunch break. and another hobby of mine is traveling and that comes together with my profession very well because now i'm here and i live in the netherlands. how far can you travel? making pictures, photographer is -- photography is another way of fend spending my free time and in my slides you will see some results of that hobby and combine that with traveling all over the world, you have nice chances for making pictures. and the last one, finally when i get home, my garden is the last passion. i grow my own vegetables and like to make dinner and enjoy that with friends and family. and as you notice, cycling is not part of my hobbies. cycling is not a hobby of mine. it's just a trans

it's an honor for me to introduce to you hillie talens, who is a great professional in the netherlandsbout biking, biking infrastructure, the safety of biking. a lot of experience. i would like to give you the

changing the culture, changing policy and implementation of policies with hard work and i think hillie talens will show some figures and numbers about the travel that we did in the nether land as well. and about the economic benefits that investing in bicycle infrastructure gives to us. if people from here -- they just did a great city -- study about additional investments in the nether land. 100 million bike paths and they discovered that within one year, the benefits would be higher than at 100 million. if you look to how -- if you look to mobility. if you look to product -- productivity and all those kinds of things. the good news from the netherlands is that you'll find the biggest supporters of good bike infrastructure among retailers. they know what good customers bicyclists are. and -- when we started discussions about this think bike workshop. we did this in other cities in the u.s. and we will be in that other big california city, los angeles, in a few other days. thursday, and -- thursday and friday. and i was convinced quite easily about the use to have these kind of work shops in