TTC boss defends surplus of bus drivers

Idle staff costs $95K a week, but Andy Byford says lower overtime will balance budget

TTC CEO Andy Byford expects labour costs for bus drivers will come in on or under budget by the end of the year, despite a temporary glut of drivers that is costing the TTC $95,000 a week for employees, who show up and get sent home early because there’s no work for them.

So far this year, the TTC has paid out about $1 million for operators who come to work and get sent home five hours into their eight-hour shift because they’re not needed.

Overall the TTC has budgeted about $330 million this year for bus drivers.

Admitting the optics are bad, Byford nevertheless insisted that having too many drivers is better than cancelling buses or explaining why the TTC doesn’t have enough operators for the Pan Am Games and offpeak service improvements that start in May.

“I would much rather be having a conversation of being over (the required number of drivers) than me cancelling service because we’re under,” he said.

The drivers are part of the TTC’s long-standing spare board system that protects it from having to call in operators on overtime to cover for sickness or other absence.

But their union contract means drivers on the spare board can’t be assigned to different kinds of work such as supervising rear-door loading or adding an additional bus to a route’s service.

The TTC says the spare board saves about $60,000 a week on overtime.

The surfeit of drivers right now comes while the transit system is hiring for the Pan Am games and this year’s service improvements.

At the same time, fewer than the expected number of bus drivers retired this year and more than the anticipated number of operators have returned from long-term sick leave.

In the end, the additional bodies will mean that the TTC saves more this year on overtime as it ramps up its driver recertification program. Normally when drivers are taken out of circulation for recertification, the replacement driver gets paid overtime. This year, those recertifications can be done on regular time, said Byford.

TTC chair Josh Colle said he believes that the TTC staffing will level out as the year goes on.

While additional service is a good thing, he said he remains concerned.

“It’s got to be done in such a way that you’re not poorly managing scarce resources. I think it’s more a matter of better timing so they’re not on board in advance of all these anticipated pressures.”

Byford said TTC managers are having another look at the staff forecasting model but it’s an art as much as a science.

“One million dollars is a lot of money in the taxpayers’ eyes and rightly so. By the end of the year, rather than being over-budget absolutely we will recoup this. I think we will likely come in under budget on labour,” he said.