Project Overview:
Recent major investments in rail present significant opportunities. However, without intentional, coordinated action to enhance rail workforce development activities alongside rail system improvements or service expansions, rail employers and local communities risk facing persistent skills gaps, constrained hiring pools, and missed opportunities for realizing the full benefits of these investments.
To address this challenge, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements (CRISI) program has funded a workforce development project aimed at reducing long-term industry recruitment challenges, fostering local talent pools and career pathways into rail, and ensuring that training and education aligns with the operational realities of rail. The project will produce a nationally replicable framework for developing, sharing and evaluating rail workforce strategies, helping the industry build a resilient, skilled workforce ready to support continued growth and innovation.
Project Team:
Three university-based transportation workforce centers are partnering to lead rail workforce development efforts in their respective regions—Montana State University (MSU), the University of Memphis (UofM), and California State University, Long Beach (CSULB). Each participating university will apply a consistent methodology to design locally-relevant rail workforce development strategies aimed at creating sustainable talent pipelines rooted in their surrounding regions.
The goal is to ensure that the jobs, innovation, and economic value created by rail investments are filled by a skilled, community-based workforce prepared to meet today’s and tomorrow’s industry demands.
The project team will work with industry to align education, training, and outreach strategies with real-world rail workforce needs. An additional project team member—Big Sky Passenger Rail Authority (BSPRA)—will lead a national industry advisory group to ensure that education and training approaches adopted by the project align with overarching national industry trends and workforce priorities.
In addition to the national advisory group, each university center will be guided by local Multisector Working Groups made up of rail industry leaders from across the rail ecosystem, including freight and passenger rail, alongside education and training partners, labor organization representatives, and workforce stakeholders from their respective regions. This approach combines regional engagement, industry-driven planning, and scalable workforce development strategies to strengthen long-term rail talent pipelines across diverse rail environments.
Key Strategies and Deliverables:
In close collaboration with industry partners, the project will implement and support strategies that strengthen local and regional rail talent pipelines. At a minimum, these efforts will include:
- Documenting clear, multidisciplinary career pathways into rail, spanning operations, engineering, technology, data, planning, and management
- Establishing a Faculty Rail Fellows Program, engaging K-12, community college, and university educators in developing hands-on, project-based learning modules aligned with industry needs
- Launching Summer Rail Academies to introduce middle and high school students to rail careers, build early awareness, and expand future hiring pools
- Creating a national coordination and knowledge-sharing hub through NNTW, enabling industry, labor and education partners to access tools, lessons learned, and technical assistance to replicate successful models in other states and regions
