Publications and Reports

Read the full report here.

On March 13, 2019, Jack Clark, Executive Director of the Center, testified before the US House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Highways and Transit on the topic of “Aligning Federal Surface Transportation Policy to Meet 21st Century Needs.” His testimony focused on the training needs in public transportation in light of new technologies and the aging workforce, which has a median age almost 10 years above the national rate. He also highlighted the lack of investment in training and the disparity of federal transit funding allocated towards human capital relative to physical capital. Jack noted the successful approaches that the Center has focused on including developing registered apprenticeship as the national standard of training and creating coursework through national consortia of transit agencies. While recommending reauthorization of the FAST Act, Jack put forward several changes that would place more focus on the frontline workforce and ensure that agencies are prepared for the future.
Congressional Testimony

Pierce Transit is part of the Center’s transit apprenticeship initiative and has received technical assistance in structuring their apprenticeship program as well as financial assistance to reimburse some training costs.
Read the article on their program in APTA’s Passenger Transport.

It is well known that public transit in the United States faces a workforce skills crisis. A lot of attention—properly—goes to training for skilled craft positions, like bus mechanics. At the Transportation Learning Center, we focus on the need for training in those occupations, particularly as new technology such as Battery Electric Buses requires a ramp-up of electric and electronic skills training. Bus operators also do skilled work, and there are a lot more of them.
Click here to read the rest of the article.

Read the article published in ATU’s In Transit Magazine

Under the Rail Car Consortium, 16 rail transit locations and more than 40 Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) have worked since 2015 to produce high-quality training material for rail car techs. So far we have developed more than 160 hours of training across 16 courses, with more in the pipeline. We will have 35 courses by the time Phase II is complete at the end of 2019.

Since 2013, the Signals Training Consortium has moved forward with its mission to create standardized national training courseware. The development team composed of signals maintenance Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) from member agencies and unions along with instructional systems designers from the Transportation Learning Center, design curriculum and courseware for the
rail and transit industry. The Signals Consortium is now entering a new phase of work. The Center expects to be able to keep agency contributions low by continuing to leverage resources and subject matter experts from transit rail locations for national standards-based courseware development.

The scope of the AAI project is not only to develop or expand registered apprenticeship programs within the transit systems, it also includes technical assistance to ensure that these are quality apprenticeship programs with the needed support. To accomplish the goals of the project, the Center has developed five technical committees to assist with the implementation and outreach of registered apprenticeship. These five technical committees are broken up by occupations and meet at least once a year to discuss apprenticeship progress and steps moving forward.

A toolkit for increasing women’s employment in traditionally male-dominated high-wage, high-skill fields on the railroad and in public transit agencies.

Rail and transit sector jobs offer significant opportunities for women to access middle skill jobs that offer economic security and enable them to support themselves and their families. However, many transit and rail jobs are considered nontraditional occupations for women. Women still remain underrepresented in the major categories of jobs, especially the high-wage, high skilled blue-collar jobs. This toolkit is designed to help rail companies, transit agencies, training programs and unions break through the occupational segregation that limits women’s participation in a range of rail and transit sector jobs.

Making Headway is the Center’s bi-annual newsletter reporting on the National Rail Car Training Consortium’s recent news and activities.

This joint labor-management effort uses a proven model for multiple other similar consortia.  Products include - instruction ready courseware and videos, a nationally recognized apprenticeship program for rail car maintainers, and train-the-trainer program.