This report presents guidelines on evaluating and implementing strategies to improve the skills of the transit industry’s maintenance workforce in order to keep pace with evolving technology. This report will be of interest to transit decision makers, maintenance managers, organised labour, vendors, human resources departments, and training personnel. The report is intended to help maintenance departments develop highly skilled, high-performance work organisations. The accelerating pace of technological change and new government regulations are creating a new set of demands on transit maintenance organisations. The 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act mandated near-universal access to public transportation for passengers with disabilities. The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 set in motion stringent requirements on bus emissions. As a consequence, industry maintenance practices, collective bargaining agreements, work rules, training programs, management systems, and workers’ skills are not consistent with technological requirements. This has resulted in a knowledge gap, which undermines the industry’s ability to provide cost-effective, reliable service. Under TCRP Project F–5, Closing the Knowledge Gap for Transit Maintenance Employees: A Systems Approach, research was undertaken by Rand Corporation to assess technological demands, document current practices, and examine and propose new approaches to link maintenance-staffing practices with evolving technology to improve effectiveness. The areas addressed in the research included the range of programs currently in place, differences and similarities in current practice, analysis of major pitfalls and keys to success, an examination of vendor roles and responsibilities in training, and the effect of labour relations and work rules. To achieve the project objective, the researchers first reviewed current practices used in the transit industry and related industries to recruit, train, qualify, promote, and retain skilled maintenance employees to ensure that worker-skill levels match job requirements. An industry-wide survey of maintenance operations (bus and rail) was done to identify critical issues and current practices. The results of the survey were analysed and, on the basis of those results, in-depth case studies of a range of transit agencies were performed. Further guidelines, reflecting a systems approach, were developed. These guidelines present evaluation and implementation strategies to improve the skills of the maintenance workforce to keep pace with evolving technology. This report consists only of the guidelines. An unpublished companion report, prepared under this project, Closing the Knowledge Gap for Transit Maintenance Employees: A Systems Approach — Final Report, provides details of the analysis and the case studies performed during the course of this project. (A)
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