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Having visited several U.S. cities over the past month with speaking engagements and other assignments, the one assignment that stands out the most was in Chicago where I helped organize the 23rd Annual Conference of the International Association of Transportation Regulators (IATR). The conference, which was well attended by government regulators, industry members and academics from around the world was a tremendous success all around. First, I am humbled that the IATR asked me to continue serving by re-electing me President. I look forward to building on the accomplishments of the past year well into the future. In our most challenging year to date, with the recession taking its toll on the fiscal ability of many government members’ ability to attend the conference, we actually increased conference attendance and organization membership expanding to continents beyond North America by welcoming Australia, Abu Dhabi, the Netherlands and Ireland, and achieved our most fiscally successfully IATR year ever. I delivered on my promise to use technology to improve membership benefits including the launch of our Webinar programs over the last year, the popular News Snippets weekly e-articles, and further growth of our website library of conference presentations and surveys and studies which now includes full video coverage our our conferences. I also promised that the IATR would become more involved on advocating for national issues by formulating the organization’s first legislative agenda and actually holding our first “Day on the Hill” in Washington, DC where we met with Congress’ Subcommittee on Highways and Transit as well as Congress Members Carolyn McCarthy and Michael McMahon’s offices. I was joined that day by D.C. Taxicab Commissioner Leon Swain, former House Virgin Islands Delegate Victor Frazer, and Atlanta Taxi Director Malachi Hull, and we advocated for the Green Taxis Act promoting clean air taxis, the ALERT Drivers’ Act discouraging the use of cell phones while driving, and discussed introducing new legislation that would allow all regulators around the country to obtain access to Federal criminal histories and conviction records from other states for taxi industry applicants. Moving forward, I also pledged this coming year to develop a national legislative agenda for Canada as well as to assist regulators from other countries in developing new agendas and enhancing current legislative agendas as needed.
The theme of the 2010 IATR conference was: “Regulating with a Purpose – Accessible, Safe and Sustainable Streets.” Focusing on the accomplishments of Chicago Commissioner Norma Reyes and her dedicated staff, including Shellie Riedle and Eve Jennings, we highlighted the sustainability and accessibility aspects of taxi service throughout the program. I also moderated an entire day exploring closed and open systems, medallion financing and franchise systems concluding with a lively debate between:
Left to right: NHTSA Administrator is joined by Chicago Consumer Affairs Commissioner Norma Reyes and IATR President Matthew Daus. Photo: Wim Faber. One new initiative and direction we have developed at the IATR is to forge academic and industry partnerships with other organizations, and to encourage the involvement of Universities and students in developing more scholarly research and integration of the for-hire ground transportation mode into broader transportation planning and development. To this end, IATR created two new membership categories for Academic Institutions and Students. In addition to facilitating a study on the efficacy of safety partitions and in-vehicle security cameras with the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, the IATR has also partnered with the Taxi Research Network, including Dr. Ray Mundy from the University of Missouri, Dr. James Cooper from Napier University in Scotland and Wim Faber from Brussels. This partnership resulted in the launch of a network in New York City in a Webinar event jointly sponsored by the City University of NY’s Transportation Research Center (Region 2) and the IATR. It was held at City College’s Grove School of Engineering. The event can be viewed by accessing the following link: http://www.utrc2.org/events/events.php?viewid=276. IATR has also partnered with the Responsible Hospitality Institute (RHI which is sponsoring a Webinar at which I will be speaking on November 16th along with government officials from Calgary in Alberta, Canada, and which will be moderated by RHI President and Founder Jim Peters. To register for this event please visit the following link: http://rhievents.org/webinar. We are already planning for our next conference which will take place in Toronto in 2011 where the theme will be “Training and Hospitality” focusing on topics ranging from Toronto’s successful Ambassador Driver Training Program, taxi enforcement officers, defensive driving, distracted driver, industry accessibility, sensitivity and customer service training, and the use of technology to enhance training as well as the effectiveness and integrity of licensing examinations. The relationship between regulators and tourism boards, as well as the positive impact that driver training programs and other regulatory initiatives have on the hospitality industry, will be explored. Thinking ahead of Toronto we will be off to Washington, DC for our 2012 conference just in time for the U.S. Presidential election season which will be a very exciting time, indeed.
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