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Making Headway is the Center's bi-annual newsletter reporting on the National Rail Car Training Consortium's recent news and activities. The second issue is now available on our website.
This joint labor-management effort sets a proven model for multiple other similar consortia. Products include: instruction ready courseware and videos, a nationally recognized apprenticeship program for rail car maintainers, and a train-the-trainer program.
Futuristic transportation modes would undoubtedly change the nature of transportation, but widespread implementation is not realistic. Too much attention on ultramodern technology in transportation distracts us from the mundane but crucial improvements that must be made to the existing system.
Train operators are told face-to-face that they need to slow to 10 miles per hour, keep watch for people on the tracks, and use special hand symbols to ensure that all workers have safely stepped onto the raised platform and out of harm's way.
[Interim MTA Executive Director, Veronique Hakim] also pointed out that the agency is investing $2.1 billion, the most ever, to upgrade antiquated signal systems which are also the cause of delays and pointed to Gov. Andrew Cuomo's upcoming genius competition to fix the subway.
One of the keys for BaltimoreLink, Quinn said, is making sure people can get to work in a timely fashion. However, he said, developers need to consider transit when they are planning their projects.
President Donald Trump's fiscal-year 2018 budget calls for eliminating federal support for Amtrak's long-distance routes. The budget calls these services a "vestige of when train service was the only viable transcontinental transportation option.
Nearly 80 percent of major central city businesses have agreed to tax themselves a combined $50 million over the next 25 years to help cover the system's operating costs. Of the 314 ballots counted as of Wednesday, 250 voters agreed to the tax, easily surpassing the required two-thirds threshold needed, according to results released by the city clerk's office.
Numerous studies have documented the phenomenon known as induced demand in transportation: Basically, if you build highway lanes, more drivers will come. And yet, transportation agencies rarely account for this effect when planning road projects.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said that the success of President Trump's $1 trillion infrastructure package - which is expected to rely heavily on the private sector - will likely depend on help from foreign investors.
A new 25-year master plan clearly states that private cars are a problem in cities, and lays out an aggressive agenda to improve London for walking, bicycling, and transit.
The conservative war on unions is beginning to look like a Faustian bargain. If 2016 taught us anything, it was that miserable workers are angry voters, and angry voters are more than capable of lashing out against trade, immigration, free markets, and for that matter liberal democracy itself.
Mayors can fund transit, build bus and bike lanes, end free parking, and reform building codes that require it. (Though they mostly don't.) But ultimately, the only way to combat American automobile dependency is to reform the way we build, and in particular, to help avoid low-density settlement patterns that make it impractical or impossible for Americans to get anywhere without a personal car.
Overall, given the strong current and likely future returns for workers from these modes of occupation- or industry-specific training, it make little sense to eschew them out of fear that some unknown future automation will render them obsolete. On the other hand, it seems prudent to understand the potential risks from automation to workers with specific training, and to modify the education and training that workers receive accordingly.
