Larry Penner

1953 - 2025

Larry Penner, mass transit expert and transportation advocate, has died after battling pancreatic cancer for over a year.

A graduate of Long Island University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science, Larry’s family moved from Bay Ridge to Great Neck when he was a young child.

In 1970, he became active in conservative Republican politics, volunteering for Jim Buckley’s successful Senate campaign, and joining Young Americans for Freedom, the nation’s foremost conservative youth organization. He served in various local capacities in YAF, and was elected to its National Board in 1975.

Larry spent much of the 1970s and early 1980s in the Marine Park section of Brooklyn, where he became a prominent Republican activist in the MacArthur Republican Club. He was a candidate for City Council, State Assembly, and U.S. Congress.

Larry briefly worked at the NYC Board of Elections before moving on to the City Planning Commission.

In 1981, Larry joined the Reagan Administration as a Special Assistant to the Region II Administrator of the Urban Mass Transit Administration (UMTA), later known as the Federal Transit Agency.

Originally a political appointee, Larry remained with the agency for three decades, eventually becoming a civil service employee, and a highly respected expert on transportation issues.

He supervised a staff of Transportation Program Specialists, Regional Office Engineers, and Engineering consulting firms. His duties included development, review, approval and oversight of billions of dollars in capital projects and programs for New Jersey Transit, New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), Long Island and Metro North Railroads, and the Staten Island Ferry.

After retiring from the federal government, Larry became a prolific author of transit op-eds and letters to the editor on a variety of public policy issues, and a historian and author on transit issues.

He married the former Wendy Goldstein in May of 1997, and became a foster dad to a variety of local cats in his Great Neck neighborhood.