Technology Links Students and Instructors in Transit Class

A dozen students from five states were enrolled spring semester in the "Introduction to Public Transportation" course offered by North Dakota State University and coordinated by an instructor in yet another state. Interactive video technology was the key to the success of the course.

"The television technology worked very well every week," noted Jim Miller, a retired faculty member from Pennsylvania State University who is now an affiliated faculty with SURTC. "It never let us down."

The course is offered on the NDSU campus and is linked to universities and departments of transportation in North Dakota, South Dakota, Colorado, Utah and Wyoming via the TEL8 system, a telecommunications link serving that region and designed to enhance transportation research, education and technology transfer.

The course was coordinated by SURTC. "The TEL8 system and interactive video technology give us access to national-level expertise," says SURTC director Jill Hough. "Students and professionals across the region are able to share their common challenges and benefit from each others' unique perspectives and experiences."

The course featured lectures by Barbara Sisson, associate administrator for research, demonstration and innovation in the Federal Transit Administration, and Bill Millar, chief executive officer of the American Public Transportation Institute. Their presentations to the class are covered in more detail elsewhere in this issue of The Transit Lane.

In addition, students in the class presented a major research project to the class. Topics included:

• Light rail projects in Salt Lake and Minneapolis
• Smart growth
• Applications of intelligent transportation systems
• Road pricing to manage demand
• Public transportation options for riders with disabilities
• Coordination among transportation service providers.

Technical Workshop Focuses on Business Skills

Transit managers know they are in the "people business" and take great pride in their people skills. But successful transit operators must also have good business skills. A SURTC technical assistance workshop on April 23 was designed to help them hone those business skills.

"Topics such as performance evaluation and effectiveness depend on the application of sound business principles," says Jim Miller, instructor for the course. "Their long-term survival depends as much on those business skills as their people skills."

The workshop provided managers, policy board members and other personnel with practical ways to design and implement a performance tracking system for their operations. Such an evaluation system can be used to help manage the system and to report on performance to customers, policymakers and funding agencies. The workshop also explained how to determine and allocate costs to help systems with performance evaluation, billing and setting prices.

The half-day workshop was offered via the TEL8 system, a telecommunications link serving that region and designed to enhance transportation research, education and technology transfer. More than 40 people attended at sites in Minnesota, South Dakota, North Dakota and Wyoming. The workshop will be held again next year.

Miller is now an affiliated faculty with SURTC. He has more than 30 years of experience in public transportation research planning and management and is a leader in developing transportation systems for rural areas.

Handouts and a request form for a video of the course are available on the Web at www.surtc.org/training/tel8/.