The Sharon D. Banks Award is a biennial award established in the memory of Sharon Banks, who chaired the TRB Executive Committee in 1998. She died in 1999. The award recognizes innovative and successful leadership in people-oriented initiatives in transportation, sustained over an extended period of time, that exemplify Banks’ ideals of humanity and service.
The award will be presented during the TRB Annual Meeting on Wednesday, January 10, 2018.
The 2018 recipient of the Sharon D. Banks Award is William W. Millar, former president of the American Public Transportation Association (APTA). Millar is recognized for his leadership and mentoring of an entire generation of public transportation leaders. Since the earliest stages of his career Millar exemplified the ideals of the Sharon Banks. As the executive director of the Port Authority of Allegheny County (Pittsburgh, PA), Millar led the way in improving transportation accessibility by working with persons in the disability community to develop practical, useable transportation services and facilities years before passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Millar was both a friend and mentor to Banks. Their friendship and collaboration was evident in TRB’s Transit Cooperative Research Program, which Millar helped establish, and where they both served on the Transit Oversight and Project Selection Committee. In their roles, both emphasized the characteristics of humanitarian leadership through collaboration, cooperation, and most importantly, valuing the insights of others.
As APTA President from 1996-2011,he helped forge partnerships to move public transportation forward whether it was helping to actualize the special acronym behind the Easter Seals Association’s Project ACTION – “Accessible Community Transportation in Our Nation” or pushing for people-oriented initiatives that brought together individuals of diverse backgrounds in the pursuit of excellence by strengthening relationships with transit workers unions, the Conference of Minority Transportation Officials, the Women’s Transportation Seminar and others or pushing public transportation to be better integrated into federal, state and local transportation policies and plans. Within APTA he is credited with fostering an environment of camaraderie and empathy, also traits of Sharon Banks, which helped to lay the groundwork for the resurgence of transit in America.
Millar, a strong supporter of transportation research, received the Founding Father Award for his leadership in establishing the Transit Cooperative Research Program. His service to TRB began in 1976 when he served as a member of the Standing Technical Committee on Transportation for the Transportation Disadvantaged. His service to TRB continued, almost uninterrupted, since that point. He was also a member of the TRB Executive Committee for more than two decades serving as its chair in 1992. In recognition of this contribution, Millar was named a National Associate of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in 2001.
Millar is the recipient of many awards including APTA’s Jesse Haugh Award as Transit Manager of the Year; TRB's W. N. Carey, Jr. Distinguished Service Award and Thomas B. Deen Distinguished Lectureship; Railway Age's Graham Claytor Award; the Texas A&M Transportation Institute's Director's Research Champion Award; and the Eno Foundation’s Award for Transportation Excellence. The William W. Millar Award for the best paper dealing with public transportation was instituted by TRB in his honor. Millar has received lifetime achievement awards from the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, the Conference of Minority Transportation Officials, and the Council of University Centers. He is a member of the APTA's Hall of Fame and the Intelligent Transportation Society of America Hall of Fame.
Millar has a bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University in geography and a master’s degree from the University of Iowa in urban transportation planning and policy analysis.
This Summary Last Modified On: 1/31/2023