Driver shortage limits Metrobus service expansions

Miami-Dade County’s bus system is rolling down a tricky road to recruit drivers and fill almost 200 lingering vacancies. Without them, the county is limited in adding new routes or more frequent buses.

“We have 1,414 operators on staff,” 16 of whom work less than 25 hours a week, said Sean L. Adgerson, deputy director and chief of transit operations at the Department of Transportation and Public Works (DTPW). “That makes 1,398 full-time bus operators, and tomorrow [Feb. 9], we graduate a class of 38. On Monday, when they start working [there will be] 1,452. In terms of vacancies that would put us for full-time operators, that’s another little less than 200.”

The department has continuous advertisements, rolling recruitment, sign-up bonuses and referral bonuses seeking to cut bus driver vacancies and fill classes training new hires, said Lydia M. Knight, the department’s human resources chief.

“There were actually eight classes that took place in 2022 because we were looking forward to filling a lot of the vacancies, and out of those eight classes, we actually had over 200 graduates,” said Ms. Knight.

Those who meet goals get a $5,000 sign-up bonus. The county website says the bonus is in two parts, “$2,500 paid after acceptance, enrollment, and completion of DTPW Bus Operator Training Program and six months of successful performance; remaining $2,500 paid after 18 months of successful performance as a DTPW Bus Operator.”

Bus drivers must pass nine-week training, said Mr. Adgerson, “and depending on if the person comes in with the CDL [commercial driver’s license] or not, will determine sort of the path they have to follow. If they don’t have their commercial driver’s license, they have to spend an additional training to get their commercial driver’s license on top of the training that they go through.”

Training focuses on aspects such as driving in different weather conditions, customer service, and how to operate a bus safely, said Mr. Adgerson.

“They’re going to take them into a variety of different settings – on the highway, in the neighborhoods, on boulevards, over at the beach. They’re going to expose them to a variety of different conditions so they get comfortable in it…. As they get closer to the end, you’re starting to teach them about the routes itself.”

“I’m starting to see that trend of more people in the class applying for jobs,” he said. “I think post-pandemic as the world starts to normalize again … we’re starting to get some natural patterns. You’re getting interest. Our overall numbers of people have sort of remained stagnant, and that’s because … one, you [have] natural attrition as people retire and move on and do other things, but we also, the bus operators, are sort of like a feeder for the rest of our organization.”

Investments are made in Metrorail operators too, said Mr. Adgerson. “As we’ve made an effort to improve our staffing levels on the rail side of the organization, a lot of them come from the bus operator part of the organization.”

The department attends high school career fairs, said Ms. Knight, to expose graduating students to its careers.

“We need the bus operators in order to provide the service … and right now the buses don’t operate themselves, so we need them [bus drivers] to be there to do it,” said Mr. Adgerson. “Also, the number of bus operators we have impacts our ability to grow our service.… If we want to add more frequency, you need operators to do that.” And expanding the route network to added areas also requires more drivers, he noted.
Other services in the system have continued to grow.

“When we did [the] Better Bus [Network], we set it up in a way for it to be operator neutral, meaning the service changes we made were in line with our current levels of operator,” said Mr. Adgerson. “If you want to continue to invest in the network, you need more operators to make those investments… So you can say ‘this bus route now comes, let’s say, every 15 minutes today,’ but if I want to make it come every 10 minutes, I need more operators to do that. So we’re able to deliver the service with what we have in the Better Bus Network redesign. As we continue to massage the network and have the network grow, yes, we’ll need those operators on board to be able to do that.”