Breed picks a new transit commissioner

San Francisco Mayor London Breed nominated

Amanda Eaken to a vacant seat on the Municipal Transportation Agency board of directors on Friday.

Eaken is an urban planner at the Natural Resources Defense Council, where she focuses on ways to curb transportation-related pollution.

She played a key role in forming and implementing the state’s 2008 Sustainable Communities Act, which provides funding and other incentives to develop emissionreduction plans.

In a statement announcing the nomination, Breed said Eaken’s expertise around transportation and land use “will bring a valuable perspective to the SFMTA Board of Directors as they work to improve transportation for all San Franciscans.”

If she is confirmed by the Board of Supervisors, Eaken would fill a seat on the SFMTA board vacated by former director Joël Ramos, who left the board in June to lead the agency’s Community Response Team.

Eaken would step into a leadership role at an agency rocked by a string of recent controversies.

Last month, SFMTA Director Ed Reiskin apologized to Breed after she sent him a scathing letter for service delays tied to the poorly managed closure of the Twin Peaks Tunnel. Breed also said she had serious concerns about insufficient background checks of SFMTA contractors. Last month, 51-year-old

Patrick Ricketts was struck and killed by a steel beam while working on the tunnel project. He was an employee of the main contractor, Shimmick Construction of Oakland. It was later found that Shimmick had been cited 39 times for safety violations by Cal/OSHA, but the company didn’t mention those violations when bidding on the contract. — Dominic Fracassa

Big and bright: The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission announced Friday that Salesforce Tower — the tallest office building west of the Mississippi River — is now being powered by 100 percent renewable energy delivered through the city’s CleanPowerSF program.

The announcement comes just over a year after Salesforce signed up two of its other office buildings — at 50 Fremont Center and 350 Mission St. — to the clean energy program.

CleanPowerSF’s electricity is generated from a mix of renewable sources and uses Pacific Gas & Electric infrastructure to transmit it to San Francisco customers. The SFPUC is slowly connecting the entire city to the CleanPowerSF option, but residents and businesses may sign up before they’re automatically enrolled.

The agency expects to have the entire city plugged into the program by July. About 108,000 San Francisco customers are already enrolled, the SFPUC said. — Dominic Fracassa