Apta Sustainability Committee

APTA SUSTAINABILITY COMMITTEE

Monday, May 6, 2013, 5:45-7:00pm (ET)

J.W. Marriott Indianapolis

Indianapolis, IN

MINUTES

Attendees: Kevin Desmond (Chair), Susannah Kerr Adler (Vice-Chair), Lolalisa King, Barry Barker, Ellen Gustafson,Brendon Hemily, Donald Leidy, Ron Kilcoyne, Collette Ericsson, Joanne Maxwell, Ken Anderson, Pat Piras, J.W. Barrett Newton, Alma Haskell, Mike Allegra, Craig Bilderback, Erik Johanson, Sadie Carney, Andrew Stryker, Karen Jealous, Gary Prince, David Sunderman, Cris Liban, Meg Cederoth, Nicole DuPuis, Art Guzzetti, Rich Weaver, Kyle Bell.

Welcome and Introductions

Kevin Desmond and Susannah Kerr Adler welcomed Sustainability Committee members and visitors to the meeting. Attendees introduced themselves by name and organization.

Motion to approve minutes of August 7, 2012 meeting was advanced, seconded, and approved.

APTA Sustainability Commitment

Update on APTA Sustainability Commitment

An update was given on the APTA Sustainability Commitment by Erik Johanson, Larry Murphy, and Kyle Bell. There are currently 103 signatories – 60% agency and 40% business members. We have streamlined the process for reviewers and for applicants with two annual review periods, the first at the end of February and the second at the end of July. There is now an expanded template for reporting to the Commitment which has been well-received. This new structure and template makes the process flow easier and is scalable if we receive an increased number of applicants.

Issues during the review process have included the definition of and difference between action items and stretch goals, as well as specific issues on measurement and normalization of indicator metrics.

Communication and Next Steps for APTA Sustainability Commitment
Kevin thankedthe peer review team and suggested a periodic check-in on the progress of the Commitment signatories to see what progress has been. In the future, it would be good to see data has reported globally and compile results. We could communicate individual successes, but would be good to have aggregate successes once more are reporting.

APTA Sustainability Commitment Recognition Recipients

Kevin Desmond recognized three agencies that have achieved a recognition level in the Sustainability Commitment since last year’s Sustainability Workshop, as well as four pending applications to be announced at this year’s Workshop:

-Platinum: L.A. Metro

-Gold: Visual Marking Systems

-Bronze: The Rapid

-Pending: Hampton Roads Transit (Gold), King County Metro Transit (Gold), CDM Smith (Silver), Amtrak (Bronze)

Alliance to Save Energy Report on Energy Efficiency in the Transportation Sector

Art Guzzetti, APTA Vice President-Policy spoke briefly about the Alliance to Save Energy report quoted by the White House that highlights potential energy savings in the transportation sector.The transportation sector has the most potential for energy savings and public transportation has a very important role in achieving these savings. We should call attention to our sustainability.

Art Guzzetti also delivered news that L.A. Metro received ASE’s "Galaxy" Star of Energy Efficiency award, announced today, because they were able to prove their energy efficiency with solid numbers and congratulated Cris Liban of L.A. Metro on this achievement.

APTA Standards Working Groups on Sustainability and Urban Design

Both Urban Design and Sustainability Metrics working groups met on August 8, 2012 in Philadelphia and Urban Design also met in February 2013 in Austin, TX. The next meeting of both groups will be at the next Sustainability Workshop in San Francisco on July 31, 2013.

Sustainability Metrics

Erik Johanson spoke briefly on the work of the Transit Sustainability Metrics working group. The current work of the group is to expand the APTA Sustainability Commitment past environmental metrics into social and economic metrics. The group recently conducted a member survey of what is currently being reported. Dan Locke has also developed a robust and easy-to-use criteria air pollutant calculation tool.

It is planned to ready a white paper of survey results and a how-to for Dan Locke’s tool for presentation in San Francisco in July. This white paper will form the basis of our next round of standards documents. It remains to be decided whether this will be a formal recommended practice or a guidance document.

Urban Design

Ron Kilcoyne reported on the numerous work products in development by the Urban Design working group, including the Arts in Transit guide. Currently under development are products relating to parking management and transit facilities. A transit-ready development guide is one potential future product.

Urban design may have a session at the APTA Annual Meeting and would like to work with transit blogs such as Atlantic Cities to gain coverage for our work products.

APTA Sustainability and Public Transportation Workshop

Susannah Kerr Adler discussed the upcoming 9th Annual Sustainability and Public Transportation Workshop, to take place from July 28-30 in at the Westin St. Francis Hotel San Francisco. We are working with Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) and San Francisco MTA to fill in the details and plan several tours, which may include:

-Bicycle experience in Golden Gate Park;

-SF Public Utility Commission (PUC) Greasecycle and the SFMTA's biodiesel program coordination (tour and lectures with PUC);

-The City's composting program (tour of Recology's infrastructure);

-Commute options (city tour via as many modes as possible, liked together for a well planned loop of sight-seeing opportunities).

We also have aplanned sustainable communities tour of transit-oriented development (TOD) sites with BART.

Susannah noted that advance notice of the availability of AIA credits would encourage more involvement in the Workshop.

SustainabilityOutreach Plan

Kyle gave an overview of the draft Sustainability Outreach Plan. Kevin mentioned that the plan looks good and has come a long way. He further suggested that any input be sent by email.

Rich Weaver reminded the group that communications is key – working on how and when to plan media outreach is very important, together with agency and APTA Communications department. For future announcements, we will encourage visibility on APTA website and through other means.

For the redesigned APTA Sustainability page, Kevin suggested that we have Michael Melaniphy send out the web address to the full APTA membership to raise awareness of our work.

Meeting adjourned at 7:00pm.

Action Items: