C-Tran is trying to work its way out of a bad cycle with its bus operators.
The agency is facing a driver shortage. Although it’s trying to hire enough drivers to adequately fill its ranks, it’s having a hard time keeping drivers around. Meanwhile, it’s got a schedule to keep, and many of the drivers it does have are working more and longer hours than they may want to be. That can make it hard to keep them around.
C-Tran spokeswoman Christine Selk said the agency is 22 drivers short of its 2017 budget of 205 drivers, but the problem is more about retention than it is recruitment.
She said the agency has recently improved its hiring strategy by making its online application process easier, advertising more on social media and bumping its training wages by about 20 percent.
During their nine-week training, fixed-route drivers start at $17 an hour, up from $15.47, and get a bump to $18 midway through. C-Van drivers now make $15 per hour, up from $12.71, but they don’t get the midway bump.
Problems with retention are due to an aging workforce out on short- and long-term leave because of injuries or health problems and absences related to the Family and Medical Leave Act and retirements, Selk said. In other cases, some people may drive a bus for a short time then decide, for one reason or another, it’s not the right job for them.
“We’ve got folks working really, really, really long hours. Sometimes that can be great if you’re in the market for overtime. … If that’s not your bag, chances are you’re going to leave,” she said.
Still, there are schedules to keep and routes that need to be run.
“When we don’t have a lot of operators, people still rely on the bus to be there, that entails some drivers having to work on their time off,” she said. “Our schedulers are building more overtime into some operating assignments, and that can lead to a lot of stress and can affect work life balance. We’re fully aware, and we don’t like it.”
C-Tran has an unscheduled absenteeism rate of about roughly 9 percent.
At the June 13 Board of Directors meeting, Director, Planning, Development and Public Affairs Scott Patterson told the board C-Tran has about 17,000 additional service hours in its current biennium budget that could be used for improving service, but the current staff shortage would prevent that from happening.
“C-Tran is experiencing a pretty significant staffing situation that’s quite frankly put us in a situation where we currently couldn’t expand service due to not having sufficient numbers of drivers, for example, to be providing that service,” he said.
Jonathan Hunt, vice president of the Amalgamated Transit Union, the agency that represents C-Tran drivers, said the problem isn’t exclusive to C-Tran.
“What we’re seeing is, the trucking industry is taking a lot of individuals,” he said.
He said some C-Tran drivers started the job thinking it’d be part-time work but soon found themselves working full-time hours. He said other employees in the union are having to work on their days off. He also said paratransit service in particular is understaffed, which Selk said they disagreed with.
To address retention and recruitment, particularly of paratransit drivers C-Tran created a committee, which includes administrators and union representatives, operators and dispatchers. Hunt credited them for doing so, but he worries it’s too little too late.
“To C-Tran’s credit, we’ve started to have conversations; however, it’s been minimal at best,” he said.
Selk said the committee’s makeup is evidence that the agency is serious.
“We’re not just giving lip service to it. These are pretty high-ranking folks that want to solve this,” she said.
Hunt and Selk stressed that the issue is not exclusive to C-Tran, but an industrywide issue.
Indeed, TriMet Spokeswoman Angela Murphy said in an email that the agency is being aggressive about keeping operator staffing levels and its hiring pace equal to its rate of service expansion, promotions and retirements. As C-Tran did, it’s made its hiring campaign highly public, and raised driver training wages.
“Most transit agencies around the country are also experiencing a slowdown in operator application flow and, like us, are implementing new techniques and incentives to maintain levels of new applicants,” Murphy said.
