TRANSPORTATION
CDTA a best-of winner
Transit company wins mass transit honors as hundreds cheer
By Brian Nearing
Capital District Transportation Authority employees and retirees cheer Tuesday during ceremonies announcing that CDTA has been named best midsize transit company in North America.
Dignitaries at the ceremony Tuesday in Albany announcing CDTA as best midsize transit company in North America include David M. Stackrow, CDTA board chairman, left; Mark Benson, University at Albany director of athletics; Mark Eagan, CEO, Capital Region Chamber of Commerce; Mary Cheeks, general manager, Rivers Casino & Resort Schenectady; and Carm Basile, CDTA chief executive officer.
Albany
It felt like a pep rally Tuesday at the UAlbany football field, where the Capital District Transportation Authority celebrated being named one of North America’s best mass transit systems by an industry group.
“This is a once in a generation honor,” said CEO Carm Basil, as a crowd of several hundred past and present authority workers, local officials and well-wishers waved large blue foam fingers, shook pom-poms, and tried to catch T-shirts being shot out of an air cannon.
On the field, cheerleaders from Green Island-based Cheer Intensity chanted and performed acrobatic routines.
All the hoopla was to mark CDTA winning an award from the American Public Transit Association as the best midsize transit company in North America.
The award puts the Capital Region in the company of such past winners as transit companies in Jacksonville, Fla.; Springfield, Ore.; Grand Rapids, Mich.; Madison, Wis.; El Paso, Texas; and Tampa, Fla.
APTA Acting President Richard White in a statement praised CTDA for its “successful community partnerships that have led to record ridership over the last several years.”
CDTA was among 62 companies eligible in the midsized class, which covers systems with more than four million passenger trips a year, but fewer than 20 million.
CDTA has bucked a national trend of declining ridership in recent years. In 2014, people took more 16.4 million trips on its buses, which cover the four-county Capital Region. That grew to nearly 16.9 million trips in 2015 and again to 17.1 million in 2016.
In contrast, national mass transit ridership dropped by nearly 4 percent in 2015 and another 5.7 percent in 2016, according to APTA figures.
CDTA Board Chairman David Stackrow credited the growth to new services, like a bike-share program, express service along the busy Route 5 corridor and new smartcard and mobile payment apps.
The APTA award was based on safety, operations and maintenance, access, customer service, financial management, sustainability, workforce development, attendance and employee costs, minority and women advancement, marketing and community relations.
• bnearing@timesunion.com • 518-454-5094 • @Bnearing10