News

Bay Area Transit Acting on Skills Crisis

Posted October 2015

“About 50 percent of our technical workforce has retired in the last two years.  Another 30 percent will retire in the next five years,”

“We expect to lose 40 percent of our workers to retirement in the next five years.”

“Close to 50 percent of our workforce could retire now, and they certainly will in the next five years.”

That’s how the discussion opened when several major Bay Area transit agencies met with the Center during the APTA Annual Conference in San Francisco.

Beverly Scott, an active Center Board member and former GM at several agencies, and Center Founding Director Brian Turner convened the discussion.  The purpose of the gathering was to share some information on newly launched Center projects and to compare notes on the initiatives Bay Area transit agencies are taking to address their workforce needs.  California higher education representatives also joined in for part of the meeting.

BART, San Francisco MTA (or Muni), SamTrans and Valley Transit all participated in the discussion.  AC Transit and Golden Gate did not have representatives in the room, but both indicated interest in working across locations to address workforce needs.

Agency representatives offered testimonials to how well past projects the Center coordinated had helped them, and they expressed interest in joining current projects.  Chuck Harvey from SamTrans cited his long and deep history with the Center.  A skills gap analysis done by the Center helped SamTrans develop a formal joint committee on training and skills.  SamTrans already had a strong maintenance training program, and the joint committee worked to make it better.  Mean Distance between Failures is now 30,000 miles.  Patrice McElroy from BART spoke about the Elevator-Escalator Consortium.  The State of California had decided that BART did not have a sufficient number of state-certified technicians to maintain its own elevators and escalators.  Because of the work the Consortium had done, BART was able to develop and implement a joint apprenticeship program for elevator-escalator technicians that the state did recognize for certification.  More than half of BART technicians now have the required certification.  Gusti Clark from Muni noted that development of new apprenticeship programs is at the heart of Muni’s effort to upgrade training.  Inez Evans of VTA expressed interest in joining in the Signals Consortium.

It’s clear that major challenges remain.  As noted above, everyone has a challenge in meeting the large number of vacancies retirements will bring.  Many of the agencies have already started partnerships with high schools, community colleges, community-based organizations and workforce boards to address that need.  They want to do more, and the education representatives made it clear that they want to be partners in the effort.

Recruiting, training and retaining workers for traction power on both overhead catenary and third rail emerged as a major unaddressed need.  At the end of the meeting, agency and Center representatives agreed on the need for continuing dialogue and exploration of how to deepen the career pathways work in northern California.

For more information, contact Center Executive Director Jack Clark.