that are up on stage including on you mayor, members of the board, the supervisors members of the sfmta board of directors, we also are pleased to be joined by our lead federal funder, of the u.s. department of transportation administration, and leslie roger and give him a hand of the regional administrator. and he is the one that started delivering that big check to us. back in october. i don't know that he is here and another important partner and we are sit ng his right-of-way underneath the structure, cal trans, region four director bj sartepi. we also have one of the central things that the subway does is bring connection to the transit including the upcoming high speed rail. so we have ben from the high speed rail authority, let's give him a hand, thank you for being here. we have a number of the our communities supporters as well, karin floods from the union square bid, very strong partner and they have been putting up with us as we have been working through her neighborhood, carlin diamond from the market street association. cathy, and andrew from the (inaudible) cvd and jim lazares t

thank you all. >> so it is because of the leadership of the sfmta board of directors that we executed the contract for the tunneling work about a year and a half ago. our contractor is benard heely and they are the ones responsible for the site right underneath where you are sitting the first of the two tunnel boring machines and launching on june tenth or eleventh. >> and as you can see even before you take the tour, and i can do so if you are able and it is significant work and you can see the crane behind us that is bringing in the pieces piece by piece, and 20-feet wide and it weighs 750 tons and the entire apparatus is longer than the football field and the two that are making the way from here underneath china town, and up to north beach and the second one, and that process will take about a year so for all of the hard work to move the facilities to build the tunnel work and remarkably fast, given the expertise that we have with the contractors and the technology that allowed this to happen with the minimal disruption above ground and from the tunneling. this happens below the g

and you know just so everybody understands the sfmta board is appointed by the mayor, it is 7 people and there are no, vacantcies on that board, there are quite a few new commissioners on that board. and pending fee change there. and any... the appointment of any new commissioner, with any new criteria is pending a natural or unnatural changing of the guard. so this is not something that necessarily the mayor can decide right now, book. right now we are going to make it and switch it up. i think that the mayor is or was very receptive to the notion that there be representation of the small business interest on that board especially as we are now seeing, i think, perhaps unlike the past, a much more organized kind of reaction from small business to some of the things that are going on. and i also and you know ed reskin was present at the meeting as well and so he continues to make himself available to hearing the concerns of small business, both on specific projects like second street and polk street and geary street and various other ones that are right in, and about to start digging

the sfmta is a priority saying the street central subways is not needed. and many of i on this board passed illegal election called proposition g that violated the workers rights. you know who you are and what i'm talking about. it's time for you to rectify and reform this prop. so we will be going to each and every one of your offices and submitting a copy of the ballot for initiatives >> thank you very much. >> next speaker . hello, i'm a co- writer for that ballot initiative. the mta in its present form has to be changed. as the previous speaker points out every year there's a deficit every single year. the operators have been saying their pay is usually feign. the 7 is gone the 53 is gone and yet actually, it persists. it is not run as a public service and their using it to fund the rested of the city. it was started to serve the public the railway to serve the priority not the revenue. revenue it is the priority they even have parking meters in front of houses. you better not put one in front of my house it will be pulled out. this mta needs to be changed. the prop g was suppose

staff recommends that the sfmta board i subject to thetutor perini corporation. >> the social economic advantage employment, 1.5 million, what does that mean? >> will be working with community based organizations that will screen potential candidates to perform a pre-apprenticeship program; essentially graduates from this program will be offered seats essentially in apprenticeship seats within the local trade unions. >> let's go through the nurse when you mentioned the, minority and disadvantaged businesses and all that. >> the small business participation goal for the program was amended at 20%. and tutor perini came in at 25% level, exceeding the goal by approximately 5 percent. >> of these local businesses? >> california state small businesses. of the listed subcontractor for the contract, approximately a quarter of the businesses have addresses located in san francisco. >> and the minorities? >> the disadvantaged db, center enterprises, would be incorporated as part of the sbe umbrella, but i have not segregated out the list of sub contractors, db versus lbe. >> it seems like a hug

. >> so the sfmta board of directors. and the plan last year when they adopted a 6-year plan that was meant to carry through the system. and the 6 years strategic plan and set a goal in those 6 years to get up to 50 percent of trips taken in san francisco be made from modes other than the private automobile of which muni will be a big part of assuming that extra burden. and so, what we have here and the reason for that goal was the city, the board of supervisors back 40 years ago established a transit four policy, recognizing that if we want the city to be as great and beautiful and enjoyable to be in, as it has been historically, we need to make sure that the people have alternatives for how they get around it, everybody is driving around in their own car we will have more congestived streets and more polluted skies and we will be spending more of our time in traffic than enjoying our city, which will have its own economic productivity impact. and so, one dynamic is really just trying to implement the transit first polic

courage and your dedication and i am going to go ahead and present this to you on behalf of the board and the sfmta and ask you to say a couple of words. okay. >> on behalf of the board and the entire city and all of the people who come and enjoy the events and get there and get that successfully, thank you so much for all of the work that you have done in the line management center. thank you, madam chair and the board members and the director of sfmta and thank you for those kind words, as i call him he is our acting director of transit services and gracious gentleman. he empowers me and let's me do what i can do. thank you to our director, transit services mr. haly, i think of him almost as a father, because you know he can be rough. he is a good guy and these are the people that empower me. i want to say thank you on behalf of the sfmta team. because without my co-workers the units, and other departments like dpt. see some familiar faces, dtw and sfpd and some of the officers that we worked closely with this would not be possible and someone just joined me and i was not expecting, it was my wif

just mentioning that in 2011 i sponsored a resolution that was unanimously supported by this board to urge the sfmta and other department agencies to focus on the better market street project to speed up transit along market street while improving the comfort of people walking, biking, supporting local culture function of the street. i'm paraphrasing from the title of that resolution. and while i do certainly appreciate the process supervisor wiener alluded to i think in recent months the management and coordination of this project between different departments has improved, we have a ways to go which is why we're here at this hearing. in addition to the topics that supervisor wiener has discussed, i am particularly interested in two issues. one, just want to get a sense of the budget and where we stand in thinking about funding for this project. and then i do want to reiterate ensuring that we are focused on near term and pilot improvements. there was quite a bit of work done on those based on past hearings that we've had and i also want to reiterate thanks to the dpw and mta departments for the re

boarding of muni -- of their public buses. and if we have modern buses, none of the issues that have been brought today by sfmta really do that much to speed boarding. and if we had grade level boarding so that wheelchair passenger could get on the bus, that would do much more. so, along the lines of the $5 million that has been spent, i think it has been wasted. this could have bought five buses and i think that would be a better use of these funds. however, along the lines of what has been proposed here, i would like to see bicycle lanes stay or be improved along market street. i don't see how it would be an improvement to move them off. and furthermore, i see cars being something that is a vehicle for transportation to and from, and therefore in the long term i think the city should look at undergrounding as is done in broadway tunnel. taking this along folsom and howard street, undergrounding through the [speaker not understood] would be a much better option. and i hope that supervisor will consider this. thank you. >> thank you very much. next speaker, ms. hodge. >>> good morning. i'm kate hodge from the san francisco bic

board president david chiu and sfmta chairman tom nolan with a coordinated set of priorities and actionable recommendations that either by executive order or ordinance or even the ballot will maintain the [speaker not understood] of our streets and make muni and the other transportation systems of our city work the way they need to. in sum, supervisor, the plan bay area is an opportunity to think regionally and strategically about our future growth, something that we've been doing for a long time locally with our many area plans. and whether we do this at the local regional level, protections against displacementses are an integral part of that puzzle, accommodating growth at the responsible way. thank you. >> thank you. i will provide the next question. during question time. ~ mr. mayor, last year the san francisco board of supervisors made small but important changes to your proposed budget that represented our shared city-wide priorities. in fact, our changes only represented 0.3% of the entire budget. in recent months controller data indicates that positions allocated by the board for l

board. leading up to that, the sfmta had distributed 1400 postcards to everyone living on the street and one block on either side informing them of community meetings. fliers were distributed door to door. i can vouch for that, i did it. mta also surveyed people who lived one block away, and found overwhelming support. 86 percent said they support this particular proposal that's before you now. in addition to the north panhandle [inaudible] and they did their support to the mta last year. also, the pacific blood bank on-or the blood bank of the pacific on turk and [inaudible] so we do have the community support. there has been outreach conducting. there may be some people who did not receive those notices, but i think more than a goodwill effort was made to reach as many as possible. thank you. >> thank you very much. before the next speaker i'll name a few more cards. david, sandra, richard, howard,. >> i live -- my name is lawrence lee, i live in the thrower hey and i'm a board member of the association. i'm department on bicycling to get around the city and it's really the most affordable