Constituents about muni and its timeliness. Thank you to the drivers. Thank you to the m. T. A. Team, thank you to all of those who have worked on this contract. Thank you to siemens for just working with the city and being patient with us. Thank you to the mayor for his leadership on transportation issues. Thank you to phil ting for always bringing home the bacon. We have got to do a better job in improving our Transportation System and today we demonstrate that this is a start. Were not done. Well keep moving muni forward. Thank you so much for being here today. [applause] thank you, president breed. It is great to have that passion leading our board of supervise source and supporting transit in San Francisco. So i had mentioned, as did the mayor and the Assembly Member and the president that the growth in San Francisco is part of what we need to accommodate on sustainable modes in the highest capacity sustainable mode of transportation we have in San Francisco is our light rail system. And so one of the first impetuses for this rail car expansion, and then eventual replacement, was the central subway project that the mayor mentioned. An expansion of Light Rail Service from visitation valley up through bayview, dog patch, mission bay and into the heart of the city in chinatown. One of the most densely populated neighborhoods in the United States. So, this expansion we got as a part of a deal we made with the federal government. And the federal government entered into we entered into a grand agreement to the town of 982 million i think at the time. Anyway, the biggest federal grant San Francisco had ever received and as part of the deal, they say well give you that money to build the subway, but you need to start expanding your Light Rail Service. So these first 24 cars are partly funded by the central subway project, but also a requirement that we had to meet in order as part of our obligations and the requirement was that we would have these cars in service by the time the central subway was done. And as i said, were ahead of schedule. Well have these first 24 cars ahead in service well in advance of the central subway opening and all that was made possible and driven by the leadership at the United States department of transportation and particularly the federal Transit Administration, federal Transit Administration is the one that oversees the Grant Programs that authorized and supported our grant for the central subway as well as this procurement. They will be funding in part, we expect, a large part of the replacement of the existing fleet. So, it is a partnership that we absolutely couldnt do without. One that we value significantly. And its been led here in San Francisco and the western United States for many, many years very well and ably by the regional administrator of the f. T. A. Please join me in welcominging leslie rogers. [applause] good morning, ladies and gentlemen. As i was standing back there, i was mindful that we usually refer to everything as being all about location, location, location. But today i think it is really about timing, timing, timing. Thank god that ed fortuitously planned this event for today rather than yesterday. But on behalf of the federal Transit Administration, im especially pleased to join you all here today. As ed mentioned, when we signed the full Funding Grant agreement for central subway, and it recognized the need for improvements to address and expanding and dynamic city, we also committed muni to addressing its state of good repair needs. And as we go about systems expansion, this these light rail vehicles represent that effort to indierdre men ish and address our capsule investment needs. Congratulationss to muni. I sat down trying to calculate how much we really might be invested in this project. And i think i just will conclude to say it is multimillions of dollars. Again, were pleased to join you here today. As a resident of San Francisco and a daily muni rider, i can tell you how very much im looking forward to the roll out of these vehicles. And i will conclude with two words lets roll. [applause] thank you, leslie. Thank you for your many, many years of greater leadership and support of transportation in the Western Region and whole western part of the United States. At the federal level, that support was critical and likewise at the state. Assembly member ting made reference to the cap and trade program. 86 million of cap and trade funds in this curement. We will be submitting our application in the coming weeks for the next round of funding for which we hope to be as equally competitive and successful and a lot of that, the existence of that program, the focus of that program on transportation, recognizing the linkage between air quality and transportation has been from the leadership of the california state transportation agency, secretary brian kelly who was appointed by Governor Brown to lead that agency and really to bring the cap and trade program as well as many other programs, supportive of Good Transportation in california into being. So, were pleased to be joined by deputy secretary of transportation, kate white. She herself is from San Francisco so she gets it not only at a policy level from sacramento, but as somebody who rides muni herself. Please join me in welcoming deputy secretary kate white. [applause] good morning, San Francisco it is absolutely wonderful to be here today. Thank you very much to everyone for the invitation. Love to be home. Have a chance to come home for this wonderful occasion. And i wanted to give greetings from secretary brian kelly and the secretarys office in sacramento. And i am very pleased to be here to celebrate one of the very first california Climate Investments out of our cap and trade program. I recently heard a quote that the future happens first in San Francisco. And the state, we are thrilled to be investing in that future. Both Climate Investments and as several speakers mentioned also recently passed senate bill 1, the transportation funding package, provides a great new opportunity to invest more seriously than a new generation in transit and rail across california. So, please thank you and i wanted to welcome the new train car here to San Francisco and see it as part of the future of decarbonizing, creating a major sustainable, resilient future. Thank you. [applause] thank you, kate. So, theres federal support. Theres state support. And, of course, the local support is crucial. Our county Transportation Authority under the leadership of executive director tilly chang, its chair aaron peskin and vice chair tang have been critical to putting together the planning and funding so we can do things like get the central subway done, get this largest ever light rail procurement done so were very pleased to be joined by our great partner, Deputy Director of the county Transportation Authority, maria lombardo. [applause] hello. Im very pleased to be here. On behalf of our chair aaron peskin i want to issue a congratulations on the entire mmta for reaching another milestone ahead of schedule. Lets keep that up. As has been said before, i really have to recognize that making an investment of this significance is a team effort and we are so fortunate to have a wonderful set of team players from the federal level, the state level, mary lee, the board of supervisors, the m. T. A. And so on. I want to add to that team, though, a very important group. Which is San Francisco residents and voters. [applause] yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, rights . Thanks to their foresight back in 1989, we authorized the first half cent transportation sales tax for San Francisco, which was reauthorized in 2003. Under the direction of the Transportation Authority board, we allocated 131 million to this base procurement contract with siemens for the l. R. V. S. That was the largest single grant we have ever made from the sales tax program. And it is very fitting that that was the grant. Because there is no single investment we can make that immediately touches so many people, makes transit ridership safer, more reliable and heck of a lot more fun. So, were very proud and we have more sales tax dollars in line for the next options to expand our fleet even further. I just want to say that we need this team to Stay Together because were looking forward to securing additional regional measures three. Thats senate bill 1 funds, cap and trade funds and local new revenue measures to expand the fleet and upgrade the facilities so we can keep these running perfectly through the end of their useful life. Thank you. [applause] thank you, pa maria for reminding us of the voters and their foresight and making the difficult decisions that we ask of them that will impact their pocketbooks and wallets. There will be possibly and likely many such occasions coming up in 2018. We need to do our job to continue to educate our own voters so that the next generation of us standing here can look back on 2018 and 2020 for insightful good voting. The first vote that had to take place in order to advance this project, again, maybe im repeating myself. But the largest ever light rail vehicle procurement in the United States history, the first vote to move that forward was put before the sfmta board of directors and i was a big ask that we were making of them. And they came through. And i want to acknowledge the leadership of our chair k cheryl brinkman, our vice chair Malcolm Heineke who is a regular rider of the system. I know the daily feedback that i get when things arent quite as they should be and those incidents will become less and less as more and more of the new trains come into service. Were joined today by one of our directors and would like to welcome another one of our directors to come forward on behalf of the board. [applause] good morning, everyone. If there was ever a day to wear a bow tie, today is that day as a director. I couldnt be more proud and pleased to welcome these trains on to our streets. You know, the most exciting thing about it as a daily and judo rider, im awakened every day at about 5 30 in the morning by the sound of these trains going by my apartment so to hear that they will be lighter is going to be welcomed. Most importantly, though, i think were all just trying to get to work. Were all just trying to get to school. Reliably and in a time we can predict and move at the speed of commerce. And to really grow the Economic Vitality of this city. And these trains, the reliability of them in addition to the new great train smell that im so excited to experience, they are going to provide the reliability that so many of us depend on. If you are not a regular transit rider, you depend on these trains to keep our streets clear and moving. If we can just get those double parkers out of the way of the new trains, theyll move a lot faster as well. And were working on that, too. Im also really excited about the potential for the new capacity. These trains. I get on in the sunset and by the time we get to tend, theres not enough to let people on. We will be able to squeeze a lot more folks on there and there will be a whole lot less people on there told oh, theres a train right behind you. Right . And so looking forward to that. And seeing, again, us being able to deliver a Reliable Service that san franciscans can depend on. This wouldnt have happened without the leadership t great leadership of everyone thats been mentioned so far. Im not going to repeat all the names because there is a lot of other people to mention. Weve got our former chair of the m. T. A. , mr. Tom nolan, back here joining us. Couldnt keep him away from this event. 12 years of leadership on the board of directors. It is too bad senator scott weiner couldnt be here because he was such a wind in the sail of getting transportation victories and we need that kind of leadership for these hard fights. I really want to reemphasize the vision of this city and the residents of this city. We truly are a worldclass city. If that is not a testament to it, i dont know what is. So, thank you all for the vision of implementing this service and lets get this train on the road. Thank you. [applause] thank you, ed. I didnt see the former chair here. Now he is the former chair. I dont have to acknowledge him because he is not my boss anymore. [laughter] but i do want to give a special shoutout to tom nolan. Under his leadership of the board that we brought forward the central subway and brought forward this procurement and we would not be here but for not his leadership. Thank you for that. [applause] and so with all of the fire power that youve heard from represented here that put together the money, that put together the leadership, that authorized and approved all of this to happen, someone actually had to do the work. And that is where some might say the part really begins. Somebody had to execute on this promise that we made to our funders, to our policymakers, most importantly to our rider and to the public. The person who is at the tip of the spear for our agency, but even coordinating beyond our agency, with the fire department, police department, the Mayors Office on disabilities, the rest of the city family is our transit director whos made this project a passion of his for the last few years. And in terms of timing, as i mentioned in terms of being ahead of schedule, the process to get to where we are today typically would be on the order of four or five years. Because of john halles leadership. Were here closer to three years. Please join me in welcoming our director of transit, john halle. [applause] uh excuse me. Thank you, ed. Good morning, everyone. Let me start by making an official announcement. This is, in fact, the title to this car so the city of San Francisco now has an extra asset to add to its inventory. The good news is president breed, it has that new car smell. [laughter] so let me again thank everyone. But most importantly, as ed mentioned, this is a complex endeavor in a very complex system. I think we were able to assemble a group of people who where others may have found problems together with our partners from siemens and all the help from the transit team and people throughout the agency, this group really solved problems and that got us to where we are today in the time that we are. I do want to first make a special shoutout because this process was closely watched and monitored throughout the you may remember the first car arrived friday, january 13th. So in the last nine months, weve been closely monitored by the cpuc whos been our oversight agency, whos been available and taken rides with us, whos really helped to make a very cumbersome process easier understand and help us work through problems. Also want to note our own system safety folks. I can see them, who worked with us to get not only the documentation done, but to make sure that everything that you are going to see is the safest and most reliable car we can provide. Let me start, again, by saying when we started this process a few years back, it seems like we can break it into segments. It has been the three years has been on the one hand very fast moving and, on the other hand, recognizing the need to provide safer and more reliable transportation. Let me first acknowledge two people, trents wynne. [applause] who put who put together this complex anxietier, built the team and got us off to the right start. Mike ellis who cap add glorious mechanical career. Excuse me can. Here at the sfmta and is principally responsible for applying all the bad thing, all the Lessons Learned from the boeing cars to our new cars. And when the cars arrived, we needed an implementation team. [train noise] i wanted to acknowledge Janet Gallegos who got us home as the project manager. [applause] she worked tirely wes her team. Mike moda, who has been our chief engineer. [applause] and has worked with siemens to solve countless technical problems. It is not easy to design a complex vehicle and drop it in our system. But we were able to identify and address any concerns and issues. Doug lee, are you somewhere . And this was a group, and finally on the kind of fulltime dedicated team, i want to acknowledge manny enriques. [applause] manny is somewhere here. For the last nine mo fnzes he has been out overnight, virtually every night five, six, sometimes seven nights a week to help us hit this deadline. And hes probably inside because i realize at this point he is no longer used to sunlight. So [laughter] im sure he is glad that we will be getting these trains in service. But congratulations to all of them. And finally i do want to recognize some of the other people who contributed a lot of their time while they continued to do their daily responsibilities. Scott broder. I see lisa wallton from i. T. Whos worked with us in resolving system problems. Terry fahey with the track crew. Part of what was done was constant adjustment to fit a highly technical vehicle on to our system which has to accommodate b. C. C. S and brada cars. Not an easy test. Maintenance. Kept the system going while we drained a lot of key staff to work on the l. R. V. 4. So, it is for me an honest and straight forward sincere thank you. Job well done. One down and 267 to go. [applause] thank you, john. Again, a lot of folks to acknowledge. But our finance folks, our legal team, our procurement folks, our materials folks,