Since 1987, the Texas Parking & Transportation Association (TPTA) has been inspiring, educating, and leading Texas parking and transportation professionals. It is a vehicle for individuals engaged with the parking and transportation businesses in municipalities, hospitals, airports, universities, and parking authorities. We promote the mutual interests of the membership in the provision and operation of adequate, safe, efficient, convenient, and economical public parking and transportation as a proper and necessary function for the economic and social well-being of our members.

TPTA’s vision: parking. mobility. connected. TPTA continues to build on key priorities and objectives that were established in 2019. We continue to enhance our association and our membership benefits by increasing our educational opportunities. Recently, have pushed towards increasing our marketing and social media presence for our community. The addition of Dawn Marti as our Conference, and Events Coordinator, Megan Leinart’s expertise in marketing, and our newest board member, Melonie Curry, have all helped us focus on social networking. Many organizations in our industry are not aware of our association benefits or the abundance of resources available to them, especially small cities and hospitals, so we are using social media to expand our current network of professionals who would appreciate all the knowledge and expertise we have to offer.

2022 Conference and Tradeshow

The 2022 TPTA Conference and Tradeshow was held at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in San Antonio, Texas. We were apprehensive about the attendee numbers, but we were pleased to see 200 attendees versus the 140 that attended the first post-pandemic conference in 2021. Although it did not meet our pre-pandemic numbers, we were excited to see universities coming back as 14 Texas universities attended—numbers we had not seen since pre-pandemic times.

Some of the highlights of the event included:

• A silent auction that raised about $3,000 for the local chapter of the Roy Maas Youth Alternatives (RMYA). Many of our vendors and members donated spectacular baskets filled with goodies and most baskets netted $200 to $350 each.
• Our Monte-Carlo Casino Night event with red carpet entry flanked by paparazzi caught attendees by surprise but everyone was quick to “strike a pose” for the cameras. The event took place on the roof of the Grand Hyatt and the weather could not have been nicer with a cool breeze and a delicious array of tasty food and drinks, dancing, and a photo booth. Even Dave Onorato, CAPP (IPMI Past Chairman) was impressed with his first TPTA show, stating he would love to come back for 2023.
• The networking and educational sessions, as always, were a big draw with topics from Self-Driving Shuttle Pilot Program, Digital Marketing, ROI of Being Proactive through Real-Time Statistical Data, Parking Action Plans in Texas, Employee Engagement and Job Satisfaction, and How Customer Experience Drives Operation Efficiency and Effectiveness. As always, we are grateful for our expert presenters, sponsors, and vendors for their generosity and support of our association and conferences. Without their sponsorship and patronage, we could not provide the beneficial assistance that we have offered over the years.

We thank all our members for their support of the 2022 Conference and Tradeshow. As we missed many of you, we hope to see you soon at our April 2023 Conference and Tradeshow in Dallas/Plano, Texas.