TWC Announces Upcoming Webinar on Strategic Workforce Planning |
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Wednesday, April 27, 2022
12 noon ET
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Dr. Philbrick Says Without Qualified Workforce, Public Transit Would ‘Grind to a Halt.’ |
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Dr. Karen Philbrick is the Executive Director of Mineta Transportation Institute at San Jose State University and a recently-appointed board member at ITLC. Check out this video where Dr. Philbrick discusses ITLC’s mission, activities, the new Transit Workforce Center (TWC), and outcomes to support recruiting and retaining a qualified workforce.
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Roll Call – April 5, 2022
The provisions create a legal definition of assault as "a circumstance in which an individual knowingly, without lawful authority or permission, and with intent to endanger the safety of any individual, or with a reckless disregard for the safety of human life, interferes with, disables, or incapacitates a transit worker while the transit worker is performing the duties of the transit worker." It also requires transit agencies to develop a risk reduction program for assaults on transit workers.
World Economic Forum – April 6, 2022
The San Diego Tribune – April 5, 2022
The driver challenge comes as a confluence of events makes public transportation more attractive: the waning (or normalizing) of the pandemic and a spike in the price of gasoline. The reopening of the economy has brought back frustrating traffic jams, while gas is going for around $6 a gallon. Those negatives could be a positive for public transit advocates and planners, who are pushing long-range plans to expand ridership and help combat global warming by reducing emissions, while easing gridlock.
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Governing – April 12, 2022
“The way that we were able to overcome that barrier was making a very clear argument for why it was not an equitable thing to do, to prioritize the privacy of drivers over people who were riding in buses,” said Joshua Schank, the former chief innovation officer for L.A. Metro, painting an image of a busload of blue-collar workers being delayed because of the whims of more privileged Angelenos.
KSL – April 6, 2022
The agency released its final report on the month Wednesday, determining that there were 105,992 average weekday riders across all forms of transportation. That's a 16% bump from the previous month and the most riders the transit system has had in a month since the pandemic led to a massive reduction in available public transit services.
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FTA – April 12, 2022
"Communities and states often need options for generating power immediately after natural disasters," said FTA Administrator Nuria Fernandez. "Under this program, we will advance the development of standards for exportable power systems, so that communities can take advantage of the power stored by high-tech transit buses to keep the lights on during natural disasters and other emergencies."
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Sustainable Bus – April 6, 2022
To begin with – the problem is smaller than one might think. Transparency on EV failures and underlying causes sadly is by no means an established practice, making it difficult to obtain reliable and independent statistics. It is suspected that the major source of ignition is caused by charging-induced overheating of components. One source states that only 19% of 125 investigated EV fires were unanimously traceable back to a failure of the battery.
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Worker shortages caused by layoffs have hurt the U.S. economy by delaying freight rail shippers, the Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO told the Surface Transportation Board rail regulator in a letter released Tuesday. It specifically called out grain companies’ concerns about disruption on tracks operated by Union Pacific Corp., Burlington Northern Santa Fe, and Norfolk Southern Corp.
WBUR – April 7, 2022
Liz Shuler is the first woman ever elected president of the AFL-CIO. She took over a time when the world of work has been turned upside down. Union organizing is happening in some unexpected places, and sometimes in ways that disrupt the traditional union playbook.
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Bloomberg – April 5, 2022
The Covid crisis has reignited a debate over what kind of credentials are really essential for American workers, and which requirements could be ditched at a time when job openings are at historic highs. It’s happening in the public sector—Maryland just scrapped college-degree requirements for thousands of government jobs—and the business world, where giants like IBM Corp. have been taking similar steps. Colleges are reexamining their criteria, too: Many have dropped compulsory entrance exams.
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USDOT Announces Largest-Ever Investment in Public Transit
Progressive Railroading – April 7, 2022
President Joe Biden and U.S. Department of Transportation officials announced a more than $20 billion investment in public transit in fiscal-year 2022 to help agencies modernize and expand service in communities of all sizes. The funding levels were detailed by the Federal Transit Administration in apportionment tables released for each of 30 programs for FY2022, USDOT and FTA officials said in a joint press release.
Greater Greater Washington – April 7, 2022
“The pandemic laid bare to myself, the Coalition for Smarter Growth, and the groups who would end up forming the Better Buses coalition who is really riding the bus. It’s essential workers, and those workers were essential before COVID-19, but the pandemic really brought their services to light and made many people reexamine fare policy. At a time when people were just trying to stay in their homes and make ends meet, we realized it was unfair and inequitable to charge folks over $80 a month just to get around to the places they needed to go, and the places we needed them to go.”
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APTA Emerging Leaders Program Capstone Projects Webinar Series – April 18, 11:30 am ET
On November 15, 2021, President Joe Biden signed the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act into law. This bill seeks to address the United States’ most pressing infrastructure projects and guide investments in the transit industry. Nearly $39 billion of the bill is dedicated to modernizing transit including funding dedicated to zero-emission vehicle chargers and to fund the purchase of zero-emission transit and school buses. An influx of funding to that degree has the potential to expedite plans transit agencies already have in place for transitioning conventional fleets to all-electric or seeking funding for pilots where none was available. In addition to the infrastructure bill, the $1.75 trillion Build Back Better legislation, currently undergoing negotiations in Congress, proposes to invest even more funding into bus electrification efforts in the United States.
APTA Emerging Leaders Program Capstone Projects Webinar Series – April 20, 11:30 am ET
As Zero-Emission Bus (ZEB) technology advances it will become a more viable solution for agencies to adopt into their fleets. Some agencies such as those located in California must educate themselves quickly as they adapt to meet the 2040 California Air Resources Board (CARB) ZEB mandate. This presentation will serve as a resource tool to help agencies looking to learn more about ZEB to gain a better understanding of the infrastructure considerations their agencies must make when deciding on a viable ZEB solution. This presentation will also explore the type of ZEB infrastructure solutions currently available, associated costs, construction timelines, service restrictions, maintenance considerations, and challenges associated to each solution.
TransitCenter – April 21, 3:00 pm ET
In Subtext, a zine from TransitCenter’s Women Changing Transportation program, women in leadership from across the field reflected on what advice they would share with others. This webinar builds on those reflections, with a discussion and an audience-led question and answer session. This webinar will go beyond a conversation about best practices for success and will instead delve into the ways that these women in leadership actively contribute to changing the field. This includes challenging existing approaches and creating pathways for other women to be key decision makers. This conversation will also create space for our panelists to share major challenges that they still struggle with as changemakers, even as they advance into leadership.
FTA – April 22, 1:00 pm ET
FTA will host a Climate Challenge Earth Day Event celebrating transit agencies that are taking bold actions to further reduce greenhouse gas emissions from public transportation to support President Biden’s greenhouse gas reduction and climate equity goals. The event will include speakers from various agencies and a presentation of eight award categories to 10 transit agencies.
The Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor – April 26, 10:00 am ET
In June 2019, the International Labor Organization adopted a ground-breaking global treaty on eliminating violence and harassment, including gender-based harassment, in the world of work. This historic treaty was the result of a global grassroots, cross-movement campaign to end gender-based workplace violence led by women trade unionists and their allies. In their newly published book, Stopping Gender-Based Violence and Harassment at Work: The Campaign for an ILO Convention, Jane Pillinger, Robin Runge, and Chidi King document the critical role of women and unions in achieving this landmark victory.
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International Transportation Learning Center
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