Albertans helping with bus driver shortage
Families in Toronto still face busing delays and confusion
Some Toronto students are being driven to school by bus drivers recently flown in from Edmonton, while others are being chauffeured in style — in black SUVs operated by a Toronto limousine service.
Those are some of the extreme and costly measures being taken by a consortium of Toronto school bus providers amid a driver shortage that has thrown families and schools into chaos this month.
The disruption and complaints, involving both public and Catholic boards, have been so massive the Ontario Ombudsman launched a formal investigation this week.
Kristi Dick, 36, is one of four Alberta drivers who agreed to come to Toronto for four to six weeks to help address the shortfall. “I’m adventurous,” says Dick, who arrived almost two weeks ago and started her Toronto route on Sept. 19. “It was an easy choice to make to come and help out.”
The arrangement was made by Stock Transportation, which runs the most routes within Toronto Student Transportation Services, a consortium that operates buses for both boards.
While Stock was not short of drivers for its own routes, the company offered to provide them from elsewhere to help address the unexpected shortage that hit other companies at the start of the school year.
“Our Edmonton location had a surplus, so we offered (drivers) to the Toronto consortium,” said Leslie Cross, vice-pres- ident of Canadian operations for Stock.
It’s a more immediate solution than training new drivers and completing police checks, which can take three to four weeks. Return flights for the Edmonton drivers, as well as shared hotel accommodation, meals and wages, will be paid for by the consortium, Cross said.
In Toronto’s west end, up to 42 students a day are being ferried to school in sixpassenger black SUVs operated by Super Stealth Inc., confirmed Peter Dawson, vice-president at the limousine service.
“This is a first for us,” said Dawson, who said the students primarily attend high schools in the west end. Dawson would not disclose the cost.
That deal, facilitated by the Toronto consortium, is among several subcontracts aimed at getting students to school until enough drivers can be hired and trained, said Kevin Hodgkinson, general manager of the student transportation group.
He said the group is already working with three taxi companies and has been scouring the landscape for other solutions. The limo company people were “the only ones that had their hands up.”
Bus companies are bearing all the extra costs as they scramble to fill the routes, said Hodgkinson. “We fully expect this to be cost neutral.”
But at a meeting late Wednesday, trustee Marit Stiles, chair of the Toronto District School Board’s finance committee, said she wants specifics on the cost and who will foot the bill.
Schools are also facing the added costs of keeping extra staff on duty to supervise children who arrive late and wait up to 60 minutes after school for their buses home. A TDSB report said the bus driver shortage affected 2,500 students in both boards and has made the start of school “exceptionally challenging.”
Four weeks in, both boards say there are still delays of up to 60 minutes as a result of drivers taking multiple routes, new drivers getting lost and continuing turnover, even after new drivers have been trained.
“The situation is improving slowly but is still a challenge,” said John Yan, of the Toronto Catholic District School Board.
Boards who pay upfront for cabs and extra staff will probably seek compensation because it’s a case of the bus companies not meeting their contractual obligations, he said. But the first priority is getting service running normally.
That bus companies are using outof-province drivers and limo services shows “it’s a big bad problem, not to be minimized,” said Deb Montgom- ery, longtime driver and president of Unifor Local 4268, who outlined to the TDSB meeting the poor pay and precarious employment faced by drivers.
She said the extreme measures are “a significant added cost for service” and it’s still not clear who will end up paying for it in the end, she said. “The money should be spent on retaining and not retraining.”