TTAP Training and Continuing Education
There's an old saying that goes "If you give a man a fish you feed him for a single day, but if you teach a man to fish you feed him for a lifetime." This proverb reflects the goal of our training and continuing education program. We strive to give you the information and skills that you need to carry out your future responsibilities for the planning, design, construction, operation, and maintenance of Tennessee's public roads.
TTAP's workshops cover a broad range of topics in categories including traffic operations, roadway safety, worker safety, infrastructure management, roadway drainage, transportation planning, roadway design, Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance, and even tort liability for public officials. Some of these workshops are geared to introduce fundamental concepts to those in a new role. Other topics are intended to provide exposure to advanced concepts that may be new to even seasoned veterans. Regardless of the topic and its level of complexity, we want to convey up-to-date information to you in an interactive setting with a focus on real-world problems and solutions.
As a statewide program we attempt to provide an equitable distribution of training opportunities to transportation professionals across the state. Recurring topics are typically rotated among Tennessee's three grand divisions (West, Middle, and East) or TDOT's four regions. Topics with a narrow scope or limited instructor availability are typically offered in Middle Tennessee to equalize the travel burden for participants from West andEast Tennessee. Thanks to our support from TDOT and FHWA, TTAP is able to offer many workshops to participants from cities and counties at a reduced registration fee. To learn more about our training and continuing education workshops, please visit our training calendar at http://ttap.utk.edu/training/course-calendar.php.
Tennessee Academy of Transportation Engineering
Since 1999, the Tennessee Academy of Transportation Engineering (TATE) has provided engineers, planners, designers, technicians, and other personnel working in the transportation field with a coordinated series of classes that address current topics in design, operation, and maintenance of transportation facilities. By completing the TATE Basic Certificate, participants gain valuable exposure to a wide range of fundamental transportation topics. Completing this certificate provides a broad base of knowledge and perspective for serious transportation professionals. Participation in TATE may be driven by a personal desire to learn, by the need to attain new skills, or as a way to demonstrate commitment to supervisors and decision makers within one's own organization.
To attain the basic certificate, TATE participants must complete six core classes (Geometric Design for 2-Lane Roads and Streets, Basic Traffic Studies, Fundamentals of Traffic Control, Traffic Flow Principles, Highway Safety Analysis, and Introduction to Highway Capacity Analysis) and three elective titles. TATE participants must pass a written exam after each class, but please don't let that deter you! The goal of the exam is to ensure that you were paying attention and understand the basic concepts, not to demonstrate mastery of every topic presented in the workshop. To learn more about TATE, please visit our website at http://ttap.utk.edu/training/tate.html.
Center for Transportation Traffic Signal Academy
Traffic signal operations play an important role in the safe and efficient movement of people, goods, and vehicles through our roadway systems. In Tennessee, city and county officials are responsible for the operation and maintenance of every one of the state's approximately 6,000 signalized intersections. Many agencies must maintain aging equipment while making every effort to keep up with the regulatory requirements and engineering guidelines that govern our roadways. On top of that, traffic signal technology is changing rapidly. New systems and software offer the promise of improved operations and safety, but this same technology increasingly forces highway and public works agencies into the world of information technology and data security.
To help address these issues, the Traffic Signal Academy (TSA) focuses on emerging technologies and established best practices in signal timing procedures and policies. This reliable information can help improve benefit-to-cost ratios by operating new or existing systems with greater efficiency. TSA offers a comprehensive discussion on standards, warrants, installation and maintenance guidelines, and strategies to minimize the adverse effects of liability issues. Investing in traffic signal training, from design to operations to maintenance, demonstrates a robust commitment to continuous improvement in the nation's transportation system.
On-Site Training
Sometimes the timing or the location of TTAP's classroom training workshops is not compatible with your schedule. Maybe we have the right class to help you address an immediate need, but it's offered in the wrong end of the state. We may even have offered the class in your area, but you learned about the class too late to register or there was a conflict with your personal or organizational calendar. Perhaps we had a class that you think could help a relatively large number of employees within your organization, but we only had a few seats available for the scheduled class. On-site training could be the solution to your scheduling challenges.
When you schedule for an on-site training workshop, you benefit getting the training you want, getting as many employees trained as possible, reducing or eliminating your own travel expenses. By having the training offered when and where you want it, organizations with a large number of participants can schedule workshops exclusively for their own workforce. Agencies with smaller number of participants can partner with neighboring cities, counties, utility companies, contractors, or consultants to increase participation in order to reduce per-person expenses or meet minimum registration requirements.
TTAP's Work Zone Traffic Control and Flagger/Highway Safety workshops are our most requested on-site topics, but many workshop titles are available with ample lead times. It you want to learn more about this on-site workshop option, please contact Frank Brewer, TTAP's Training Coordinator, at 865-974-8251 or fbrewer1@utk.edu. Frank will work with you to determine the availability of workshop titles for on-site delivery, potential workshop dates, and costs. There is no predetermined cost to deliver an on-site workshop. The cost of an on-site workshop may vary based on the instructor, location, workshop duration, and number of students. Regardless, we seek to deliver high-value, low-cost training to all Tennessee cities and counties.
AASHTO TC3 Online Training
Classroom training may offer the best experience for many students, but your schedule or financial resources may prevent you from attending a workshop of interest. In other cases TTAP may not offer a class to address a topic of interest. Fortunately there are additional training resources available to local agency officials. One such resource is the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) Transportation Curriculum Coordinating Committee's (TC3's) online library of training modules. Available categories include Construction, Employee Development, Maintenance, Materials, Pavement Preservation, and Traffic and Safety.
Many of these modules are free for all users, thanks to an agreement between FHWA and AASHTO. The entire collection of more than 190 modules is free to local agency officials across the nation. To browse and access TC3 course offerings, please go to https://tc3.transportation.org/. All users will need to create an AASHTO user account to view online training modules. Local agency (cities and counties) users can use the discount code "D5X3-B3D9-52CB-4XCX" to view modules at no cost. We encourage you to check out the TC3 training library and take advantage of this impressive resource.
The Future of TTAP Training and Continuing Education
TTAP's training staff devotes a significant amount of effort to monitoring, assessing, and ultimately improving its training program. Every training participant is asked to complete a workshop evaluation form. We use this feedback to ensure that individual workshop topics and instructors are relevant, up-to-date, and meet the needs of our local transportation professionals. Additionally, evaluations and student comments are carefully reviewed to identify opportunities for improvement. This feedback may lead to the addition of new or revised material in future offerings of the same topic, the development of a new but related training workshops, or the retirement of a training topic that has become obsolete or unnecessary. Many TTAP workshops have evolved over time to keep up with technology, regulations and guidelines, and a changing workforce.
Beyond feedback from workshop participants, TTAP is constantly looking for new training topics and sources. In some cases these new training products result from an obvious need for our audience. Our recent Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) workshops are a prime example of our efforts to help local agencies address current needs. As FHWA and TDOT has placed an increased emphasis on ADA compliance, many local agencies have needed to make significant updates to their accessibility policies and procedures. Beyond existing obligations to provide citizens with accessible facilities and services, the availability of transportation grant funds is now tied to the local agency's compliance efforts. In the last three years, TTAP has offered 10 sessions in two distinct ADA related topics (ADA Self-Evaluations/Transition Plans and Overview of Elements of Public Right-of-Way Accessibility and Designing Pedestrian Facilities for Accessibility).
The CTR Traffic Signal Academy is another example of our efforts to address the needs of local agencies. TSA has filled a void providing transportation professionals with detailed information regarding the design, construction, maintenance, and operation of traffic signal systems. TSA continues to expand and evolve as we engage local, state, and federal transportation officials, engineering consultants, equipment manufacturers, researchers, and other transportation stakeholders to identify new or unaddressed needs.
Finally, we are working behind the scenes to improve your overall training experience. We hope to have a new training registration system online in early 2019. This system will improve your registration experience, enable true online credit card payment, and improve our efficiency behind the scenes. The new system will also give us the option to offer some training content in an online format, further increasing our flexibility and providing you with a greater range of training options. It will take more time to develop this online content, but we anticipate that our first efforts will also be available in 2019.
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