The MTA’s workforce has suffered the loss of more than 160 employees to COVID-19 and retirements have also taken a toll. “It’s the difference between providing good service and a bus that’s overcrowded or not meeting demand.” “They’re going to have to really ramp up hiring, especially going into the summer,” Patafio said. The MTA has nearly 400 bus operator vacancies, Berman said - about a 3% job-vacancy rate among the 11,700 workers at the wheel.

“This is in spite of the modest uptick in absences due to the pandemic and a hiring freeze that was recently lifted.”

“Our primary customer metrics show improved or comparable bus-service performance compared to pre-COVID levels,” said the spokesperson, Andrei Berman. Members and sponsors make THE CITY possible. The MTA has resumed hiring bus operators and dispatchers after a freeze on new hires that predated the pandemic, an agency spokesperson said. The figure can be affected by bus-operator availability, along with factors like weather and unforeseen incidents during a planned run. In April 2020, when thousands of transit workers were sidelined by positive COVID-19 tests or exposure to the virus, service delivery plunged to 90.7%. MTA data shows the agency’s rate of “service delivery” - a metric for the percentage of scheduled bus trips that are successfully completed - dipped to 95.1% in April, down from 97.7% during the same month two years earlier. “That’s not a way to get people to come back.” “We’re trying to come out of this pandemic stronger and better and instead we’re coming out stumbling and bumbling,” said JP Patafio, a vice president with Transport Workers Union Local 100.

As the MTA urges riders to return to mass transit, a shortage of bus operators has led to an increase in canceled trips on local and express routes.Ī citywide shortfall of about 400 drivers for a bus network that now carries about 1.1 million riders daily - about half its pre-pandemic total - mirrors the dwindling of the workforce in the subway, as THE CITY reported last month.

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