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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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Over the past year, SEPTA officials have responded to a few track fall incidents each month. Surveillance cameras often show people — some talking or texting on their phones or otherwise distracted — walking past the yellow warning strip and landing into the track area. To decrease these incidents, SEPTA is making distracted commuting the focus of its second annual “Make the Safe Choice” Safety Day.
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With President Obama’s recent bills regarding gender equality in the workplace, it’s hard to understand why gaps regarding pay, position, and opportunity for women still exist and why, in some industries such as transportation, gaps regarding position and opportunity are wider than in others.
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Going hand in hand with a standardized curriculum should be a standardized way of documenting student performance. When putting pen to paper, be sure an instructor’s documentation can be clearly understood by others who may need to refer back to it at a future date. Proper documentation is critical in the case of a student operator who may attempt to dispute a dismissal and may want to protest and pursue some type of legal options to challenge an instructor’s final evaluation.
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Based on its population of more than 6.5 million people, Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) is the fourth largest metropolitan area in the country. Based on land area, it’s the second largest. Regional planners are always looking toward alternative modes of transportation to efficiently and effectively move residents to their destinations. This is particularly important considering that 10 counties in the DFW region are rated by the EPA as non-attainment areas for ground-level ozone.
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In the public transit world, 1964 marked the world’s first high-speed rail network, driverless train and California breaking ground on the BART system. It was an important year for public transportation in Philadelphia, too. On Feb. 18, 1964, the organizational meeting that established what is now the nation's sixth largest transportation agency —SEPTA — was held.
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The Intelligent Transport Systems World Congress only occurs in the Americas once every three years and this Sept. 7 to 11 our industry returns to its origins. Five months from now in Detroit, 10,000 of the world’s high tech transportation leaders will gather to discuss and showcase the technologies that are driving the future of transportation.
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For years, Steve Jobs and company seem to have been our reliable guides to new technology and a better tomorrow. However, Apple’s decision to build a mammoth new headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. – miles from public transportation and adequate housing – amounts to a corporate denunciation of sustainability.
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The "Training Bus Instructor" (TBI) spends hours diligently working with a new hire candidate to provide basic skills training. Through this process, the required skills and knowledge successfully transfers to the student operator and they are released to a "Route Familiarization Operator" (RFO) that will help them learn the routes.
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The decision to add a new transit service can be energizing for transit agencies and communities alike. At the same time, however, this type of decision introduces a host of new questions your agency will need to address, including “What should the new service be named? What will the logo and branding look like? How will we reach consensus with all stakeholders? And, most importantly, “How will we attract and inform people who will want to use the system, so that the new line will be a success?”
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