Fingerprints on future mobility systems: Empowering the next generation of transportation professionals By Tyler D. Reeb, PhD; Director of Research and Workforce Development, Center for International Trade and Transportation - Long Beach State University, College of Professional and International Education, METRANS Transportation Center Abstract New technologies and consumer attitudes are driving change in personal vehicle, mass transit, active transportation, and goods movement domestically and internationally. Meanwhile, entrepreneurs are developing new business models that offer alternatives to traditional owner-operator models. Successfully addressing those trends will require leaders in industry, government, and education to challenge core assumptions about the role transportation will play in moving people and goods through twenty-first-century urban, suburban, exurban, and rural communities. Challenging those assumptions also means embracing the information-based economy as well as workforce realities facing families. To address this broad range of challenges, workforce development professionals must develop effective curricula, experiential learning models, and career pathways to prepare emerging professionals for that brave new world of mobility. This commentary examines investment in such workforce development infrastructure to ensure that future transportation professionals are prepared to design, develop, operate, and maintain the systems that will move people and goods in the future. Perhaps the easiest way to convey the magnitude of change transforming the mobility systems that move people and goods is to take a moment to reflect on the difference between the telephone workforce today and 20 years ago. Two decades ago, a phone was merely a phone; it was tied to a location and transmitted analog audio. Two decades later, phones are supercomputers that facilitate a new paradigm for human mobility and consumer behavior. In the time it took to read this paragraph, countless commercial transactions were made with mobile computing devices that led to the movement of people and goods throughout the world. This world of digital mobility is the only reality that the Millennial and Digital Native generations have ever known, which means that new workforce development strategies must address the emerging transportation ecosystem, not its prior iteration back when personal phones were merely phones. Multijurisdictional and Transdisciplinary Solutions to Move Beyond Silos The children riding on tricycles today are fast moving into an Internet-of-things world where new technologies and consumer attitudes are driving change in personal vehicle, mass transit, active transportation, and goods movement domestically and internationally. Entrepreneurs are developing new business models that offer alternatives to traditional owner-operator models; this includes mobility memberships that give subscribers access to a multimodal suite of transportation options with manual and electric bicycles and scooters on local streets and a blend of public- and private-sector vehicular and mass-transit options for longer commutes. Successfully addressing these transformational technologies and societal trends will require leaders in industry, government, and education to challenge core assumptions about the role transportation will play in moving people and goods through twenty-first-century urban, suburban, exurban, and rural communities. Challenging those assumptions also means embracing the information-based economy as well as workforce realities facing families.

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Said another way, leaders in industry, government, and education must look beyond traditional disciplinary silos to solve mobility challenges in the future. Similarly, local, state and federal policymakers will need to move beyond jurisdictional and regulatory silos to find new ways to train, recruit, and retain the next generation of transportation professionals in a highly competitive labor marketplace. Take a moment to consider the future transportation ecosystem that workforce development professionals must understand in order to develop effective curriculum, experiential learning models, and career pathways to prepare emerging professionals for that brave new world of mobility. In the personal vehicle sector, companies like Qualcomm and Intel—who made semiconductors and processors for the supercomputers that drove the Internet, e-commerce, and smart phone revolutions—are now investing billions of dollars into the development of self-driving vehicles, AKA: super computers on wheels.1 Other Silicon Valley giants like Google, Apple, Lyft, and Uber are investing heavily in the vehicle-to-vehicle, vehicle-to-infrastructure, and smart-city technologies that will enable those driverless vehicles.2 In the freight and logistics sector, a range of information-technology, electrification, and automation trends are creating demands for new skills and competencies in occupations beginning at the entry level and continuing all the way to the C-suite. Only two decades ago, the logistical arrangements for freight shipments were largely coordinated via fax machines, phone calls, clipboards, and handshakes. On the consumer end of things, in-person shopping was still the preferred mode of shopping. Back then, if you said “Amazon” most people thought of a river. Utter “Amazon” two decades later and most people think of an e-commerce multinational corporate monolith that can ship virtually anything you want anywhere in the world. It is widely known that Amazon is testing unmanned drone parcel deliveries and has patents on a range of drone technologies that would have seemed like science fiction only a few years ago. What is most amazing about this notion is that most of the American public has accepted this future reality and is not surprised by the prospect of flying robots one day replacing delivery drivers.3 In the active transportation sector, bicycles and scooters are driving considerable change in urban centers. Over the last decade, bike-sharing depots have become ubiquitous in most American cities. Also on the technological horizon are a host of new high-speed rail, crowd-sourced busing, zero-emission, and Hyperloop technologies that could create new opportunities for publicly and privately funded mass transit options. Predicting the future of mobility is impossible. But one thing is certain, the industry, educational, and governmental professionals who will shape emerging mobility systems will need to collaborate and integrate data and infrastructure systems as never before. Only in this richer context is it possible to comprehend and account for the full implications an abiding question:

What are the most effective ways to prepare the next generation of mobility professionals to design, develop, operate, and maintain the systems that will move people and goods in the future?

Clearly new transportation systems will increasingly transform the way businesses and communities function in the future. In turn, and equally important to consider, are the ways that members of the new mobility workforce will have to respond to challenges driven by new consumer preferences, governmental mandates, and the reality that the finite amount of

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space currently available to move people and goods will become more constrained and congested in the years ahead. All of this means the financial viability and resilience of future mobility systems will be determined by how successful stakeholders across all modes are in synchronizing their efforts across oversight, transaction, and logistics/operational levels as shown in Figure 1.4

Figure 1: A layered, cross-functional supply chain model helps identify related regulatory, contractual, and physical challenges facing goods movement stakeholders and related segments of the workforce. Similar models can be applied to human mobility systems. Factoring in the jurisdictional layers and cross-functional roles stakeholders in mobility systems play makes it possible to document and analyze simultaneous interactions occurring at any given step in a human or goods movement mobility system. Such an approach calls for transdisciplinary workforce development research and related strategic initiatives that move beyond traditional business, policy, and educational silos to better address the regulatory, contractual, and physical challenges facing the new mobility workforce. Addressing National Transportation Workforce Challenges In 2012, an exemplary group of leaders in industry, government, and education gathered in Washington, D.C., to address the most pressing issues facing the new mobility workforce at the National Transportation Workforce Summit. Organized by the Council of University Transportation Centers with the support of a broad range of key transportation stakeholders, the summit was unique because it convened leadership from the U.S. Departments of Transportation, Labor, and Education to focus on four areas of challenge and opportunity: 1. Demographic changes among the user population as well as the future workforce, 2. Lack of career awareness and competencies needed in the field, 3. Emerging technologies, and 4. Increasing and changing demands on transportation agencies. Those challenges are more relevant today than they were in 2012. Beyond identifying top priorities for the new mobility workforce, the summit embodied the multidisciplinary and non-siloed approach required to develop that future workforce. A joint report from the

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summit concluded that transportation employers will need to hire “4.6 million workers—1.2 times the current transportation workforce—in the next decade, due to the industry’s employment needs that will result from growth, retirements, and turnover.”5 In the aftermath of that report, U.S. Department of Transportation officials contended that the nation’s transportation systems were fast approaching a “demographic cliff”.6 Another common reference is the “silver tsunami,” a perfect storm of Baby Boomer retirements along with an alarming lack of skilled professionals to assume those critical transportation occupations. In this perfect-storm scenario, transportation jobs remain unfilled, the movement of people and goods grows more inefficient, companies lose revenue, and the national economy suffers. To prevent that scenario, thought leaders in industry, government, and education must develop innovative ways to bridge the gap between the skills job seekers bring and skills that employers need while developing new local, state, and national policy initiatives that support those goals. Empowering the Next Generation Employers across all sectors are increasingly responding to workforce challenges by investing more time and resources into recruiting and developing skilled transportation professionals. Major supply-chain employers are now developing nontraditional apprentice programs to create their own minor leagues of talented professionals after realizing that such efforts are more sustainable than poaching employees from competing firms. Apprenticeships are most commonly associated with training programs for union workers. But there is a growing trend in private-sector firms to develop industry-sponsored apprentice programs to bridge the skills gap between classrooms and workplaces. Investing in apprenticeships can save organizations recruitment and training costs, given that employees can be more accurately placed in positions that match the knowledge and skills gained in the apprenticeship. As a result, these programs help employers to reduce skills gaps. In an Urban Institute study consisting of 900 organizations with apprenticeship programs, approximately 90% of organizations reported they would highly recommend apprenticeship programs to others, because the programs helped meet skill demands and reduce gap.7

The emergence of nontraditional apprentice programs is part of a larger trend toward more workplace-learning initiatives formed through employer-educator partnerships. It is commonly observed that K-12 and postsecondary education fails to prepare students for the workplace by emphasizing individualized work and abstract theoretical knowledge over workplace competencies and multi-disciplinary understanding. The modern work environment calls for professionals who have in-depth knowledge of their discipline, but a breadth of knowledge in regard to how their field intersects with others. It seems the days of laissez–faire hiring strategies are long past for employers seeking sustainable workforces. It is no longer sufficient to post a job description on indeed.com or LinkedIn and passively wait for talented applicants. Savvy employers understand that investment in employee talent pipelines, career pathways, and other employer-educator partnerships are keys to long-term viability. Conclusion Through an examination of investment in workforce development infrastructure, we can work to ensure that future transportation professionals are prepared to design, develop, operate, and maintain the systems that will move people and goods in the future. Leaders in industry, government, and education must make clear to future generations that they have unprecedented opportunities to rebuild America via new systems that move people and goods

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through smart cities and intelligent rural corridors. In the end, humans, not machines, will solve mobility problems created by disruptive technologies and societal trends. It is imperative that the children riding tricycles today grow to understand that their fingerprints will soon cover the mobility systems of the future. Systems that will make their homes, communities, and countries safer, healthier, and more prosperous. If today’s emerging professionals understand that, then the future of mobility is in good hands. References1. Qualcomm. Develop smart transportation solutions for cities in motion. 2018.

https://www.qualcomm.com/solutions/internet-of-things/smart-cities/transportation 2. Silver D. Self-Driving Cars Will Keep Getting Better Forever. Forbes. September 4,

2018. https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidsilver/2018/09/04/self-driving-cars-will-keep-getting-better-forever/#4053ee5a217d

3. Amazon Prime Air. 2018. https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Prime-Air/b?ie=UTF8&node=8037720011

4. WillisHH,OrtizDS.EvaluatingtheSecurityoftheGlobalContainerizedSupplyChain.Infrastructure,Safety,andEnvironment.RANDCorporation.2004.https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/technical_reports/2004/RAND_TR214.pdf

5. StrengtheningSkillsTrainingandCareerPathwaysAcrosstheTransportationIndustry:DataReportonFutureWorkforceNeeds.U.S.DepartmentsofEducation,Training,andLabor.August2015.https://s3.amazonaws.com/PCRN/docs/Strengthening_Skills_Training_and_Career_Pathways_Across_Transportation_Industry_Data_Report.pdf

6. NunezJ.FHWA,FTAtakeonworkforce“cliff.”RT&S.June15,2016.https://www.rtands.com/track-maintenance/off-track-maintenance/fhwa-fta-take-on-workforce-cliff/

7. SouthwestTransportationWorkforceCenter.JobsNeedsandPrioritiesReport,Phase2:SouthwestRegion.2016.https://www.swtwc.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/FHWA_Job-Needs-Phase-2-Report-_Southwest.pdf

SuggestedCitationReeb, T. Fingerprints on future mobility systems: Empowering the next generation of transportation professionals. Journal of Interprofessional Workforce Research and Development. Volume 2:Issue 2, 2019.