The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently issued three recommendations for transit agencies following a review of the transit workforce.
The transit system requires a skilled, qualified workforce. Annually, the Federal Transit Authority (FTA) provides more than $12 billion to support and expand transit services.
As technology advances and employees retire, the industry will have trouble finding eligible applicants for transit jobs.
In its report, the GAO concluded the FTA’s strategic planning could be more effective regarding assisting transit agencies with workforce issues and federal workforce projections either don’t include or aren’t relevant to the transit workforce.
Currently, the best information available on transit job projects was published in 2015, according to the FTA. The report also contained information on services that are not defined by the Department of Transportation as transit, including taxis and school buses.
Transit-specific data would be expensive to obtain, according to the report.
The GAO issued recommendations for the FTA administrator. The recommendations instruct the administrator to collaborate with transit stakeholders to determine whether additional transit workforce data is needed, to develop and document a strategy that outlines how FTA can help address future transit workforce needs, and to clearly defined performance goals and measures for its transit workforce development efforts.