Mark Jehnke, Ocean County’s Supervising Engineer, and Barkha Patel, a Senior Planner in Jersey City’s Division of City Planning, were elected chair and vice chair, respectively, of the NJTPA’s Regional Transportation Advisory Committee (RTAC) on December 3.
Jehnke most recently served as the committee’s vice chair. He takes the helm from Liza Betz, Transportation Planning Manager in Union County’s Department of Economic Development, who served as chair for two years.
Both Jehnke and Patel were elected to two-year terms.
The RTAC is comprised of technical staff from each of the NJTPA’s 15 subregions — the 13 counties in northern and central New Jersey and the cities of Jersey City and Newark — as well as representatives from NJ TRANSIT, the New Jersey Department of Transportation and the Port Authority.
The committee honored Betz with a resolution thanking her for her service as chair, praising her for improving and enhancing subregional participation in the transportation planning process.
“In her role as RTAC Chair, Liza Betz has been a strong advocate for the subregions, and worked with Central Staff to further increase efficiencies of the Subregional Studies Program and the Subregional Transportation Planning Program,” the resolution states. “The record of leadership by Liza Betz helps ensure that RTAC serves an increasingly important and evolving advisory role in the transportation planning process at the NJTPA.”