Transit Technology Career Ladder Partnership
July 2012-June 2012 (2001-2012)
FTA funding for the Center under the Transit Technology Career Ladder Partnership program was continuous from the Center’s founding in early 2001 until the summer of 2012. This core program has directly supported development of the Center’s overall program framework:
• The network of local and statewide training partnerships in 12 states
• National training standards for six frontline maintenance and operations occupations
• National frameworks for apprenticeship with mentoring and train-the-trainer for bus, rail vehicle and elevator-escalator technicians
• Creating an industry-wide Consortium for developing training materials for elevator-escalator technicians and a broad-based proposal for a Signals training consortium (and broad interest in follow-on consortium work in fields like traction power and rail vehicle maintenance).
FTA core funding has also enabled the Center to develop additional programs that build on the partnerships for incumbent worker training:
• Safety, safety culture, and safety and health, expanding the reach of data-driven, problem-solving partnerships into new critical areas of joint interest to transit labor and management
• Career Pathways programs, using industry training standards and hands-on learning modules to motivate and educate in-school youth and other community members for future careers in frontline transit and other transportation occupations.
Funded originally on a discretionary basis by DOT, the TTCLP program was authorized at $500,000 annually in TEA-21 and $1,000,000 annually in SAFETEA-LU. Unfortunately this program, like all other policy direction for frontline workforce training, was left out of MAP-21.
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TCRP Project A-35 Improving Safety Culture in Public Transportation
April 2011 - April 2013
In 2011, the Transportation Learning Center joined a team of transit experts to develop a critical research project for Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) - Project A-35 Improving Safety Culture in Public Transportation. The central goal of Project A-35 is “to help transit agencies improve their safety cultures.” In order to achieve that goal, the team will answer a number of key questions designed to gain insight into safety cultures inside and outside of the public transportation industry.
Read MoreThese questions include:
1. What is safety culture?
2. How do key transit agency stakeholders perceive safety culture?
3. How are safety values communicated throughout the agency? i.e., from the board to the shop floor and the track worker?
4. What key factors (positive and negative) impact safety?
5. What methods do transit systems use to assess, improve and monitor safety?
6. What transit agencies have positive safety cultures?
7. What factors set these agencies apart from their peers?
8. How are the safety improvements made?
9. What methods do organizations outside the public transportation industry use to assess, improve and monitor safety?
10. What industries and organizations outside the public transportation industry have positive safety cultures?
11. What factors set these organizations apart from their peers?
12. How are safety culture improvements made? What are their metrics and methods for monitoring and continuous improvement?
13. How can these insights be applied to the public transportation industry?
14. What resources do transit agencies need to help them improve safety culture?
In Phase I, the research team has conducted literature review, transit stakeholder surveys, transit case studies, as well as case studies of companies outside of transit. Phase II of the research will focus on evaluating best practices of safety culture leaders within and outside of public transportation, developing leading and lagging indicators for measuring safety culture, and specifying elements that improve safety performance and safety culture in transit.
The report and materials generated from this project will explain the imperative of a safety culture; identify and assess safety culture concepts from within and outside of the public transportation sector; and present organizational models, processes, and pragmatic strategies for assessing, improving and monitoring the safety performance and safety culture of the public transportation industry.
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Transit Elevator/Escalator Training Consortium
In September 2010, The Transit Elevator/Escalator Consortium (the consortium) was formed to develop a national Transit Elevator/Escalator Maintenance Training and Apprenticeship Program to address the following concerns of the transit industry:
• Lack of quality training materials consistent training
• Safety and reliability of Transit elevators and escalators
• Liability concerns
• Growing state certification requirements
• Dissatisfaction with contracted-out maintenance
The consortium consists of Bay Area Rapid Transit, Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority, New York City Transit, Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority, Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, and their local union partners, with national sponsorship from ATU, TWU and APTA. Each location contributes staff time and expertise to this project as well as evenly split monetary contributions which are matched with funds from the Federal Transit Administration. The project is staffed and administered by the Transportation Learning Center.
The Courseware Development ProcessThese courses are developed through a participative Instructional Systems Design (ISD) process which partners experienced instructional designers with Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) from the world of transit elevators and escalators. The designers and SMEs work very closely through the entire development process. Additional resources include materials from Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) like Kone and Fujitec who have agreed to contribute their visual and written training materials to the project.
DeliverablesThe principal deliverables are the 45 maintenance training 45 courses. Each includes:
• Course books
• Lesson plans which support hands-on and On-the-Job learning
• Instructor PowerPoint presentations
• Detailed instructor guides
Previews of this material can be found on Transit Training Network
In addition, the Center has developed a Train-the-Trainer program which teaches seasoned transit elevator/escalator technicians about learning principles, participant engagement and how to use the instructor guides.
Finally, all of these components are built to be part of a larger system of apprenticeship. An apprenticeship application was submitted to US DOL by the Center and accepted.
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TCRP Project F-17 Improving Bus Operator Health, Wellness, and Retention
October 2011-April 2013
The Center’s project team (Dr. Robin M. Gillespie, Xinge Wang and Tia Brown) has been working to identify and analyze improvements in operator health, absenteeism, medical disqualification, turnover, health care costs, and other relevant outcomes due to transit agency initiatives for health policy, scheduling, or other workplace improvements.
The first phase of this project catalogued and assessed the workplace health promotion program (WHPP) practices, goals and theories implemented by public transportation organizations, through a literature review a survey of 238 of transit agencies and unions, detailed case examples developed through follow-up with survey respondents and a series of illustrative case studies. The program and implementation models seen in practice are being compared with models described in the health promotion literature and practice to establish the outlines, targets, and effective actions for the final comprehensive workplace health promotion framework. The survey was sent in slightly different forms to agency CEOs and local union presidents; responses from 68 agencies across the US (52) and Canada (16) were received, and from 40 agencies represented by 44 local unions (8 Canadian and 36 US), for a total of 94 different agencies. A panel of Subject Matter Experts from agencies and union in the US and Canada was recruited to assess the information and contribute to the development of the proposed WHPP toolkit.
After conducting follow up interviews with agency and union contacts and performing initial data analysis, project staff produced:
• Industry profiles of worksite health protection and promotion (WHPP) activities
• Case descriptions of all respondents with WHPP programs
• A summary rating of all respondents’ program activity
• A set of case study targets that will illustrate development, implementation and assessment issues in WHPP
An interim report and draft materials will be submitted to the F-17 Panel on September 15. Following on their critique, revisions, and approval, the next phase is dedicated to producing a manual describing traditional and innovative workplace health promotion approaches, along with tools and support materials. Program options will be organized into a readily usable best-practices tool kit and implementation guide for step-by-step local action. This tool kit will include an approach to return on investment (ROI) in transit health promotion for use in local transit agencies.
This research process has already had an impact. As project staff probed for ideas and experience, some agency and union respondents have recognized potential improvements or been inspired by the discussion to reinvigorate their own programs. The impact has been especially clear in the area of collaboration and joint program sponsorship. This early impact is to be expected in the action research model that has been implemented throughout the F-17 project.
Phase 2 will continue to call on input from university-based consultants Dr. June M. Fisher, MD, Professor at the University of California at San Francisco Medical Center, Dr. Paul Landsbergis, Professor at SUNY Downstate, Dr. Deborah McLellan, PhD Researcher at Harvard School of Public Health Center for Work, Health, and Well-being and Dr. Charles Levenstein, Professor Emeritus of Work Environment Policy at University of Massachusetts, Lowell.
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Transit Green Jobs Training Partnership
January 2010 - June 2012
In January 2010, the US Department of Labor awarded a $5 million grant to the Center for a Transit Green Jobs Training Partnership under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).
The Green Jobs Partnership invested $4 million for green jobs training in four transit locations, two with highly developed labor-management structures for front-line worker training and two with no prior history of labor-management partnership for training. The four sites included: New York City Transit, Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union (TWU) and their joint Training and Upgrade Fund; the Utah Transit Authority and Local 382 Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) and their joint Intermountain Transit Career Ladder Partnership; New Jersey Transit and the New Jersey State Council of the ATU; and the Central Ohio Transportation Authority and Local 208 TWU.
In submitting the proposal, the Center and the four sites showed that transit is already a green sector. By offering an alternative to the use of private automobiles, the average transit maintenance or operations employee removes 134 tons of carbon from the atmosphere annually. Transit continues to become even more green, and employees need the skills to master complex new technologies required for even better environmental outcomes. USDOL in awarding $5 million from ARRA confirmed that transit is one of the most promising emerging green sectors of the economy.
A full report on the Green Jobs grant can be found in the Resources section. A few highlights:
• More than 5,000 training opportunities were offered through this grant process.
• NJ Transit and the NJ ATU State Council reorganized and deepened the training available to bus maintainers on electric and electronic systems as the direct result of a skills gap analysis conducted under this grant.
• The Training and Upgrade Fund (TUF) of Local 100 and NY City Transit was able to introduce training on maintenance of solar arrays that produce electric power; NY City Transit was also able to upgrade training on fiber optics.
• COTA in Columbus, OH already had achieved LEED certification for its newly built facilities; maintenance staff upgraded their skills to use the green technology to the greatest effect.
• Through the Intermountain Partnership, UTA and Local 382 were able to conduct a skills gap analysis for incumbent bus operators that led to improved training for current drivers and improved entry-level training for new employees.
• For the first time, a national joint committee brought together management and labor around issues of training for bus operators. The national joint committee explored related issues and best practices on operator safety, restroom breaks and awareness of pedestrians when executing left hand turns. The national joint committee reviewed and revised existing industry recommended practices for operator training.
• Working with several locations and with a national joint committee on bus maintenance, Center staff developed a new national training standard for advanced emissions controls consistent with EPA 2010 requirements.
• Center staff worked with joint teams at the sites to validate local training to the existing national standards.
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TCRP Project E7: Building a Joint System of Qualifications for Transit Rail Car Technicians
June 2008-2013
The internal training capacity of the transit industry has had trouble keeping up with the pace of innovation in new rail vehicle technologies. With the growth of transit rail systems, it has likewise become increasingly difficult to hire new external applicants with the needed specialized skills. Upgrading the skills of the workforce that maintains this new technology and developing a system that does this on an ongoing basis is of the utmost importance to the industry.
National standards for qualifying transit technicians through jointly developed systems for training and certification offer the best approach for meeting the skill needs of the transit industry for rail car mechanics and other maintenance occupations. Training standards were jointly developed by the industry through Center-funded projects, with the standards adopted by APTA in 2010. The ongoing national rail car training partnership has mobilized skilled Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) including mechanics, trainers and supervisors to develop standardized curricula and systems for sharing courseware materials that correspond with the curricula. Key national players in this effort include APTA, ATU, TWU and IBEW, supporting the work of some 15 agencies and their local unions such as Miami-Dade Transit, Metropolitan Atlanta Regional Transportation Authority, Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County, Minneapolis Metro, NYCMTA, San Diego Trolley, Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, TriMet and Utah Transit.
TCRP project E-7 has worked to build a shared industry framework for training, apprenticeship and certification by drawing lessons from joint training and qualification systems in other US industries and Internationally and developing a proposed national qualification system for rail car technicians.
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Keep up with updated industry training standards, share and rate courseware in bus, rail and elevator/escalator maintenance.
