By chris zeilinger
Training for Transit Excellence in the Electric City
At a time when a lot of people were traveling to places like New Orleans or Mobile, Ala., for their Mardi Gras celebrations, I headed north, for far nobler purposes than raucous revelry. For two days in early March, I settled in to the training room of the COLTS Lackawanna Transit Center in downtown Scranton, Pa., and taught a session of our “Preparing for the CTAA Management Certification Test” course to 21 of Pennsylvania’s best transit managers.
In case you’re unfamiliar with CCTM, you really should check it out. It’s a unique professional credential, developed specifically for transit managers. Our certified transit managers have demonstrated experience in the areas of transit service design, financial management, operations management, human resource management, contract management, and transit leadership, and then have to prove their knowledge on a written exam. Oh, and for state-level or similar managers of transit grant programs, we also offer our Certified Transit Program Administrator (CTPA) professional credential, developed in partnership with the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, which includes everything in the CCTM program, plus knowledge and testing around the area of grants and program management. Details on all this are available from the CTAA website’s “Training and Certification.”
Right before the test, we took a class photo. As you can see, everyone was smiling. It was a good-natured and diverse class. We had transit managers from some of Pennsylvania’s most rural transit systems, and managers from Philadelphia-area SEPTA, which is Pennsylvania’s largest transit system. The class included people with years of transit management experience, people who were just starting their transit careers, bus managers, rail managers, planners, a couple of Pennsylvania’s state DOT staff, marketing professionals, and others. And you know what? Even when they finished their CCTM and CTPA exams, everyone was still smiling!
Are you ready to demonstrate your transit excellence through our CCTM certification program? We offer the class and testing at the CTAA Expo, and I can travel to places other than Scranton to deliver this program at a location near you. For instance, I know I’ll be in central New Jersey this summer, and we’re in conversations with a few other state DOTs and transit organizations about other places to bring CCTM in the coming year. I’d love to see you in one of my classes!
The Community Transportation Association of America (CTAA) and its members believe that mobility is a basic human right. From work and education to life-sustaining health care and human services programs to shopping and visiting with family and friends, mobility directly impacts quality of life.