TDM Forum Wrap-Up
Date postedNovember 21, 2022
Last week, we welcomed everyone to Atlanta for the 2022 TDM Forum. As this was the final in-person event of the year, we wanted to make sure that we had the best programming possible. We started with a walking tour and bike tour of Atlanta. The goal was to connect participants to the culture and beating heart of Atlanta while learning the history of the city. Participants were able to learn about Atlanta’s connection to history and TDM while taking in the sights of the city.
The first full day of conference activities saw a rousing morning keynote from Ryan Gravel, Founder of Sixpitch, but not before our special guest speaker, Marsha Anderson Bomar, Interim Commissioner of the Atlanta DOT, spoke on behalf of the mayor and the city of Atlanta. We also heard from Jeff Byma, Associate Vice President of Marketing at Hallcon, and David Straus, ACT’s Executive Director. Ryan Gravel talked about the Atlanta Beltline, a project that he authored, prior to its adoption, to help Atlanta keep up with the growing demand that comes with a rising population. He addressed the bigger picture in the Atlanta City Design and how the Beltline plays an integral role in the future of Atlanta.
After the morning keynote we all broke out into concurrent sessions. For this event concurrent sessions ran the gamut with topics ranging from incentive strategies aiming to reduce congestion ahead of the Olympics in Los Angeles to secondary dimensions of diversity and how to use DE&I to ignite opportunity in TDM.
At the end of the day, we celebrated our newest generation of TDM professionals at the 40 Under 40 Awards ceremony. These awards went to the 40 most impressive young TDM’ers with the goal of recognizing and fostering talent in the field. This being the first in-person 40 Under 40 Awards in a few years, many people were excited to pop champagne and recognize the future of TDM. After the awards we found ourselves on the 27th floor overlooking Atlanta and toasting to an amazing first day, our 40 Under 40 Award winners and the future of TDM.
After Debra Lam’s keynote and a round of concurrent sessions, we celebrated this year’s winners of the TDM Excellence awards. Unlike years past, we had 8 awards with some representing new aspects of TDM Excellence. We recognized Google, Stanford University, Atlanta Regional Commission, Washington DC, WeDriveU, RideAmigos, Veronica Jarvis, and Congressman Peter DeFazio as recipients of the 2022 TDM Excellence Awards. After the awards, we went through two more rounds of concurrent sessions and then it was time to head home.
This year’s TDM Forum was a great look at where TDM is headed with much hope on the horizon and even more opportunity.