September 14, 2016

On September 12 the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) announced its new Executive Committee and new members of the Board of Directors. Among the many industry leaders selected to be a part of APTA’s Committee and Board (see the full list here) was Eno Board of Advisors member, Doran Barnes and Eno Board of Directors member, Keith Parker. Barnes will serve as Chair of APTA’s Executive Committee and Parker was elected to APTA’s Board of Directors.

Barnes currently serves as Executive Director of Foothill Transit in Southern California. He leads a transit agency that is actually made up of three independent contractors all working together. Prior to joining Foothill, Barnes worked with Ernst & Young as part of their transit-consulting group and with Monterey Salinas Transit as their director of planning.

While Foothill Transit may have started out as an “experiment” the agency has done very well over the years since Barnes has been at the helm. Foothill plans to have an all-electric bus fleet by 2030 and in 2010 was actually the first transit agency to add an electric bus to its fleet. Just this past week, Barnes confirmed that the agency had recently surpassed one million miles of revenue service with their electric buses.

Parker currently serves as the General Manager and Chief Executive Officer of the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) the nation’s 9th largest transit system. Prior to joining MARTA, he served as CEO for transit systems in San Antonio, Texas (the nation’s 7th largest city) and Charlotte, North Carolina.

Since taking the helm at MARTA in 2012, Parker has been working hard to keep the transit agency at the cutting edge of the industry. Instead of resisting the change that companies like Uber and Lyft are bringing to the industry, MARTA has embraced both services. In July of last year the agency announced a pilot partnership with Uber and added free Wi-Fi to all its buses in one fell swoop (the pilot with Uber has since ended). This past August the agency announced another partnership with Lyft.

Eno President and CEO, Robert Puentes said, “We are very proud to see that APTA has elected Doran and Keith. Both men are excellent advocates of public transit and are making great strides at their respective agencies. I have no doubt that they will have a positive effect in their new positions with APTA’s Board and Executive Committee.”