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Spotlight on Frontline Workforce - Students at APTA Youth Summit Explore Transit Frontline Careers

Posted July 2015

Last week, 50 brilliant high school students across the country came together in Washington DC for the 4th Biennial APTA Youth Summit, to explore how public transportation can build better communities and a healthy environment. Deputy Director, Xinge Wang and Project Manager, Tia Brown from the Transportation Learning Center, a sponsor of the event, hosted an interactive session to familiarize students with the mission critical transit frontline workforce. More than 80 percent of public transportation employees work on the front line and over 400,000 frontline career opportunities with good pay and benefits are expected to open up in the next decade. Students showed great interest in exploring the various jobs that keep buses, trains, elevators, escalators and stations running. Through role play and other fun exercises, they learned to appreciate the responsibilities and challenges of frontline jobs. At the end of the session, students had a much better understanding of the skills and qualifications required.  They came to understand career pathways for these transit operations and maintenance jobs - knowledge that will be helpful for their future selection of career and studies.