Traction Power Training Consortium Full Group Meeting |
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For a group that has never met in person, the camaraderie is real.
The subject matter experts who make up the membership of the Traction Power Training Consortium have formed great cross-location relationships. The full group met virtually on Wednesday, July 21, 2021 for a session packed with updates on upcoming events and courseware development and discussions on training requirements for traction power jobs.
Since the Consortium’s last full meeting earlier this year, the team has completed two courses, making a total of five courses available for members to download from the Center’s courseware sharing portal, www.transittraining.net. Each course is ready for instructor-led training and includes participant guides, instructor guides, presentation slides, videos, hands-on exercises, quizzes, and course assessments. During the meeting, agencies discussed the challenge many are facing in finding new hires with basic electrical skills, providing necessary classroom training and facilitating adequate on-the-job learning.
Center staff Amri Joyner and Brandon Liu feel incredibly lucky to be working with the Traction Power group. Amri made a site visit to SEPTA (Philadelphia, PA) in early June and Brandon spent a week visiting CATS (Charlotte, NC) and had the opportunity to shadow a line crew working on the third shift. Lastly, the Center is exploring options for a Consortium-wide meeting in early November.
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From July 2021, Issue 3, Gaining Traction, a newsletter of the national Traction Power Training Consortium
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For more information on the Traction Power Consortium, please contact Amri Joyner at [email protected]
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Partnership to Advance Youth Apprenticeship (PAYA) - July 29, 3:00 pm - 4:15 pm ET
PAYA recently completed a series of focus groups educators, intermediaries, employers, and labor organizers to identify challenges and opportunities for developing youth apprenticeship and other high-quality work-based learning experiences in the skilled trades. This webinar will showcase the project’s findings and engage leaders from across the work-based learning ecosystem to highlight promising program models.
FTA - July 30, 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm ET
This session will focus on best practices to increase ridership across the industry and encourage transit systems to explore ways to incorporate strategies to encourage people to ride.
FTA – August 6, 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm ET
This session will ask transit stakeholders to discuss best practices on how to increase ridership with a focus on safety to build public confidence.
Eno Center for Transportation – August 11, 2:00 pm ET
New transportation technologies are coming online faster than ever. While many of these emerging technologies are helping to expand our world, they need to be evaluated critically. Todd Litman, author of the new book New Mobilities: Smart Planning for Emerging Transportation Technologies will discuss 12 emerging transportation modes and services that will likely significantly affect our lives as they become more commonplace. Litman will explain how these modes and services, including bike and car sharing, micro-transit and electric vehicles, may affect travel activity, costs and affordability, infrastructure design and cost, and other elements.
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Greater Greater Washington – July 23, 2021
When it’s done right, accessible transit signage makes public transportation more usable for everyone, and allows people—especially those with disabilities—fuller access to the region’s transport system. When it’s done wrong, inaccessible transit signage and notices make transit harder to use for people with disabilities, and can effectively push them off transit.
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COVID's Impact on Transit |
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NBC – July 22, 2021
Ridership plummeted early last year, when cities issued stay-at-home orders and companies began allowing remote work. Essential workers and those reliant on public transit commuted on nearly empty trains and endured service cuts and mask mandates. The number of people using public transportation has increased since then, but it's still nowhere near what it was. Commuters were estimated to have taken 358 million rides in June, up by 200 million from April 2020, the first full month after stay-at-home orders were implemented to prevent the spread of Covid-19. But that's still far below the 918 million rides commuters logged in June 2019.
Transit Talent - July 26, 2021
Commuters returning to their workplaces as the pandemic eases are clogging Denver-area highways, but they aren't yet boarding buses and trains in droves. That emerging dynamic has prompted an outside review panel to call for the Regional Transportation District to act boldly: Use some of its federal relief money to slash regular fares temporarily and streamline its monthly passes to make them easier to get.
FTA – July 21, 2021
The U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Transit Administration (FTA) announced today that transit ridership is rebounding in communities across the nation. Thanks to the Biden-Harris Administration's actions to tackle the pandemic, more Americans are on the move. As Americans are going to work, shopping and visiting friends and loved ones they are returning to transit. In some communities, transit ridership is up more than 80 percent over early 2020 levels, according to the FTA.
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Mass Transit Magazine – July 22, 2021
In 1985, the TriMet Board of Directors adopted plans to establish TriMet’s Committee on Accessible Transportation, also known as CAT. Campbell and two colleagues were at the forefront then and today she serves as chair. The CAT has been advocating to improve access to transit for people with disabilities in the tri-county area for nearly 40 years, and its work is far from finished.
Mass Transit – July 23, 2021
A silver lining – perhaps the only silver lining - to a global pandemic can be found within the Measure RR Bond Oversight Committee’s fourth annual report, which found reduced service hours helped Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) accelerate work on its massive Measure RR system rebuilding program.
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The Hill – July 22, 2021
the impasse over transit remains a tough issue to resolve. Sen. Pat Toomey (Pa.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, which has jurisdiction over transit, has balked at the bipartisan group’s proposal to spend $48.5 billion on public transit, on top of the traditional 80-20 allocation of highway funding between highways and transit priorities.
Politico – July 22, 2021
Overall, 57.5 percent of women aged 20 and older were participating in the U.S. labor force in June — down from 59.2 percent in February 2020 and a level that, even after months of improvement, is still the lowest in more than 30 years. Economists caution that women’s workforce participation in the U.S. has been stagnant for decades, more or less plateauing around 2000 — a phenomenon experts say shows that even before the pandemic, working women needed more societal supports than were available. But the pandemic still dealt a resounding blow.
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In These Times – July 20, 2021
Congress is currently devising a solution that makes it easier for workers to organize and collectively bargain through unions. In March, the House passed the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, a bill that would allow gig workers to unionize, legalize solidarity strikes and ban various union-busting tactics that keep workers underpaid and overworked. By expanding access to unionization, the PRO Act strengthens avenues for workers to improve their wages and working conditions. It’s a necessary long-term policy for Millennials and Gen Z to remedy endemic economic inequalities.
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NOLA - July 26, 2021
The agency told its 800 employees Friday that they must show proof of vaccination or proof that they have scheduled their shots before returning to work on Thursday, July 29. Those who refuse to get the shots will not be allowed to work unless they have a medical condition that prevents their vaccination or can cite a religious reason for avoiding the shot, according to an agency memo.
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Building Transit Infrastructure |
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Reuters - July 25, 2021
The lead U.S. Republican negotiator on an infrastructure plan said on Sunday he hoped for a detailed agreement sometime this week despite a dispute over spending on mass transit, but a Democratic source said several other issues were also unresolved.
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International Transit News |
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The New York Times – July 22, 2021
Subway systems around the world are struggling to adapt to an era of extreme weather brought on by climate change. Their designs, many based on the expectations of another era, are being overwhelmed, and investment in upgrades could be squeezed by a drop in ridership brought on by the pandemic.
The Independent - July 26, 2021
Britain's public transport services are being hit by staff self-isolating. Workers in the sector are among the vast number of people being pinged by the National Health Service (NHS) coronavirus app. Reduced timetables have been introduced on railways across England in an attempt to improve reliability after a recent spate of last-minute cancellations due to staff shortages.
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Michigan News - July 12, 2021
Though EVs represent a small fraction of delivery vehicles today, the number is growing. In 2019, Amazon announced plans to obtain 100,000 electric delivery vehicles. UPS has ordered 10,000 of them and FedEx plans to be fully electric by 2040. Now, a study from University of Michigan researchers shows that when, where and how those fleet vehicles are charged can greatly impact their potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. A key point of the study is that both the emissions directly tied to charging the vehicles and emissions that result from manufacturing the batteries must be considered. Charging practices that shorten a battery’s lifetime will lead to early battery replacement, adding to the total greenhouse gas emissions associated with that vehicle.
The Columbus Dispatch – July 18, 2021
“People don’t always see the connection between public transit and climate change,” she said in an interview. “Making sure that we switch over to electric or green forms of transit would make a big difference.”
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Common Dreams - July 22, 2021
In an ideal world, robots and AI would increasingly take on all the dirty, dangerous, and demeaning jobs globally, freeing humans to do more interesting work. In the real world, however, automation is often making jobs dirtier and more dangerous by, for instance, speeding up the work done by the remaining human labor force. Meanwhile, robots are beginning to encroach on what's usually thought of as the more interesting kinds of work done by, for example, architects and product designers.
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