Closing the Knowledge Gap for Transit Maintenance Employees

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. The report is intended to help maintenance departments develop highly skilled, high-performance work organizations. 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 labor relations and work rules.