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The US Department of Labor and the White House have declared November 2-9 as "National Apprenticeship Week." The goal is to spread the word about the many advantages of apprenticeship training, including new systems for granting college credit for learning at work in registered apprenticeship programs and providing support for apprentices through the GI Bill and other federal benefit programs. "National Apprenticeship Week is an opportunity for the National Apprenticeship Community to tell the story of registered apprenticeship," says US DOL. It is "an invitation to business and industry, education, career seekers, community based organizations, students and workers to learn about the real world advantages of apprenticeship."
Interested in starting or ramping up an apprenticeship program at your location? Check out these resources:
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Quick Start Toolkit - US DOL
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Apprenticeship Event Kit - US DOL
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Implementing Local Apprenticeship Program Tutorial - the Transportation Learning Center
In addition, the Center is looking to organize partner locations for an
apprenticeship week event. For more information, contact Center Founding Director
Brian Turner.
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Center's Work Well Received at NTI's Transit Trainers' Workshop
Earlier this week, the Center presented two separate sessions at the National Transit Institute's Transit Trainers' Workshop in New Orleans, LA. Both sessions were well attended and participants were highly engaged. More information and links to the presentations can be found below:
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Expanding Apprenticeship for Transit Technicians: Opportunities and Resources - Executive Director Jack Clark introduced attendees to the benefits of registered apprenticeships, including college credit for workplace training.
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Transit Instructional Systems Design Boot Camp - Instructional Designer Amri Joyner led an interactive session on ISD principles. During this intensive session, attendees worked in teams to create the fundamentals of instructional design particularly in developing measurable learning objectives. Attendees also examined the principles of adult learning and effective learning design, working with subject matter experts and the impact of training on the success of an organization.
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International Transportation News
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As I write this, the City of Vancouver is about to get a report from a multi-party roundtable on a safe route to regulating vehicles for hire through the intersection of a panting Uber and a taxi owners' lawsuit. Uber is the biggest and highest-profile of several burgeoning "transportation network companies" (TNCs) whose customers use smart phones to access software to order and pay for rides in vehicles, mostly with non-professional drivers, often in contravention of vehicle-for-hire bylaws.
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Singapore has unveiled its ambitious autonomous transportation plans hoping that driverless vehicles will help the city-state solve the shortage of skilled drivers. The first two driverless cars developed by the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) in cooperation with the National University of Singapore and the Agency for Science, Technology and Research have been revealed to the public on Monday, marking the beginning of Singapore's ambitious driverless future.
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Siemens has been awarded a $112 million contract to build an additional 29 SD-160 light rail vehicles for Denver Regional Transportation District (RTD). This order further extends the 22-year relationship between Siemens and RTD and will bring the Siemens' fleet operating on the RTD light rail system to over 200 vehicles. The new vehicles will be completely interoperable with the current system, allowing Denver RTD to achieve lower operational and maintenance costs that should continue the agency's ongoing cost savings that over the years has likely totaled millions of dollars for RTD and its taxpayers and passengers.
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A $29 billion infusion into the city's transportation network likely will still leave the nation's largest regional transportation network lagging behind modern systems across the globe but will provide repairs and upgrades needed to keep pace with booming ridership, transit experts said. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority's five-year modernization plan now has funding for scores of improvements, including more than 1,000 new subway cars, more real-time countdown clocks, better signals that lead to faster service and more than 80 miles of track repair, including some to rails damaged by Superstorm Sandy in 2012.
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Members of Amalgamated Transit Union 1433 voted by more than 95 percent to turn down the offer from Transdev, the French company which owns and operates the majority of Phoenix bus routes. In a statement Katrina Heineking, a Transdev Phoenix general manager, said they are "very disappointed" that members rejected the offer she called "extremely fair," guaranteeing operators receive three percent pay raises per year for five years. Transit union members, who have been working without a contract, have previously voted to authorize a strike. ATU Local 1433 representative Michael Cornelius said no decision has been made on a work stoppage yet, but that it could happen in "five minutes or next month."
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U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx has directed the Federal Transit Administration to assume immediate oversight of Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority's Metrorail's operations. Foxx sent a letter to National Transportation Safety Board Chair Christopher Hart on Oct. 9, in response to the Sept. 30 NTSB Urgent Safety Recommendation that the Federal Railroad Administration assume oversight of WMATA's transit rail operations from the Tri-State Oversight Committee (TOC), which is currently responsible for safety oversight of Metrorail, but lacks sufficient resources, technical capacity, and enforcement authority to provide the level of oversight that is needed.
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The Jacksonville Transportation Authority unveiled the first of many new, natural gas-powered, buses Wednesday, which are hitting local streets soon. Compressed Natural Gas busses are quieter, more environmentally friendly and cost-effective alternatives to the standard diesel bus. According to JTA, replacing a diesel bus with a CNG bus is like taking 21 cars off the road.
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Two years ago, the late former federal Conservative finance minister Jim Flaherty went to an east-end community centre pledging $660 million for the Scarborough subway, effectively burying a rival plan to build an LRT.
It was a marked contrast from 2009, when his Conservative colleague and then transport minister John Baird told Toronto to "f--- off" when it wanted cash to buy new streetcars. As recently as June, Conservative Leader Stephen Harper made a pre-campaign stop at a TTC bus garage to promise $2.6 billion for Mayor John Tory's SmartTrack plan. These examples are why transit advocates such as Councillor Joe Mihevc, a long-serving TTC board member and NDP supporter, accuse the Conservative government of "cherry-picking their pet projects."
"They should be asking: 'What are the city's priorities?' Then we fund a plan, not a project," he said.
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