Regina Transit grapples with shortage of drivers
Union cites abuse from public for high turnover rate
Regina Transit is dealing REGINA with high turnover among bus drivers, leaving the department “consistently understaffed” and driving up overtime costs.
City Hall revealed the problem in its budget proposal, released Feb. 1.
The proposal said that between 25 and 30 transit operators leave every year. It takes about two months to train their replacements, forcing the department to call on other drivers to pick up the slack.
Arnie Buehler, manager of transit operations and training, said the department’s annual turnover rate — about 15 per cent of the entire staff contingent — is not uncommon for transit services in Canada.
“It’s something that we’re trying to deal with,” he said. “Whenever someone would be leaving, we would be sitting down with them and going through some of the issues they faced.”
He said most drivers are simply retiring.
In 2017, the department also had eight resignations. In previous years, they’ve had as many as 18 drivers quit.
Buehler said that most leave because they find other opportunities. But Kevin Lucier, president of the union representing the operators, suspects many just get fed up with the demands of a “tough job.”
“It’s a difficult position to deal with the public, the time schedule, the road conditions, the weather,” he said.
“You’re essentially a one-man team out there.”
He said drivers often don’t have sufficient time to complete their routes. He called the schedules “very tight.”
“Any sort of disruption or delay out on the road is very difficult to pick up,” Lucier said. “At that point you start getting a little bit of pressure from the public because you’re late all the time — it leads to a lot of pressure.”
Sometimes that pressure escalates to verbal or physical abuse.
“That is something that we deal with literally on a weekly basis, if not daily,” he said. “Everybody has a limit.” Buehler said that’s news to him. He knows that altercations happen, but doubts it’s as frequent as Lucier claims.
“In any industry you’re going to have some unsatisfied customers, but I would say we don’t have that many,” he said.
He said the transit department takes safety seriously. They’ve installed cameras, provide nationally certified training and have an officer on call to deal with testy situations. He’s confident that drivers have the tools they need to de-escalate conflict.
Still, he agrees with Lucier that driving a bus can be “stressful.”
Lucier said the staffing pressures got particularly bad at the end of 2017. He was pleased to see a wave of new hires in the new year, but many of those drivers are still in training; they aren’t yet able to drive a bus on their own.
He said he knows of operators who work up to 120 hours in a twoweek period.
The union is calling for measures to help protect drivers from abuse. They’ve suggested installing plastic shields to protect drivers from violence, according to Lucier.
He said the city has not been receptive to the idea.
Buehler explained that shields have not proven effective in other cities where they ’ve been tried. He argued that buses are safer when drivers can build relationships with passengers. Shields, he said, can get in the way.
“How they actually deal and interact when you put barriers in place is almost counterproductive to what they’re trying to do,” he said.
He said Regina Transit has “come a long way” in engaging its drivers, handing out surveys and sounding them out on training and equipment.
But he admits it’s a matter of “perception,” and the union might feel differently.
In Lucier’s view, the city doesn’t understand the predicament drivers face out there on the streets.
“I would maybe suggest a little more compassion amongst the management team toward the members,” he said. “I know some of our members do feel sort of alone out there on the road, so a little more support there could possibly go a long way.”