LAVTA honored as North America’s top transit agency

The Livermore Amador Valley Transit Authority (LAVTA) has been awarded the 2020 Outstanding Public Transportation System Achievement Award by the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) for systems providing four million or fewer passenger trips annually.

The annual award acknowledges excellence among public transportation providers in North America. In LAVTA’s 35-year history, this the first time it has received this honor.

In announcing the award, APTA Chair Nuria Fernandez said, “This is a prestigious and well-deserved honor for your organization. It also spotlights your outstanding leadership, working with your board, your team members and your community. Your success is a model that our industry can emulate.”

Agencies are evaluated by APTA’s Awards Committee based on a combination of qualitative and quantitative criteria. The qualitative criteria include safety, operations and maintenance, customer service, financial management, diversity and inclusion, marketing and community relations. Quantitative measures include ridership, cost effectiveness and road call data.

Livermore Vice Mayor Bob Woerner, currently LAVTA’s Board Chair, recognized the LAVTA staff and thanked the other members of the LAVTA Board of Directors.

“In the past three years, this agency comprised of a 14-person staff and a seven-member board of directors has been named Transit Agency of the Year in California by two different organizations and has now been selected as the top transit agency of our size in North America,” said Woerner. “These honors are truly a testament to the quality of our small staff and the effective collaboration between that staff and our board of directors. In the midst of the current pandemic, during which our employees are busy providing an essential service to the residents of our region, it is nice to be able to take a moment and reflect on all we have accomplished recently as an organization.”

Among the accomplishments which led to LAVTA receiving the award are:

• An increase in ridership of 12.1 percent over the two-year period from 2017 to 2019.
• The successful passage of a Student Mobility Initiative at Las Positas College (LPC) to fund unlimited access transit passes for all LPC students.
• Launching a Shared Autonomous Vehicle (SAV) project in proximity to the East Dublin/Pleasanton Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Station to help provide first- and last-mile connections with BART
• Serving as executive and administrative support for the Tri-Valley – San Joaquin Valley Regional Rail Authority (Valley Link), which held its first board meeting in January 2018.
• Partnering with the city of Livermore to relocate and rehabilitate the Southern Pacific Railroad’s historic train depot for use as LAVTA’s Livermore Transit Center sales and operations building.
• Initiating Go Dublin, an on-demand real-time mobility alternative for Dublin residents utilizing a unique partnership with Uber and Lyft.

LAVTA and the rest of this year’s award winners will be honored at an APTA Virtual Meeting in October and again in March at APTA’s annual TRANSform Conference.