During the 2011 Executive Committee retreat in Savannah, GA, the APTA Executive Committee named Phillip A. Washington, general manager of Denver’s Regional Transportation District (RTD), and Thomas F. Prendergast, president of MTA New York City Transit (NYC Transit), as members-at-large of the committee.

They succeed Jay H. Walder, who stepped down Oct. 21 as chairman and chief executive officer of the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) and will become chief executive officer and a member of the board of directors of the MTR Corporation in Hong Kong on Jan. 1, 2012, and James Weinstein, executive director of New Jersey Transit Corporation (NJ Transit), who stepped down from the executive committee following the election of NJ Transit board member Flora Castillo as vice chair.

RTD named Washington its general manager in December 2009, a position he held on an interim basis for the previous six months. Prior to that, he was the agency’s assistant general manager of administration for nearly 10 years.

Washington earlier served 24 years in the U.S. Army, retiring with the rank of command sergeant major (E-9)—the highest non-commissioned officer rank an enlisted person can achieve.

Prendergast was a former president of MTA Long Island Rail Road and senior vice president of subways with NYC Transit before assuming his current post in 2009. He has more than 30 years of transportation experience, beginning with the Chicago Transit Authority and working at the Federal Transit Administration before originally joining the New York City agency in 1983. He worked in the private sector from 2000 to 2008, then became chief executive officer of the South Coast British Columbia Transportation Authority (TransLink) in Vancouver, BC, before returning to NYC Transit.

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