Welcoming the future workforce to CTtransit

It takes a lot of expertise and a wide range of skills to keep CTtransit rolling, and we’re always on the lookout for fresh talent. For National Transit Career Day on November 12, 2026, we want to highlight a group of exceptional young people who will be the future of the workforce, in transit or wherever they may set their sights.

CTtransit’s New Haven division recently hosted several students from Bridgeport’s Bullard-Havens Technical High School for a tour of its maintenance facilities.

Cynthia Streater, Maintenance Manager, Safety and Training, led the development of the partnership with the high school to welcome students to the facility. She said students learned about transit maintenance operations, technical career pathways, safety practices, and hands-on shop environments, while meeting with CTtransit’s leadership team, technicians, and service lane employees.

Streater said the visit grew out of the need for CTtransit to rebuild its apprenticeship program, with the idea originating a few years ago.

“We want to open up pipelines and different avenues, actually identify where we can get the talent that we need,” she said. That led to a partnership with the Connecticut Technical Education and Career System, which helps students learn about all the possible careers available to them, providing them with job placements that provide them with valuable work experience while continuing their education.

The hope is that such tours will prompt some students to select CTtransit as their work placement, potentially leading to careers once they graduate. It was an “aha moment” for students to realize there’s more to CTtransit than operating buses, Streater said.

“I don’t even think that these kids know that that’s a possibility or an avenue,” she said. “They kind of just take automotive [classes]. They don’t really think about diesel or large equipment, so we set up a visit just to let them know what was going on right down the street from them.”

Streater said the students were impressed with the range of career paths available at CTtransit and asked great questions, ranging from apprenticeship opportunities and transit technology to technician career growth and industry expectations.

“Some of them already had jobs, so hearing our compensation [versus] what they were going into, they were completely mind-blown,” she said, laughing. “It was a very eye-opening experience for them and also an eye-opening experience for us that there’s 25 kids in our room right now that are very interested in joining us.”

Multiply that by 17 technical high schools in the state, with multiple grades, said Streater, and the benefits of the partnership are clear.

“We have a huge avenue to get people in our doors,” she said. “We just have to structure it and package it very carefully, and that was the main point of the visit. We wanted to show them what our package entails, and what better way to do it than to bring them down to our facility?”

With one success in the books, Streater hopes there will be more.

“It was a great opportunity and moment for everyone involved,” she said.

CTtransit also regularly hosts open job fairs in all of its divisions. Just this week, HR representatives were on hand in Stamford to answer questions from potential candidates for openings in the Maintenance department.

All of CTtransit’s job openings can be found at cttransit.com, under the Careers section.