Presenting Leadership APTA Class of 2025 Capstone Projects

View Leadership APTA Class of 2025 Capstone Projects and learn how the next generation of transit leaders is tackling today’s biggest industry priorities and challenges!

APTA members have exclusive access to these new resources, including executive summaries and short videos packed with key findings and innovative ideas. Months of in-depth research and interviews are distilled into engaging, easy-to-digest presentations covering a wide variety of topics.

As APTA’s premier senior and executive leadership program, Leadership APTA continues to shape the future of public transportation.

The six on-demand sessions are:

Brand. Data. Story. The Transit Trifecta
This project identifies how agencies can more effectively frame their benefits in ways that resonate across political lines and funding levels. Brand. Data. Story. provides a cohesive strategy for building trust, demonstrating value, and earning enduring support.

CEO Compass: Peer-Tested Strategies for Transit Executives
Through candid interviews with 30 transit leaders from 13 U.S. states and Canada, this capstone highlights the hard-earned insights that helped these executives lead with clarity, confidence, and impact.

Mobilizing Mega Moments: How Transit Agencies Prepare, Perform, and Prevail
Drawing on a series of in-depth interviews with executives, operations leaders, customer experience specialists, and public–private partners, this session presents a proven framework for planning, delivering, and sustaining transit excellence across the three critical phases of a mega-event: Pre-Event, During Event, and Post-Event.

Ready, Set, AI: Risk, Readiness, and Real-World Use of AI in Transit
This capstone explores how public transit agencies can adopt AI solutions responsibly by establishing a framework that identifies key risks, outlines governance surrounding AI, and implements policies to put appropriate guard rails on usage.

Striking the Right Staffing Balance: What Can We Learn from Recent Capital Expansion Programs?
The capstone team conducted several months of industry research on recent capital expansion programs across the U.S., seeking to better understand if there was a “right” balance between public- and private-sector staffing when advancing a capital expansion program.

The New Normal: Post-COVID Safety and Security Strategies
This capstone examines how agencies are closing the gap between system data and the rider experience. Findings suggest that restoring rider trust requires a three-legged stool of solutions: Policy & Partnerships, Human Presence, and Technology & Infrastructure.