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Maintenance and construction projects can present quite the conundrum for transportation organizations with rail operations: shut down a major portion or entire line in one shot to get the work done while offering substitute service for riders? Work overnights and weekends for long stretches of time? One solution to the maintenance/construction puzzle is the “blitz” — a balancing act between productivity and customer inconvenience.
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Think of a safety blitz as seeking confirmation that bus operators are in compliance, or non-compliant, with your standard operating procedures during an unannounced "spot check" of a specific skill set. A blitz may also be initiated in response to a sudden spike in unsafe actions being reported, observed or indicated by video review.
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Building new maintenance facilities for transit agencies are rarities, but when agencies do build them, it’s critical to design and build to the highest performance possible — these facilities and their efficiencies will live on for decades. As part of preserving limited revenue, agencies are focusing on how efficiently design facilities can help the bottom line.
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Transit would be better served if the pay-per-ride and unlimited fare structures that currently dominate were expanded to include more fine-tuned pricing structures similar to those offered by cell phone companies. That was the idea that won the recent second annual Outside the Box transportation conference and competition at George Mason University’s School of Public Policy.
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Switching our bus fleet to compressed natural gas from liquefied natural gas and diesel was a carefully weighed decision at DART. But in the end, it was a no-brainer: go with the fuel source that will promote clean air while saving taxpayers $120 million in fuel costs over the next 10 years.
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When the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and Paralyzed Veterans of America hold the 34th National Veterans Wheelchair Games in Philadelphia from August 12-17, SEPTA will have the opportunity to demonstrate its commitment to those who have served the Armed Forces. The Authority will provide transportation for the more than 500 veterans with spinal cord injury, amputations and neurological disorders that will travel to Philadelphia from across the country and the United Kingdom to compete.
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There should come a time during each new student’s training bus instruction, when instructor-led skill development turns to student demonstration and “Show Time” begins. It is during this time the student must perform for the instructor. I call this a “Show Me” day.
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From a customer service standpoint, the convenience and immediacy of same-day paratransit service would be a huge improvement. And from an operating standpoint, it offers the opportunity to increase productivity by filling holes in schedules left by cancellations and no-shows.
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Those who depend on mass transit believe that service should be available 24/7 so that they can get to where they need to go, whenever they need to get there. In New York, MTA customers can hop on the subway 24 hours a day. In Chicago, CTA riders can use the Blue and Red “L” lines around the clock. But in cities like Boston and Philadelphia, major service lines and routes are not always all that convenient in the early hours of the morning — until now.
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All too often what was taught during the initial training period can get diluted by what other operators may be saying or doing. Well-meaning veterans sometimes offer advice in an effort to “help” new operators that might be inconsistent with what was just taught to them on the training bus. Would you even recognize your past students by their driving performance? Do they resemble the student that you personally qualified into passenger service?
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I’ve been enjoying danah boyd’s book titled It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens. She is a researcher from Microsoft, New York University and Harvard who toured the country for the past several years interviewing teens about why they seem so addicted to social media and whether they are destroying their brains and their lives in the process. Her findings are basically that the kids are alright and it’s probably the parents who are crazy.
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Maintenance facilities are the operational backbone of transit agencies, helping wash, clean and maintain thousands of buses, railcars and ferries each and every day. This regular maintenance makes them huge consumers of water and energy (and money). Many cities across the country are mandating transit agencies create more efficient facilities not only as good stewards of the environment, but also to help the bottom line.
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