Center's Efforts in Developing National Bus Apprenticeship Highlighted during Jobs to Move America Sponsored Webinar
John Schiavone, Center director of technical training, shown here working with a technician to validate hands-on assessments.
John Schiavone, the Center's director of technical training, joined Stuart Bass, Keystone Development Partnership, and three other presenters for a Webinar sponsored by Jobs to Move America regarding an upcoming procurement of CNG and zero emissions buses for LA Metro.
Jobs to Move America is a national coalition dedicated to ensuring that public dollars spent on public transit systems create good jobs, cleaner equipment and more opportunity for low income people. Proposers to the LA Metro bus procurement must provide a Local Employment Plan (LEP) for creating new employment opportunities for local workers including those at bus manufacturing plants.
Mr. Schiavone discussed the Center's joint labor-management project with the Department of Labor to develop a national bus apprenticeship for technicians, which can be applied to better train and advance the careers of plant workers as part of the LEP.
Once dismissed as a pie-in-sky idea-and laughed off as a joke-a proposed gondola between Rosslyn and Georgetown now has some serious study behind it. And the findings from outside consultants are as rosy as they come: it would be technically possible and legal to build. The picture (and Potomac views) get prettier from there. ZGF Architects, which was commissioned to examine the feasibility of such a project, conservatively estimates a daily ridership of 6,500. And it would take significantly less time and money to build than a Metro station.
From Rosa Parks' principled stand on bus segregation to the current debates over urban transit access, transportation often plays a big role in discussions of equality and equity. However, what is less often discussed is the strangely personal, community-building effects of using public transit. When you take a bus in Chapel Hill, a subway train in New York or a metro in Madrid, you're thrust into a diverse group of people.
Marion County voters passed a referendum to fund an expansion of mass transit. The measure asked voters to approve .25-percent increase in the income tax, which will raise $56 million a year for IndyGo. That will allow the city's buses to run more frequent routes, improving connectivity and decreasing wait times.
In a key decision that could have derailed SmartTrack, Toronto's city council voted to approve a massive funding plan that would fuel billions worth of transit projects in the coming years, principle among them is John Tory's SmartTrack. A staff report revealed the project would cost around $7 billion, which includes the cost of building and upgrading the Regional Express Rail (RER) infrastructure that SmartTrack would run on.
The RMT union is staging a day of protests in support of its Safer Scottish Railways campaign. The move follows calls by the transport workers' union for the Scottish Government to set out an immediate timetable for Abellio to be stripped of its ScotRail franchise. RMT claims performance by the under-fire operator has slumped and not enough money is being invested in staffing, services and safety.
Proponents of public transportation in the city of Atlanta are buzzing after voters overwhelmingly approved raising the sales tax to expand MARTA and the Transportation the approval of the referendums means that a city tired of traffic problems will add more public transportation and other streetscape improvements. Residents supported the half-cent sales tax for MARTA transportation projects.
Mass transit was the big winner in Tuesday's election, with Seattle and Los Angeles both on track to approve multi-billion-dollar transportation packages that promise to bring relief to some of the country's most congested roadways.
SEPTA and TWU Local 234 have announced a tentative five-year contract that will bring 4,700-plus employees back to work and end a six-day strike that shut down the City Transit Division.
Voters approved BART's request for a $3.5 billion bond measure to modernize, enhance and enhance passenger loads. BART now has a "shopping list" it promises to follow. Every cent of BART's bond money is earmarked for specific projects; not raises or other diversions.
Blue Line rail crossings in Long Beach and Compton, among other places, are safer now thanks to new gates, alarms and other measures to protect pedestrians from speeding trains. Several public officials, including Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Compton Mayor Aja Brown, gathered Thursday morning to commemorate the installation of new safety features at Wardlow Station, which is near the crossing of W. Wardlow Road and Pacific Place, around the city's Wrigley Heights neighborhood. Safety enhancements there have already been completed, and are part of what the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority reported to be a $30 million project to improve safety at 27 rail crossings.
In a bit of good news for labor unions, Virginians voted down a ballot initiative Tuesday that would have enshrined the state's right-to-work status in the state constitution. Unions in Virginia campaigned hard against the proposal, which was supported by business groups and Republican lawmakers. Virginia has had a right-to-work law on the books for decades, but the ballot measure would have effectively made it permanent.
