Transit
COMTO champions
Multi-Modal Transportation
2018 COMTO “Celebrating Women Who Move the Nation Award” winners join COMTO officials for a group photo at the conclusion of the ceremony.
By American DBE Staff
T
he Conference of Minority Transportation Officials (COMTO) has maintained its advocacy and leadership efforts to move the transportation industry forward, despite the lack of new legislation or investment in infrastructure from Congress and the Trump Administration in 2018. Just as it takes a rising tide to lift all boats, COMTO President Brad Mims understands that increasing diversity and inclusion in the industry must begin with increasing opportunities. Therefore, COMTO’s strategy has been to stay heavily involved in policy discussions and legislative activities important to the transportation industry, and to educate the COMTO membership on key initiatives needed to advance the industry. COMTO is one of more than 200 local and national organizations to send a letter to House and Senate appropriators in June 2018, urging them to continue rejecting the Trump administration’s proposed cuts to transit and passenger rail programs, and to continue the BUILD competitive grant program. BUILD stands for Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development,
and is a Transportation Discretionary Grants program that replaced the pre-existing Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grant program. BUILD Transportation grants are for investments in surface transportation infrastructure and are awarded on a competitive basis for projects that will have a significant local or regional impact. BUILD funding can support roads, bridges, transit, rail, ports or intermodal transportation. COMTO is also actively seeking to advance the creation of a DBE Program in the Federal Rail Administration. COMTO has worked on this initiative for several years and made progress during the Obama Administration; however, progress has slowed in the time since President Trump took office. “It’s been tough,” Mims said. “But we have to keep the discussion going and hopefully get some movement on getting that program started. There are a lot of dollars being spent on rail, and we need to be a part of it.”
Summer 2018 //
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