Shortage of bus drivers has local transit agencies scrambling.
If you’ve been stuck at a Bay Area bus stop waiting for a ride that never showed, the culprit might have been a shortage of drivers that has local transit agencies scrambling to recruit new operators.
SamTrans has had to cancel hundreds of bus trips in recent months as it tries to fill 50 open driver positions and announced this week that it will shut down one of its routes because it doesn’t have enough drivers. That bus system, along with VTA and AC Transit, has ramped up its efforts to find and train new drivers amid a nationwide shortage of bus operators.
In San Francisco, where voters last November approved a new tax on Uber and Lyft trips, city officials said they plan to use the money it will raise to address a serious shortage of Muni drivers.
The problem isn’t limited to public transit, either — Bay Area school districts have similarly struggled to find drivers amid a tight labor market, high cost of living and competition with charter companies and tech industry shuttles.
“We don’t have enough operators to effectively cover all of our routes,” SamTrans spokesman Dan Lieberman said.
SamTrans classified over 800 trips from August to November as “did not operate,” which Lieberman said typically means there wasn’t an operator available to run it. The canceled runs were fewer than 1% of SamTrans’ total trips during that time period but were a sharp
increase over the previous four months, when only 60 trips were canceled — not to mention a headache for riders whose commutes stretched on as they waited for the next bus.
SamTrans began warning riders this week that it plans to shut down its ECR Rapid route, an express version of its popular route along El Camino Real, as a result of the shortage. The Rapid bus, which runs between the Daly City BART station and the Redwood City Transit Center, will take its final trip Jan. 17, though the standard route won’t change.
“This was the most painless way to keep our other routes covered,” Lieberman said.
The open driver jobs, 15 of which SamTrans expects to fill when its next class of recruits finishes training later this month, represent about 14% of the system’s 348 total driver positions.
In an effort to recruit enough new bus drivers to make up for those who are retiring, SamTrans has increased the size of its recruit classes and begun offering more of them each year.
AC Transit has joined with the Oakland community organization The Unity Council on a program to recruit and train new drivers.
AC Transit spokesman Robert Lyles said the system’s current staffing levels are “sufficient” for its routes, but he did not say how many openings the system has.
VTA similarly has sought to bolster its recruitment through new partnerships with its drivers union, as well as mentoring programs.
But though VTA has acknowledged that a lack of drivers was to blame for missed trips that have caused riders to grumble on social media, system officials place the blame on drivers calling in sick or other unplanned absences, not a lack of new drivers getting hired.
VTA has 30 vacant bus and light-rail driver positions out of its budgeted staff of 923, spokeswoman Brandi Childress said.
“The crux of the issue is a shortage of operators covering their daily scheduled work shifts,” Childress said. “As we work to fill the vacant positions, we are also exploring ways to help employees be more accountable to their scheduled work shifts and assignments.”
John Courtney, the president of Amalgamated Transit Union local 265 in San Jose, said drivers’ attendance was not the culprit and instead blamed VTA for not moving quickly enough to hire new drivers.
“We’re shorthanded in every position,” said Courtney, whose union represents drivers, maintenance workers, dispatchers and other VTA employees.
Courtney said he would “certainly” support a measure like the one San Francisco voters just approved taxing ride-hailing companies to fund better public transportation and hire new drivers.
“It helps our industry if we figure it out,” he said.