July 24, 2015
APTA MEMBER PROFILE
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Meet Donna P. McNamee!

Donna P. McNamee
Trustee
Laketran
Painesville, OH
Member, APTA Executive Committee; vice chair, Transit Board Members ADA Subcommittee; member, Transit Board Members, Legislative and Access committees

Please describe your agency's scope.

Laketran transports approximately 3,000 people, six days a week, via six fixed routes, commuter express, and Dial-a-Ride—its door-to-door paratransit and demand-response service, with the latter available throughout our 228-square-mile county. Laketran also plays an integral role in the county emergency management agency.

How long have you been involved in public transportation?

I was first appointed to the Laketran Board of Trustees in February 2001. Following my run for Ohio State Senate in 2000, one of our county commissioners, knowing of my 20-year advocacy efforts on behalf of people with disabilities, invited me to send in an application for the Laketran board. He felt it would be a great “marriage” between my advocacy on behalf of the disability community and my business background. He was so right! One APTA conference—the Legislative was my first in 2002—I was beyond hooked!

Please describe your involvement with APTA and note what’s rewarding about it.

Laketran has been an APTA member for more than 35 years. Absolutely the most rewarding factor is the opportunity to meet people involved in public transit all across the U. S. and Canada and their willingness to share their knowledge, challenges and successes.

APTA is about professional development and advocacy, both of which are very important to me professionally. In terms of professional development, being able to interact with all sorts of people with various professional backgrounds and from various regions has been a personal growing experience as well as a way to broaden my knowledge of the industry in general and on issues at various transit systems specifically.

As for advocacy, I’ve been involved in ­public transportation issues from the time I began advocating for the needs of people with disabilities when the ADA was little more than one of hundreds of bills before Congress in the late 1980s. That’s when I was telling the disability community’s story—my story!—to help legislators understand that ADA is our civil rights legislation and providing examples of how my community, and me personally, were unable to connect to or feel a part of the American Dream. It became my passion.

My involvement with APTA has been beyond rewarding. I have served on ­several committees, I chaired (and created) the Transit Board Members Committee ADA Subcommittee.

As chair of the ADA subcommittee (and now vice chair under Doug Lecato’s able leadership), it has been tremendously rewarding for me to watch transit board members’ knowledge and understanding of the ADA grow.

As chair of APTA’s ADA subcommittee and coincidentally chair of the Easter Seals Project Action (ESPA) National Steering Committee, I spearheaded the joint development of a book on the ADA specifically for transit board members, ADA Essentials for Transit Board Members, published jointly by APTA and ESPA in 2010. [Find it at the APTA Bookstore.] Another noteworthy reward was having Laketran recognized by APTA and receiving the Outstanding Achievement Award for a small system in 2000 and 2005.

What have you found to be the most valuable APTA benefit and why?

Frankly, over the course of my 14-year association with APTA, everything I have encountered has been a valuable resource and benefit and helped me to grow into my role as a transit board member.

But if I had to pick just one thing to encourage other board members to get involved, it would be to tell them to go to conferences and join committees. I would tell them that the ability to interact with transit board members across the country—to learn from each other—is tremendously helpful. I must say, this is really the most rewarding aspect of our entire industry: the willingness to share information and ideas to help foster the growth and development of public transit nationwide.

What would readers be surprised to learn about your agency?

Laketran primarily evolved from health and human service transportation. Founded in 1974, Laketran started out with one fixed route and adopted the existing health and human service transportation network, which was then supported by a “patchwork quilt” of grant funding.

By the late 1980s, that funding was drying up, yet the need for transport of seniors and people with disabilities was rapidly growing. In 1988, after many ­unsuccessful attempts to pass a referendum, voters finally passed a one-quarter of 1 percent sales tax levy. Laketran has remained true to its original mission to ­primarily serve seniors and people with disabilities by consistently committing two-thirds of its operating budget to serve paratransit and demand-response customers, who represent one-third of our ridership. Laketran’s passenger focus and its operating budget distribution figures are the two aspects of our service model that most surprise others in the industry.
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