The United States transit transportation industry has two trailblazing leaders who are forging the path to a more climate-friendly 21st century-focused world – the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) and New Flyer. Each, in their own arena, is radically altering the way we move people from one place to another. New Flyer builds battery electric buses (BEBs), and Metro is adding BEBs to their fleet.
New Flyer is the largest transit bus manufacturer in North America. They design and manufacture the Xcelsior Battery Electric Bus – an all-electric zero-emission bus powered by a high voltage electric motor.
Metro, our long-time customer, coordinates transit in a county with more than 9.6 million residents! Metro is forward-thinking and quick to step up and into the future of transit in ways that embrace new technologies as well as California’s initiatives for clean transportation. It’s not surprising that for years their fleet has included thousands of carbon-reducing CNG buses.
And it’s not at all surprising that Metro has been steadily introducing BEBs to its fleet with the goal to operate an all-electric fleet by the year 2030. Redesigning a fleet that is the size of Metro’s requires planning and coordination. At the top of the list is workforce training. And so…it should surprise no one that these two leaders in the transit transportation industry, Metro and New Flyer, would join forces to train and prepare a workforce to expertly and safely maintain buses with high voltage systems and components.
The automotive industry has been training its workforce to work on high voltage (HV) systems for a while now, but the presence of high voltage in transit bus systems is a relatively new occurrence for the U.S. transit bus workforce. The vast majority of transit mechanics and service people have little to no experience or knowledge of BEBs and other systems that operate using high voltage. Education was and is needed. We are happy to share that Immersed Technologies was asked to join in the Metro/New Flyer collaboration with the opportunity to develop 25 hours of eLearning.
Immersed Technologies is assisting Metro and New Flyer to create a library of new eLearning courses ranging from General High Voltage Electrical Safety, High Voltage Personal Protective Equipment, Lockout/Tagout, Zero Voltage Verification and the Fundamentals of Alternating Current to Energy Storage Systems, Electric Drive System Inspection, and Power Inverters and Converters to list a few. The courses range from 30 minutes to two hours in length and include illustrations, animations, photos, videos, 3d and interactive activities created and produced by Immersed Technologies to enhance the course content and support learning goals and objectives.
It’s not surprising to us that training a 21st-century transit transportation workforce got a big boost from the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority and that New Flyer stepped up to collaborate. We are glad that we could be a part of their collaboration. Well done Metro and New Flyer!