“Not everyone understands just how valuable it is to have a pension and affordable healthcare,” said Chris Van Eyken, program manager for Transit Center and the author of the report. Depending on the state, acquiring a commercial driver’s license can cost thousands of dollars and take weeks or even months, and some agencies like the MTA in New York make their applicants wait six to 12 months just to be added to a hiring list.Įven if all those barriers are struck down, though, experts say many agencies still need to rethink how they communicate about the hiring process to applicants - and the benefits that await them when they jump through those hoops. While securing new funding for agencies to up driver’s pay and increase signing bonuses is an absolute must - particularly from federal agencies, which traditionally have offered mass transit little money for operations - the Transit Center team says it’s just as critical for agencies to cut the costs of getting onto the job into the first place. In 2021, the average transit worker was nearly 53 years old, more than 10 years older than the average American worker in other industries, and a staggering 72% of drivers who climbed behind the wheel just seven years ago are predicted to have either retired by the end of 2022, or switched to a better-paying job in another industry, like using their commercial driving license to operate a truck. Unsurprisingly, those lucky boomers are some of the only ones who can afford to stay behind the wheel today - and they won’t stay there for long. Today, an MTA driver in New York City can expect to make $25.49 an hour on her first day on the job, or about 40% less than the living wage for a single parent of one child in that region. Perhaps the most obvious factor driving the bus operator shortage is low pay - though Transit Center researchers emphasize that it wasn’t always that way.īack when baby boomers were first entering the workforce, becoming a bus driver was actually one of the fastest routes to the middle class for poor Americans, until costs of living skyrocketed, pensions were gutted, and the time it took to jump to the next pay grade swelled to as much as five years on the job. Here are four reasons why it’s so hard to hire and keep a bus driver on the payroll these days - and what to do about them.ġ. And that may be because the solutions auto the problem aren’t as simple as just giving public transportation the robust funding it deserves. That foundational challenge, though, has been relatively under-discussed in the debate about how to help transit agencies recover the riders they lost during the pandemic, even as journalists wonder why sky-high gas prices aren’t tempting people onto shared modes. This article was first published by Streetsblog.īus driver shortages are undermining transit agencies’ efforts to recover from the pandemic and become the front-line mobility option that American cities need - and those shortages won’t end until policymakers and transportation leaders confront the many structural reasons why so few Americans are climbing into the (bus) driver’s seat, a new analysis argues.Īccording to a recently released report from Transit Center, more than nine in 10 public transit agencies “are having difficulty hiring new employees … and bus operator positions are the most difficult to fill.” Moreover, those shortfalls are forcing a staggering 71% of providers to either cut or delay service, while others, like Los Angeles, are postponing service upgrades that would increase shared mobility access in the Black and brown neighborhoods that need it most. ![]() Training vehicle at Farragut Square, Washington, DC Image by Adam Fagen licensed under Creative Commons.
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