News

RTA members and partners,

We are just over two months away from what may be our greatest regional leadership tour as an organization, and our most important as a region.

RTA tour honorary co-chairs Mary-Ann Baldwin, Mayor of Raleigh; J. Eric Boyette, NCDOT Secretary of Transportation; and RTA chair-elect Harold Hicks with RTI International look forward to welcoming business, elected, and transportation leaders from across our extended region and beyond to the South Florida area in late January.

The RTA Regional Leadership Tour to South Florida, presented by GoTriangle and the NC Railroad Company, will be held from January 26-28, 2022. The tour creates a wonderful opportunity for both the public and private sectors to demonstrate a shared commitment to learning together and to advancing new multimodal options and ideas for the Research Triangle region and for North Carolina.

Attendees will experience a series of briefings and field visits on a variety of focus areas including commuter and intercity passenger rail, bus rapid transit, freeway innovations, last (five-) mile connections, land use opportunities, the impact of elected leadership, and more — along with overall lessons learned.

Here is a summary of the current working agenda for the tour:

Wednesday, January 26:

• Evening welcome reception in Fort Lauderdale at conference hotel (Riverside Hotel on Las Olas Boulevard)

 Thursday, January 27:

• Breakfast briefing: Tour overview, Tri-Rail commuter rail overview
• Morning field visits in Miami: Tri-Rail commuter rail, Miami Intermodal Center, The Underline linear park
• Miami lunch briefings: elected leadership; Miami-Dade TPO; SMART plan/bus rapid transit (BRT); freeways
• Afternoon field visits in Miami: Brightline rail, first/last five-mile solutions, autonomous innovations
• Evening reception in Fort Lauderdale

 Friday, January 28:

• Breakfast and hotel check out
• Morning field visits in Fort Lauderdale: walking tour of Downtown Fort Lauderdale development
• Fort Lauderdale briefings: elected leadership; climate resilience; bus rapid transit; Broward MPO
• Field visits to/from West Palm Beach: Brightline rail follow-up, transit station area development
• West Palm Beach lunch briefings: business, elected, and community perspectives, closing reception

 Note:  Tour events will commence no earlier than 5 pm on Wednesday, January 26, and conclude no later than 3 pm on Friday, January 28. Topics and sequence subject to change based on speaker availability and new info.

While attendees looking for “beach time” may be disappointed, tour participants seeking an outstanding shared learning environment with your fellow leaders from North Carolina will find this visit to South Florida an excellent opportunity to invest in the future of our region and state.

Please contact me with questions, or just register online.

Thank you to our RTA presenting sponsors the North Carolina Railroad Company and GoTriangle, and to our RTA tour sponsors: WSP, the Research Triangle Foundation of North Carolina, Kimley-Horn, and HDR.

I hope to see you on the RTA tour later this winter!

Let’s get moving,

Joe

Joe Milazzo II, PE
RTA executive director

RTA is the voice of the regional business community on transportation in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina.

RTA represents more than 100 leading businesses and 25 member chambers of commerce in central and eastern North Carolina. RTA is a regional program of the Raleigh Chamber.

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