This report presents guidelines on evaluating and implementing strategies to improve the skills for 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, organized labor, vendors, human resources departments, and training personnel. The report is intended to help maintenance departments develop highly skilled, high-performance work organizations.

The objectives of this research were to assess technological demands, document current practices, and examine and propose new approaches designed to link maintenance-staffing practices with evolving technology to improve effectiveness. The research will help to develop innovative practices to recruit, train, qualify, promote, and retain a skilled maintenance workforce.

Status: The study findings are available in TCRP Report 29, "Closing the Knowledge Gap for Transit Maintenance Employees: A Systems Approach." This report is available also in portable document format (PDF). (A free copy of Adobe Acrobat reader is available at https://www.adobe.com.) Double-click on the links below to access the report.