e-Transit: Electronic Business Strategies for Public Transportation. Volume 3: Using the Internet for Transit Training and Certification

摘要

Recognizing that the transit industry should explore the potential of e-business, TCRP initiated Project J-09, e-Transit: Electronic Business Strategies for Public Transportation in 2001. This multitask study of the potential for electronic business activities in the transit industry has seven tasks, including Task 6, Web-Based Training and Certification. This research project was designed to explore the potential of web-based training (WBT) to provide cost-effective, high-quality training to the transit industry. Internet hardware and software technologies and applications are evolving rapidly to provide the tools needed to develop and supply training for an abundance of topics via the World Wide Web. These products, services, and resources enable staff persons in most sectors of the economy to engage in training without many of the constraints endemic to classroom courses. The resulting research findings reported here strongly support the perspective that the transit industry can and should move more fully into the WBT arena. WBT experts expect the training to provide significant benefits; however, the transit industry is generally slow in adopting and adapting to new technologies such as the Internet. Moreover, the research showed that the transit industry is constrained because it lacks a knowledge and resource base that transit agencies can use to identify WBT needs, approaches, requirements, and resources. As several research sources indicated, the transit industry needs to look at training as a business strategy.