New Jersey Transit Corporation (NJ Transit) hosted 90 policy makers and staff at APTA’s annual Transit Board Members Seminar and Board Support Employee Development Workshop, July 23-26 at the Hyatt Regency Jersey City.

Speakers addressed a variety of subjects including safety and security, mobility management, transit-oriented development, customer service, and workforce development.

With the approach of the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, conference participants considered safety and security issues as they visited the World Trade Center site and participated in a session, “The Board Member’s Role in System Safety and Security.” Speakers for the session were National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Chairman Deborah Hersman; international terrorism and security expert Brian Michael Jenkins, director of the Mineta Transportation Institute’s (MTI) National Transportation Security Center; and Christopher Trucillo, NJ Transit’s chief of police, who was at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey on 9/11. The moderator was Mort Downey, former deputy secretary of transportation; chair of the Safety and Security Committee of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) Board of Directors; and chair of the MTI Board of Directors.

The speakers discussed the important oversight role of the board, agreeing that safety and security are core responsibilities for all employees, and emphasized an organization’s safety and security culture.

Hersman presented a series of questions regarding the board’s role:
* Was the board more focused on things other than safety?
* Was there a constantly evolving safety structure?
* Did the board measure safety and keep track of it?
* Was safety part of the board’s mission statement?

“Your role is to set the tone for safety, first,” she said. “Second, ask the questions, make people uncomfortable. Third, own your responsibility, be vulnerable.”

Jenkins discussed prevention, deterrents, and facilitating emergency response. “When a plane goes down,” he said, “we cannot do much to mitigate, so we pile up the security at the front end. We cannot do that in surface transportation. We know that the aviation security model is not going to work with surface transportation.”

He noted that the daily screening process of two million U.S. boarding airline passengers requires 45,000 employees; with 10 to 20 million passengers on surface transportation, hundreds of thousands of screeners would be needed. Transit is looking for low-cost solutions, Jenkins also said, because “we cannot implement costly measures. And they must be sustainable; what we put in will be with us for a long time.”

He recommended random passenger screening and advised board members to start now—before an incident occurs—rather than trying to design, implement, and operate a new program all at once.

Judy Telge, a member of the Corpus Christi Regional Transportation Authority Board of Directors, moderated a panel on mobility management. Panelists were Ron Barnes, APTA’s new Mobility Management Committee chair and senior advisor, Steer Davies Gleave North America; Westat senior study director Jon Burkhardt; and Michael Sanders, transit administrator, Connecticut DOT.

Barnes cited four aspects of mobility management: providing more services; integrating land use and transportation in a more cooperative way; providing service from a person-centered approach; and moving toward one system for all by integrating all transportation services.  Burkhardt noted: “It used to be you ran what you owned, but do you know how a FedEx package gets to you? Any way it can. It could be on a UPS or USPS plane. We need multimodal partnerships for trips to be taken.”

A session focusing on transit-oriented development in New Jersey, Virginia, and Louisiana featured Tom Schulze, senior director of capital planning, NJ Transit; Christopher Zimmerman, chairman, Arlington County Board; and Justin Augustine III, chief executive officer, New Orleans Regional Transit Authority. Jeff Boothe, a partner at Holland & Knight, LLP, presented an overview of federal resources and local decisions. That session, titled “Urban Development & Public Transportation,” was moderated by Rosa Navejar, vice chair of the Fort Worth Transportation Authority.

Other sessions included an interactive exercise testing styles of communication, led by board members and clerks of the board; discussions of legislative issues; workforce development and employee relations; and new paradigms that take a forward look at business models, revenue sources, and technologies.

The seminar opened with a session where board chairs discussed their roles and paths to becoming chair, moderated by Alison Hewitt, chair of the APTA Transit Board Members Committee and a member of the APTA Executive Committee. The closing session, which paired board chairs with their chief executives as they discussed aspects of their professional relationships, was chaired by Flora M. Castillo, CHIE, an NJ Transit board member.

NJ Transit Executive Director James Weinstein, also a member of APTA’s Executive Committee, outlined recent actions related to customer service, based on metrics. He added that quarterly rider satisfaction survey findings will be linked to goals in the future.

APTA’s Board Support Subcommittee, chaired by Rhodetta Seward, executive services director of Intercity Transit in Olympia, WA, continued its strong professional development program during this year’s Board Support Employee Development Workshop. The planning committee, co-chaired by Robin Crothers of The Rapid in Grand Rapids, MI, and Necola Pierce of WMATA, developed the workshop’s program for 30 board support professionals, including several first-time attendees.

The workshop focused on the critical role of communication in fostering productive relationships between staff and transit board members to enable them to carry out their day-to-day responsibilities. With the overall theme, “A Healthier and More Successful YOU,” facilitator Tami C. Gaines, principal, Sage Enterprises LLC, Montclair, NJ, addressed leadership styles; how to manage ups and downs; practicing self-leadership; developing and sustaining strong communication skills; and identifying specific sources of stress and strategies to help maintain work and career balance while increasing productivity.

As is the tradition for the workshop, attendees toured the host agency’s board room and participated in a discussion of best practices. The session also included a board portal demonstration, video of a board meeting, tours, and an interactive discussion on preparing the board’s agenda.

Michael Sanders speaks during the “Mobility Management for the 21st Century” session at the 2011 APTA Transit Board Members Seminar & Board Support Employee Development Workshop.	Speaking on safety and security concerns for public transit board members are, from left, Brian Michael Jenkins, Christopher Trucillo, presiding officer Crystal Lyons, Deborah Hersman, and Mort Downey.