People involved in maintenance of transit buses must frequently address issues for which no internal written maintenance practices are available. Consequently, information must be gathered to assist in determining how best to address the issues. Whether the issue is an equipment problem, an inspection procedure, a campaign replacement, a climatological adaptation, or a routine cleaning, information usually is gathered from other transit systems and vendors, and a maintenance practice is developed to meet the needs of the local system. That practice then becomes the de facto norm for the system until a better way to address the issue is identified. Unfortunately, the results of such efforts are not typically shared with the rest of the transit industry. Consequently, many transit systems, facing the same need to provide detailed work procedures, expend valuable time and resources duplicating the research of other transit systems. Consequently, research was needed to provide guidance to transit systems on a methodology for developing bus maintenance practices and sharing them with the rest of the transit industry. The intent of this research was not to develop universal best maintenance practices, but, rather, to assist maintenance managers in obtaining and validating relevant information, filling in the gaps where necessary, developing a practice most applicable to local conditions, and appropriately sharing maintenance practices with the rest of the transit industry. Under TCRP Project E-5, the Transit Resource Center, in collaboration with John Schiavone, Consultant, was asked to develop a guidebook that provides a methodology to assist maintenance managers in developing and sharing bus maintenance practices. To complete the project objective, the research team conducted a review of research in the area of developing and sharing maintenance practices in transit and other related industries, such as trucking, airlines, and defense. A survey of APTA and CTAA members was also conducted to obtain information on methods that members currently used to develop and share maintenance practices, members’ willingness to share maintenance practices with others in the industry, members’ ideas on the guidebook content, and members’ suggestions on maintenance problem areas that would serve as useful case studies in the guidebook. The research team then identified and evaluated currently available tools and information sources that can assist in developing and sharing transit bus maintenance practices and identified the strengths and weaknesses of each tool and information source. Currently available tools and information sources included transit maintenance Web Boards, transit system best practices and process sheets, and vendor-supplied information. Based on the information collected, the research team developed this guidebook. The guidebook contains detailed instructions on how a maintenance manager can develop a maintenance practice based on the local operating environment and provides seven case studies of specific maintenance practices developed using the guidebook process. Concurrent with the development of the guidebook, the research team enhanced an on-line Web Board sponsored by the Transportation Research Board’s Committee on Transit Fleet Maintenance. This Web Board allows transit agencies to post their maintenance practices for others to review, revise as necessary for their own operating conditions, and use. The report provides instructions on how to access the Web Board and use it to develop maintenance practices and to share information on transit bus maintenance practices among transit agencies. (Author/publisher)
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