Welcome to APTA’s 2012 Legislative Conference! As we convene in Washington, DC—and our conversations focus on Congress and authorization—I find myself thinking increasingly about the challenges our industry has been facing, and how we are facing them—and rising above them.

Our legislative activities and outreach over the last month, in particular, have shown that APTA and the public transit industry are both strong and vocal: our voice was heard!

We who make up APTA rallied to show that we could effect change. That we could respond to the House of Representatives bill that would have eliminated public transportation funding in such a way that the bill is being rewritten!

That’s one big accomplishment. And we could not have done it without you, our members. It showed that we are the policy leader and voice for public transportation. It showed that we are indeed a thought leader.

And that’s just one of my three initiatives as APTA Chair. The other two? Agility and value.

Well, we certainly showed our agility to respond on a dime. To be timely and flexible. For APTA staff, it showed how we could disseminate critically needed information in a hurry. For you APTA members, it showed your agility in assessing the information we provided to you and using it to press the message that federal investment in public transit simply cannot be eliminated!

In short, my fellow APTA members—you did good.

But we can never rest on our laurels. We must continue to educate and advocate aggressively for public transportation.

To help you do that, APTA offers an array of resources that I think are highly valuable. These resources will help you stay informed, up to date on what’s happening with authorization bills, and they will help all of us to continue to exert our influence, especially on Capitol Hill. What kind of resources am I talking about? Well, they include:

* Legislative Alerts.
* Calls to action.
* Tool kits with templates for op-eds and letters to the editor.
* Conference calls.
* Webinars.
* Monographs.
* Ongoing stories in Passenger Transport about legislative activity.
* Press releases.
* Support—informational and in-person, when you testify.

I know how critical federal investment is to our industry, and I truly know the value of having all the information and data you need, literally, at your fingertips. Make a call, send an e-mail, write a text—APTA is there to help you, to support you, to cheer you on.

Because APTA members, Congress, the administration, our partners, and the public must be drawn to our association as their source of “big picture” thinking.

Conversely, we must use our collective voice to continue to advocate aggressively and to build momentum for Congress to pass a meaningful, robust, multi-year, multimodal surface transportation bill. I urge you while you’re here (and also when you return home) to contact your elected officials and make plans to visit them or their staff—and make the case for increased investment in public transportation.

APTA’s vision can and should serve as the basis for any discussion of public transportation—and we must continuously expand its already strong outreach to maintain APTA’s role in shaping the near, middle, and distant future of public transportation.

There is, as “they” say, no time like the present. So if you haven’t been very active in terms of reaching out to convey our message, then let me suggest that you start now. Our message as we move forward? “Public Transportation Takes You There—Public Transit Takes People to Work and Puts People to Work.”

One of the key points you can make is that investing in public transit is investing in business—and jobs—in the private sector. Because if there’s one message we’ve ALL gotten from this past election and the political conversations this year—it’s that job creation is paramount.

But that’s not our only message. We’re excited about our increasing ridership numbers. As more people choose to take public transportation, those same people are opting to stay with public transit.

And that helps drive our economy, enable people to save money, enhance our environmental efforts, dramatically reduce traffic congestion, and—reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

So let’s keep all your actions going, and let’s keep those three recommendations at the ready: value, agility, thought leader. That’s you, that’s me, that’s us, that’s APTA.