MTC Is Getting Social

There are more ways than ever before to keep in touch with MTC, and find out about workshops, new publications, funding opportunities, service upgrades, special promotions and the like. Now you can follow us on Facebook and Twitter and share your favorite finds with friends, view recent videos on YouTube, and subscribe to our daily headline service, alerts about press releases and several other fresh information streams via RSS Feeds and GovDelivery e-mail alerts (look for the little red subscription envelope on our home page). These social media tools offer news and information not only from MTC, but also from our sister agency, the Bay Area Toll Authority (BATA), which oversees and finances the region's seven state-owned toll bridges.

And that's not all. MTC's customer service projects (511 traveler information service, Clipper^SM transit fare card and FasTrak® electronic toll collection) also participate in social media. See a list of all our social media streams at www.mtc.ca.gov/links -- get on board, and tell your friends and colleagues.

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Put Clipper^SM and FasTrak® on Your Holiday Shopping List

Here's a holiday idea that's "green" and can appeal to any local resident on your gift list: a Clipper card. Give your friends and family the impetus to drive less and ride transit more in 2011, with Clipper. You can put as much or as little starting value on the card as you like, from $2 to $250, and everything in between, or load it with a monthly pass. Accepted by AC Transit, BART, S.F. Muni, Golden Gate Transit Buses and Ferries, and Caltrain, along with the Dumbarton Express, the card can be obtained online at clippercard.com, at the transit kiosk at the Embarcadero BART/Muni station in San Francisco, the Bay Crossings store at the S.F. Ferry Building, Clipper ticket vending machines in S.F. Muni Metro stations, at select Walgreens stores and a number of other retail vendors (listed on the clippercard.com site). And if you haven't gone electronic yet for your transit and toll payments, don't forget to add Clipper to your own wish list, along with a FasTrak transponder for electronic toll collection. FasTrak can be used to pay tolls on all eight of the region's bridges, plus the new Express Lane along Interstate 680. You can sign up for FasTrak online at bayareafastrak.org or, to take advantage of bonus offers, pick up a tag at select Walgreens, Costco or Safeway stores.

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Clipper Card Goes Multilingual While Use Skyrockets

Clipper is reaching out to the Chinese community with a new tag line, pronounced Lu Lu Tong, and meaning "The Go Everywhere Card." MTC co-hosted an event with BART on October 7, 2010, to introduce the card to San Francisco's large Chinese-speaking community. In other Clipper developments, November 1 marked the transition of the monthly Muni/BART A-Pass -- good for unlimited rides on BART and Muni within San Francisco -- from a paper ticket to a Clipper-only pass. Clipper usage has been rising steadily, with the number of weekday boardings approaching 300,000 the first week of November, nearly a 30 percent increase over the prior week, and more than a 200 percent increase from early September. Those numbers should continue to grow as SamTrans begins accepting Clipper in mid-December.

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This aerial photo shows all four tower sections in place.  © 2010 Barrie Rokeach

While the Bay Area's attention was focused on the San Francisco Giants' stellar performance in the playoffs and the World Series in late October, another high-stakes event was going on over the Bay: the installation of the second tier of legs for the tower holding up the new East Span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. Over the course of several days, crews lifted four 617-ton tower legs, a painstaking process that can take a full day for each leg. The signature tower is now 272 feet tall, a little more than halfway to its ultimate height.

See more images on our East Span photo page. And for a great view of the action, try out one of the free outdoor telescopes at the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley.

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Several types of state-of-the art electric vehicles were showcased at the climate grants press event.

Coming to Bay Area neighborhoods soon: public bike-sharing stations, much like the ones in Denver, Chicago, Washington D.C. and Montreal, among other cities on this continent, as well as in cities around the globe, including London, Paris and Barcelona. At its October monthly meeting, MTC awarded a $4 million grant to implement a pilot bike-sharing program with 1,000 bikes at 100 kiosks to be located in San Francisco, down the Peninsula and in Santa Clara County (San Jose, Palo Alto and Mountain View). Bike-sharing addresses first- and last-mile connections to transit, and can be a powerful tool in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. MTC also approved nearly $14 million for a series of projects demonstrating the power of electric vehicles to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, including a battery-swap program that will allow electric taxis to go the distance. In all, MTC distributed $33 million to 13 innovative climate programs. Read more on our site.

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A young client of the Cycles of Change program learns to maintain her bike. Photo: Noah Berger

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