Hello Members and Friends of the Major Cities Committee,
TRB is around the corner, so here are some updates to make sure you're ready with information on what our committee is up to (and a travel advisory):
1. Committee activities
We have the agenda and committee-sponsored sessions on the attached flyer. These are also available on the website (
sessions,
agenda,
calendar), and we'll have the
Twitter feed up and running to give live updates and session reminders.Our committee meeting is
Tuesday morning, 8am-noon in Liberty M (M4) in the Marriott.
If anyone is interested in helping me take notes during the meeting, please let me know! And if you are interested in helping with some tweeting of activities during TRB generally, let me know as well (Matt Kroneberger will be coordinating that from afar).
New this year, a subcommittee on Transportation Equity is getting started and as a co-sponsor of that subcommittee, it would be great to have folks from our committee attend. The meeting is on Tuesday evening at 6pm and details are included with our session information.
2. Travel advisory
For those that are flying into Reagan National Airport (DCA), please be warned that Metrorail is not running trains from the airport into DC this weekend. There will be express bus service to L'Enfant Plaza available, but since DCA is also doing
major work on its roadways, things have tended to move slowly for buses and rideshare/taxi vehicles. And... it's supposed to snow Saturday into Sunday and that tends to make a mess of things here, particularly since this may be our first real snow of the season (I highly recommend following
Capital Weather Gang for nuanced updates and geeky model discussions). Not sure what impact, if any, the shutdown has had on airport traffic.
3. Other events
Lastly, for the transit data-loving among us, sharing some information on a unofficial TRB event (not TRB sponsored, but at the Marriott Marquis):
Are you a transit agency looking for inexpensive ways to
provide better information to your riders? Or are you a developer or academic
looking for a platform on which to code rider information tools? Have you
always wanted to know more about open-source coded transit tools like trip
planners and real-time information systems? Two of the main open-source transit
software groups, OneBusAway and OpenTripPlanner are teaming up to create more
of a community around open-source software, open data initiatives, and data
standards like GTFS. We’d love to have you come learn more about the projects
if you are interested.
The meeting is Sunday, January 13 from 11 am to 3 pm at TRB.
There is an Eventbrite here with more information:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/open-source-public-transit-software-onebusaway-opentripplanner-at-trbam-2019-tickets-52847649743
Safe travels and I look forward to seeing some of you next week!
Stephanie, your friendly communications coordinator
