Measuring Up: Volume 1

Research shows 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 reduced maintenance costs and improved vehicle reliability.

​Measuring Up has gone further than many studies in identifying the impacts of training because of the perseverance of the Center’s research team and the thoughtful assistance provided by Pennsylvania’s transit systems and unions, particularly at SEPTA. Most importantly, however, this research was able to find and measure these results because of the extraordinary effectiveness of the Keystone Transit Career Ladder Partnership and the training it has developed. This second edition of Measuring Up builds on research conducted by the Center over the past several years. In 2003 Pennsylvania Transit on the High Road examined the history of Pennsylvania’s innovative Keystone Transit Career Ladder Partnership and reported leadership impressions. In 2004 Making a Difference showed that workers receiving Keystone training and their supervisors perceived the program to be extremely valuable. Measuring Up builds on that earlier work by exploring quantitative changes in the key components of transit operations and their linkages to the new Keystone maintenance training.