 It's really exciting day as we announce the launch of Columbia's bike share program with the region, making our city more walkable, bikeable, and overall easier to get around. It's part of our overarching efforts to make this city a place where people can live, work, play, prosper, and making us a 21st century city, a multimodal city, where we'll track and retain the very best and brightest residents of all ages and experiences. The bike share program will not only expand our residents' options and how they'd like to maneuver the streets of Columbia, but will also serve as a mode of alternative transportation that is environmentally friendly, sustainable, and moves us closer to our goal of being 100 percent clean energy by 2036. Whether you're commuting to work, riding to class, or wanting to avoid having to find a parking spot on the way to lunch, the bikes will give us all a quick and even fun way to get around from point A to points B and C and D and yes, as it starts cooling down over the next several months, which I'm sure will make the experience a whole lot more enjoyable for each and every one of us. A partner in this project, but we Jen is a Canadian company with bike share programs across the country and around the world, even in cities across the South like Raleigh and in Birmingham, Alabama, but we Jen is going to truly enhance our connectivity across the city and hopefully will even connect the Midlands as we look to expand beyond the river. Columbia has earned national recognition for its efforts to improve bike ability among residents, including being named a bronze level, bike friendly community three times by the League of American Bicycles. The University of South Carolina has also been designated the bronze level bike friendly university and with the help and coordination with groups like the bike pedestrian advisory committee, our leadership of the B pack here with us today, Columbia is eager to expand the opportunities for bikes and pedestrians with more bike lanes, more programming and more inclusive events. This effort would not be possible without fantastic partners like Blue Cross, Blue Shield of South Carolina, who's the primary sponsor for the bike share pro program through partnership with the region. This is yet another initiative that we're able to accomplish through public private partnerships and we couldn't be more glad to have such a wonderful benevolent company like Blue Cross harbored here in our city. We look forward to additional sponsors being added in the new near future. I didn't want to touch on a few more points. I'm going to pass the microphone to our Mayor Pro Tem Tamika Isaac Devine. Currently the city has three miles of bike boulevards, one mile of Vista Greenway open, two blocks of the Intervista Trail open, five miles of share roads, nine miles of bike lanes, 17 miles of shared youth pass, shared youth pass. We currently have 97 high visibility crosswalks in the city, which increase crosswalk visibility at nighttime. We have six bike corrals within the community and certainly the fantastic work folks behind me have done in hosting the Open Streets events on Divine Street, the first one in April of last year. And certainly last year we also hosted that very first South Carolina Mayor's Bike Summit. If you just go a few blocks down on Green Street, we have the very first tabletop pedestrian intersection in the state of South Carolina. We're making some steps forward primarily because of the men and women standing behind me and several of you standing in front of me. We've only just begun. What this can mean not just in terms of leisure or even health and wellness for the city, but in terms of addressing some significant equity concerns in our community cannot be understated. This is important. This is every once in a while you get to take some baby steps. And frequently you get to take a big leap forward. Today is a big leap forward because of the incredible men and women standing behind me and because of the benevolence of Blue Cross, Blue Shield of South Carolina. It's an exciting day. I want to pass the microphone to my friend, the mayor pro tem of the city of Columbia who long before many or any I would say of our city council people were even thinking about focusing on creating a multi-modal bike friendly pedestrian friendly city led the way in helping establish the B pack and continue to be an advocate for these efforts and will continue to in many years to come. My friend, the mayor pro tem Tamika, Isaac divine. Thank you so much, Mr. Mayor. And thank you so much for your leadership. Mayor Benjamin when he was elected and took office, one of the first things he did was make sure that we started on the path of inclusivity as far as bicycle and pedestrian friendliness. And as he mentioned, this is a huge leap forward for our city. I want to thank Norwegian for their partnership. We went through a strenuous process. I do want to say this. No, you've heard us talk about the bike share for a while. And the reason is we wanted to make sure that we had a company and a provider that could really get us to where we needed to be. And so through a great process with a lot of great respondents, Norwegian, a Canadian company was chosen and their partner core logistics are going to be providing the bike share to our community. But also Blue Cross, I can't echo the mayor's comments enough how thankful we are for Blue Cross and their partnership. Not just through the bike share, but through a lot of the health initiatives that we're doing in the city. And I think this certainly is a testament to their commitment to this community and to the health and well-being of all of our citizens. Bike share program, I'm so excited about this. It seems like sometimes in government things take a while. But when you get to the point where you can stand here and see something, an idea come to fruition, it is so important. Bike share literally is going to be public transportation on your schedule. You can walk to a station, you can choose a bike, you can go for a ride, and then return it. One of the things that we've noticed here in the city is, and sometimes you get to the point where there's the chicken or the egg. Some people say, well, there's not enough bikers. And then you hear, well, people aren't biking because they don't have access to biking. And so this is certainly our opportunity to make sure that people have not only the bike boulevards and the infrastructure necessary, but also the bike and equipment to take a leisure ride, to have transportation to work, to play, and whatever is in your schedule. The bike share is a relatively inexpensive and quick infrastructure extension to the city's public transportation system, allowing it to serve as a convenient last mile connector and function to transit by bike. Bike share also enhances the city's image. It creates jobs, provides additional access to local businesses and jobs, provides a brand development for our local businesses, and can assist with reducing the transportation costs of households throughout our community. We'll be unveiling this in two phases. Phase one of the project will include 15 stations and hubs with 135 bikes. And phase two will expand the program to 25 stations and hubs in 225 bikes. The plan is to have bike share stations in many locations throughout the city with an option to set up temporary stations to support special events taking place throughout our great city, like famously hot New Year, or people having things on Main Street. The system can also be expanded beyond phase two to allow for other partners to work with the city and Norwegian to identify additional locations. And this could be a regional project. We are hoping to have partners regionally come on to this so that you can pick up a bike in downtown Columbia and you can go anywhere within our region in the Midlands area. Of course, we want to remind our cyclists of safety, and that's one of the things that we want to make sure as we enhance our bicycle pedestrian friendliness throughout our city, we enhance our infrastructure. We want to make it easier for people to pick up a bike and ride, but we also want to remind people of safety. We want bicyclists to choose the most bike friendly route and we see are going to be expanding our infrastructure to that end. We also want to make sure that we're inspecting the bikes and the tires and we've got BPAC who will be doing education for bicyclists as well. And then we also want to make sure that our drivers and our bicycles are sharing the road. It was exciting to wake up this morning and think about the fact that we're unveiling this, but it also was sobering as many of us woke up to the news that we had a bicyclist hit yesterday. And so it reminds us that as we expand this infrastructure in our city, we as a community, as we introduce the bike share, but also introduce our infrastructure, we have a long way to go to encouraging bicyclists and drivers to share the road. But hopefully we'll get some more drivers out of the cars into taking advantage of bicycling and having these bike share will help make that easier for them. Lastly, I just want to thank BPAC for their staunch support of bicycle friendliness throughout the city, making sure that we're not only are we providing the infrastructure, but we're having events and things that will encourage bicycling throughout our city. But we're also keeping and holding us accountable to providing the infrastructure and support necessary to expand bicycling throughout the city of Columbia. This is a very important day for us. Like the mayor said, it is a leap forward, but it's just one part of our overall bicycle, pedestrian, master plan. We have a lot more things that we need to do in the city of Columbia, and we're looking forward to having more constituents and citizens joining us and providing not only education, but amenities that will support a bicycle friendly community.