It is my delight to welcome you to APTA – both the virtual APTA here and the "organizational" APTA we all belong to.

I’m sure you are familiar with the vast amount of information you can retrieve from the web site alone—the latest legislative alerts, current and past issues of Passenger Transport and Passenger Transport EXPRESS, breaking industry news, current research and survey results, committee listings, advocacy campaigns—and much, much more.

We update this web site daily, but that is only a small part of the work APTA performs.

Moving forward we will be concentrating on three major areas of focus: the value of an APTA membership, using even more technology and communications vehicles to keep APTA organizationally agile, and positioning APTA as the policy leader and innovator in our industry. Or, in other words, the thought leader. APTA members, Congress, the administration, our partners, and the public must be drawn to APTA as their source of “big picture” thinking.

So, it is both our pleasure and our mission to continue keeping you informed, to continue being the voice of the public information industry. It is my particular goal as Chair to find ways to ensure that we hear from more of you directly—that you make your individual voices heard—and that each of you find new ways to take advantage of the many benefits and resources APTA provides.

Sincerely,

Gary C. Thomas