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Center Director Jack Clark Presents on Workforce Development Needs of the Public Transportation Industry
Jeff Gonneville, Chief Mechanical Officer at MBTA in Boston and Chair of the Bus Maintenance Training Committee asked Center Executive Director Jack Clark to present to the Committee plans for a national system of apprenticeship in public transportation. Jack made the case that apprenticeship addresses exactly the needs transit has for recruiting, training and retaining a skilled frontline workforce. He also shared some information on the recently submitted apprenticeship proposal to US DOL, particularly the breadth of support for the proposal from the industry.
A panel on "Maintenance Management and Workforce Development" featured John Schiavone presenting on how Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) can be used as a tool for training. John emphasized that involving the frontline workforce in developing SOPs helped ensure that SOPs would be developed well. Once there is agreement on a single right way to get a job done, that can also serve as the basis for training new workers. Mentoring needs to be a crucial component of training around SOPs.
Jack Clark spoke again at the Workforce Development Roundtable, presenting detailed data on public transportation needs. Jack's presentation drew heavily on research and earlier presentations done by Deputy Director Xinge Wang. In addition to laying out the overall transit workforce need--126 percent of the current workforce needs to be hired and trained in the next ten years--the presentation examined possible solutions, including apprenticeship.
For more information, visit the following links:
Transit vehicle maintenance instructor competency model
TRB has recently published Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Report 178: A National Training and Certification Program for Transit Vehicle Maintenance Instructors, following two years of research spearheaded by the Transportation Learning Center. This report provides a proposed national program structure and plan for training and certifying transit bus and rail maintenance instructors. The report also provides best practices used in the public and private sectors to prepare and certify technical instructors, as well as the attributes and instructional delivery methods found most effective for maintenance instructors. The Center's strong in-house train-the-trainer program, designed for transit vehicle, elevator/escalator, and signals maintenance trainers and delivered successfully at multiple agencies has put it in a unique position in understanding the needs and recommending effective elements for trainer development and qualification. The project team is led by principal investigator Dr. Chuck Hodell, Senior Program Director of Instructional Design of the Center and Associate Director of Graduate Program in Instructional Systems Development, University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Other team members include John Schiavone and Xinge Wang from the Center, Melissa Huber of Huber Associates, and Brian Lester from EDSI Consulting. Report 178 can be accessed at:
http://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/tcrp/tcrp_rpt_178.pdf.
For additional information, contact Director of Research/Deputy Director Xinge Wang.
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The ferry line is working with Metro/Greater Portland Transit District and the South Portland Bus Service to implement a new GPS tracking system. The three agencies partnered to award a single contract to one company to provide the service to all of them.
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The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) yesterday ordered Amtrak to take immediate steps to improve safety on the Northeast Corridor. The order is in response to last week's deadly derailment of an Amtrak train in Philadelphia.
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In 1956, as Martin Luther King Jr. and Bayard Rustin struggled to sustain the historic boycott of segregated public transit in Montgomery, Alabama, Rustin turned to the union leader A. Phillip Randolph for advice. The carpool for black workers was faltering. "Go up to Birmingham," Randolph told them, "where the steel workers are making enough to afford two cars. Ask them to donate their second car." According to historian Judith Stein, King reported the steel workers saved the boycott.
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Building Transportation Infrastructure
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The trains that link global centers of learning, finance and power on the East Coast lumber through tunnels dug just after the Civil War, and cross century-old bridges that sometimes jam when they swing open to let tugboats pass.
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A young homeowner told NJ Transit officials that a proposed 9 percent fare increase would drive his family out of the state. Ken Ramsey of Matawan said he and his wife commute to New York, where they work for non-profits. They lived in an apartment, and saved their money to buy a modest house in which to raise their two-year-old son, he said.
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You may have read this and not believed it but the House Appropriations Committee did vote to cut - yes cut! - money for Amtrak just hours after the fatal derailment in Philadelphia. The Republicans on the committee used as an excuse that their quarter-million-dollar slice was for capital improvements and did not effect funding for safety.
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