Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) will join other congressional leaders in addressing APTA’s 2021 virtual Legislative Conference, May 18. Sen. Cantwell serves as as chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, overseeing issues of vital importance to the public transportation industry.

 

The virtual Legislative Conference will educate attendees on important federal legislation and policy initiatives and offers an opportunity for participants to shape the industry’s positions and federal advocacy agenda. The event includes a day of live educational sessions, followed by a FREE virtual Fly-In day on May 19.

 

APTA is calling for abstracts for its 2021 APTATech conference and Sustainability & Multimodal Planning Workshop, the association’s first in-person events since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
 
APTATech conference educational topic areas include best practices in revenue management and audits; connected and autonomous vehicle technologies; cybersecurity; fare risk / combatting fare evasion; mobile ticketing / mobile payments; mobility, equity and accessibility; open and contactless fare payment; safety & security technologies; transit & paratransit ITS applications; unbanked / underbanked populations and more. Abstracts are due to APTA by June 4, with decision notifications announced later that month. Learn more and submit abstracts here.
 
Sustainability & Multimodal Planning Workshop educational topic areas include climate action planning, operations planning post-COVID, customer engagement, resilient community design, fares, collaboration, sustainable operations frameworks and implementation, reimagining the transit network during an uncertain time, electric buses / zero emission fleet issues and more. Abstracts are due to APTA by June 11, with decision notifications announced in July. Learn more and submit abstracts here.

 

 

John Vincent Terango, GCRTA
 
John Vincent Terango, a long-time public transportation advocate, died April 15. He was 85. Terango served as general manager of the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (GCRTA) from the 1970s to 1990s.
 
While serving as assistant city manager for Cleveland Heights, Terango received a fellowship from Case Western Reserve University. His thesis outlined a Cleveland Urban Planning model that was completed in 1983 and is still in use today. Later, he was offered a position to essentially invent paratransit. Terango developed, proposed and implemented the entire program in one year for all of Cuyahoga County, OH. Twenty years later, the Americans With Disabilities Act modeled the national paratransit service requirements on his program.
 
Among his other key achievements, Terango created a radial hub model connecting university students to the city center, with the ability to transfer and gain access to the suburban areas of the region. This model was used nationally and shared by APTA as a best practice.
 
Throughout his lifetime, Terango looked for creative opportunities that would have a long-lasting impact on the public transportation industry. He worked at Orion Bus, where he developed marketing for new, low-floor buses that would better serve the public; then later at Orbital Sciences, where he worked on business development, helping to shape the organization to better understand transit and fusing high-quality advanced technology with the industry.
 
Terango won numerous professional and civic awards and was most proud of the Minority and Women Advancement Award by APTA, the Design Award for the Shaker Heights Square Transit Development and Leadership Cleveland Individual of Distinction recognition. Terango served on the APTA Board of Directors from 1984-1987.

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APTA’s webinars are archived and available to the public transit industry. Please click here to access APTA’s library of recordings and videos to keep informed during the COVID-19 pandemic.