Center Pilots Transit Core Competencies Curriculum with Students from Denver's Mile High Youth Corps
Dustin Hughes and Juston Hrubes deliver TC3 to Mile High Youth Corps students
Transportation Learning Center has completed its first full pilot of the six modules that have been developed for the Transit Core Competencies Curriculum (TC3). The five-week Denver-based course featured a collaborative effort between Denver RTD, Mile High Youth Corps (MHYC), and the Transportation Learning Center, with assistance from the Community College of Denver (CCD). After an initial train-the-trainer course run by the Center and held at CCD, RTD trainers, led by RTD's Maintenance Training Manager Matt Younce, taught the TC3 curriculum to a diverse cohort of MHYC students.
TLC Instructional Design Associate Contella Mills, who worked on TC3 development with ISD Program Manager Julie Deibel-Pundt, joined RTD instructors Dustin Hughes and Juston Hrubes in teaching the Mechanical Theory and Application module. Contella described her experience teaching TC3: "Exposing youth and young adults to careers in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) is exciting and a fulfilling opportunity to shine a light on the transit career area that is very rewarding and provides for future professional growth".
TC3 is designed to introduce diverse groups of young people and adults in the communities public transportation serves to frontline career opportunities in the industry generally and to provide baseline knowledge and skills in electrical and mechanical theory and practice and vehicle and facilities maintenance. TC3's goal is to provide participants nationally the opportunity to become strong and successful applicants, trainees and apprentices in the transportation field.
The Denver pilot concludes a year of delivering TC3 in various forms to range of groups in Cleveland and throughout Massachusetts, in addition to Denver. TLC staff will be using the feedback from the pilots to finalize the curriculum so it can be made broadly available in conjunction with training programs on how to use the curriculum in a variety of contexts. For more information about TC3, contact Sr. Program Director, Pat Greenfield.
Center Staff Promotes Transit Coach Operator Apprenticeship with Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority and ATU Local 265
From left to right: Tia Brown, Diana Hermone, Jamaine Gibson, Bobby Hill, Jess Guerra.
Center Program Manager Tia Brown participated in the Paying It Forward session at the APTA conference alongside Diana Hermone and Jamaine Gibson of the Joint Workforce Investment of Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA). During this session, Jamaine Gibson and Diana Hermone highlighted the successes of their transit coach operator apprenticeship program, the first registered transit coach operator apprenticeship program in the country.
The Joint Workforce Investment is a jointly funded labor management committee within VTA that focuses on employee development and training including the development of apprenticeship programs. This committee has developed a coach operator apprenticeship program with a major emphasis on mentoring that also provides operators with the opportunity to obtain college credit. This apprenticeship program has garnered over 3 million in external funding and has helped reduce operator turnover, accident rates, customer complaints, and grievances. The Center is working with VTA and 7 other transit agency locations to implement similar types of transit coach operator apprenticeship programs across the United States.
For more information regarding the development and implementation of apprenticeship programs at your location and/or the Center's American Apprenticeship program, please contact Program Manager, Tia Brown.
Public transit agencies should see this challenge of declining ridership as an opportunity for change. As cities and metro regions continue to evolve, transit should position itself as a leader by pursuing new innovations while also simultaneously fulfilling its core goal of safe and reliable transit.
This is often how transit projects are framed - as congestion reducers - and that's a problem, says The Urbanist's Doug Trumm: "Congestion relief is how someone who does not actually ride light rail would likely define success, but the primary job of light rail is to serve transit users, not motorists."
Jeff Davis, a transportation policy analyst at the Eno Center, a D.C.-based research group, said any delays would seriously jeopardize federal dollars under the Trump administration's FY2018 budget proposal.
At the conclusion of the repair project, WMATA will have completed three years worth of track work in a single year, agency officials said in a press release. The SafeTrack plan included the replacement of more than 50,000 crossties compared with about 15,000 in a typical year.
After years of relatively few changes, Metro is beginning the process of reimagining and restructuring its bus system to better meet the needs of past, current and future riders, Metro officials said at the agency's Board of Directors committee meeting on Thursday.
While all-door boarding has been a success for MUNI, it isn't the only tool that the agency is looking to implement to improve bus service. Dedicated bus lanes, signal prioritization, better parking enforcement and management, and complete, safe streets are all strategies MUNI is currently pursuing.
Since 1991, Amtrak has only used Grand Central as a temporary station once during work affecting upstate trains' access to Penn Station. One complicating factor is that the third rail system that Metro-North trains use to access Grand Central is different from that which Amtrak uses at Penn Station.
Last week, the Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority Board of Directors heard the first results of a "rebooted" effort to fund high-capacity transit.
In a stunning reversal, the Federal Transit Administration said Monday that it will approve a $647 million grant to electrify Caltrain tracks, nearly doubling capacity on the overburdened San Jose to San Francisco commute route.
The proposal from Rep. Ted Lieu would inject $2 trillion into a wide-range of transportation projects over 10 years, including those that boost public transit systems, water and sewer systems, clean-energy jobs, high-speed Internet access and veterans hospitals.
Republicans have sought to waive provisions from the Davis-Bacon Act, a nearly century-old law requiring employees working on federally funded construction projects to be paid prevailing wages, in past infrastructure-related bills.
Public-private partnerships have a role, said Virginia Transportation Secretary Aubrey L. Lane, but they are not a silver bullet that allows taxpayers to get something for nothing. The public pays for infrastructure one way or another, whether through tolls, taxes, fares, or fees, and it's up to the government to make sure taxpayers are getting the best deal possible.
London ranked as the most expensive city in the world for public transportation, costing nearly $175 for a month of riding the Tube, with New York City coming it at No. 4 at a cost of approximately $120 per month.
For decades, the portion of prime-age men (ages 25 to 54) in the labor force has been in decline. More recently, the labor force participation rate of prime-age women has stagnated and also declined. This paper addresses the consequences of, and reasons for, these declines, especially among men. A subsequent effort will address appropriate policy responses.
In 2017, America has a jobs problem: It's not that we don't have enough jobs, but that we don't have enough good jobs. We all lose when pay raises for workers - despite rising productivity and quality service - are unreasoningly restrained.
