The city of Columbia is grappling with a shortage of bus drivers that has the current employees consistently working overtime.
Despite having 41 drivers currently serving Columbia, Adnan Halilovic, GoCOMO’s Para-Transit supervisor, said the city is seven drivers short.
Current drivers remain on each of the city’s six different routes while working mandatory overtime, says Mike Sokoff, transit and parking manager in the city of Columbia. Each route gets one bus at any given time.
That mandatory overtime is an additional eight hours per week for each driver on staff for GoCOMO. In an email, Sokoff said drivers “are free to volunteer for more, if it’s available.”
Shift structures vary from driver to driver. Sokoff offered an example of a driver “working in the morning, take a break during the afternoon then come back and drive an hour or two in the evenings.”
The city has attempted various driver recruitment tactics, including advertisements on buses and the hiring service Indeed.
Bus drivers for Columbia are required to have a commercial driver’s license with a passenger and air brake endorsement. Columbia Public Information Officer Sydney Olsen emphasized that customer service skills are vital to drivers as well.
“(Drivers) are obviously helping residents all day,” Olsen says. “That’s part of the job that’s unique to the city bus drivers.”
To aid recruitment efforts, Sokoff says the city is “willing to help people who want to become a driver get their CDL.”
He outlined the process for bringing new drivers on board:
Drivers are required to take the written test and pay for the permits on their own. The city then hires them as a temporary driver.
The drivers get paid for training hours required for the CDL exam. The exam and cost of the Missouri Department of Transportation physical exam is covered by the city of Columbia.
“Takes a little bit of time to get through everything,” Sokoff says. “But in about six weeks we can have a driver ... able to be on the street.”
Figures from the City’s Public Transit Advisory Commission shows GoCOMO’s ridership prior to December 2020 had been decreasing consistently since at least January 2017.
Some of this consistent drop in ridership can be attributed to fewer routes serving Columbia. The opposite is also true though, with a decrease in ridership also contributing to the decision to have fewer bus routes in the city, as indicated by data from the city of Columbia’s Public Transit Advisory Commission.
In both September 2017 and May 2019, the city decided to change GoCOMO routes. The decision in September 2017 saved the city a then-estimated $565,635 annually. The decision in May 2019 was to provide riders with a “safe, central transfer hub for customers,” according to the GoCOMO website at the time.
Sokoff says that, while ridership varies between routes, it has generally increased since COVID-19 restrictions were lifted.
The Columbia/Boone County Public Health and Human Services Department began easing COVID-19 restrictions in January 2021 when the department began adding exceptions to the mask mandate in place at the time.
The Public Transit Advisory Commission’s figures support Sokoff’s point. January 2021 saw an increase in ridership by about 105% compared to January 2020.
From January to June 2021, the last month that data is available, GoCOMO’s ridership saw an increase no less than 65%, which came in March.
The Columbia City Council voted Sept. 20 to extend the fare free program through the end of the 2022 Fiscal Year. Fares were initially suspended in March 2020, but the city has continued the practice since, which officials say has undoubtedly helped ridership numbers.
The routes run by city buses take about 45 minutes and serve the community without charge from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday, 9:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Saturdays and does not run on Sundays. Routes can be found on GoCOMO’s website.
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October 08, 2021 at 04:30AM
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