Measuring Up Interim Report

​The Measuring Up project goes beyond earlier research by showing that enhanced maintenance training through Pennsylvania’s statewide Keystone Transit Career Ladder Partnership has (1) raised the knowledge and skill levels of transit maintenance employees, (2) led to improved effectiveness in diagnostics and repair and (3) yielded significantly reduced maintenance costs and improved vehicle reliability.

This Interim Report breaks new ground in comparing the value of savings in SEPTA’s maintenance program with the costs of Pennsylvania’s innovative Keystone Transit Career Ladder Partnership. This training program is uniquely based on an effective labor-management training partnership and a joint process driven by objective data identifying the training needs of transit systems and their workers and unions. Research is continuing to isolate the contribution of the new training program from all the other factors that simultaneously impact transit maintenance and operations. The wide range of changing conditions surrounding any transit training program – changes in fleet composition and age, weather, management strategies, workplace practices, the labor relations climate, and so forth – make this further analysis a challenge. But it is a challenge the Center is committed to pursuing.