Shortage of drivers forces MTA to trim NYC bus service

[Via Garibaldi 8]

2 minutes ago, B35 via Church said:

There wouldn't be a need for resorting to temporary service cuts (or reduced scheduling, as you put it) - which can VERY easily resort to permanent ones with this agency, if they hired more op's to make service....

They don't want to make service.... That's all this shit is.

Absolutely they could.... They blatantly refuse to.

You're continuing with this red herring fallacy regarding scheduling, while poor 73 year old Raymond Simmons just wants adequate service on his B20... Hire the god damn drivers already.

The irony here is that the MTA can't get out of its own way....

It's a disgrace quite frankly. There seems to be this notion that everyone has the luxury to work from home, and that because people aren't running out and packing on the buses, that means we don't need to run service. The majority of New Yorkers DON'T have cars. Even some that do don't want to drive back and forth and prefer to take public transportation. I can see that little by little more things are opening, especially compared to months ago. Business is picking up. I'm now getting requests to organize for public meetings for the first time in almost a year. We've been trying to do that for months, but because of the cases increasing back and forth, we've has to postpone them, but make no mistake about it, the City is moving towards trying to re-open in increments. It has to because the City needs to start generating up revenue, so the  needs to get with it and start hiring.

[B35 via Church]

1 minute ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

It's a disgrace quite frankly. There seems to be this notion that everyone has the luxury to work from home, and that because people aren't running out and packing on the buses, that means we don't need to run service. The majority of New Yorkers DON'T have cars. Even some that do don't want to drive back and forth and prefer to take public transportation. I can see that little by little more things are opening, especially compared to months ago. Business is picking up. I'm now getting requests to organize for public meetings for the first time in almost a year. We've been trying to do that for months, but because of the cases increasing back and forth, we've has to postpone them, but make no mistake about it, the City is moving towards trying to re-open in increments. It has to because the City needs to start generating up revenue, so the  needs to get with it and start hiring.

You're right, but I'm just bottom-lining this bullshit.... The covid crisis will be used as justification by the MTA to a] warrant & b] expedite the axing of service.

[Via Garibaldi 8]

2 minutes ago, B35 via Church said:

You're right, but I'm just bottom-lining this bullshit.... The covid crisis will be used as justification by the MTA to a] warrant & b] expedite the axing of service.

They've already been using it. Since people think that the buses are "empty", this is a BxM9 recently at just after 6am in the morning. They left at least one trip open, and this was the result. No, not every bus is crowded, but people are coming back.

[SoSpectacular]

Well if you want something to really get done, by all means go on up to Albany and march right on up in their faces and keep screaming until you get what you all need. Otherwise, this whole thing falls on deaf ears.

[JAzumah]

1 hour ago, SoSpectacular said:

Well if you want something to really get done, by all means go on up to Albany and march right on up in their faces and keep screaming until you get what you all need. Otherwise, this whole thing falls on deaf ears.

Better yet, VG8 can get his crew to keep a missing trip log. It's one thing to say that the MTA needs more drivers (which is true) and it is another thing to document a list of trips that go missing each day. If a pattern develops, then you can get politicians to amplify a call for more resources. This is how they forced NJT to increase their supply of locomotive engineers. They were caught cancelling trains on a regular pattern to mask the shortage and they were forced to fix it. If the data shows that a depot is short 20 drivers on a regular basis, you can tell the MTA to hire 20 drivers for that depot while monitoring other places to make sure they are not stealing them.

I am not saying that is VG8's job. I am just saying that a specific issue is easier to fix than a generic one. The driver list issue is a specific thing that the MTA can fix to improve its driver supply. A temporary service reduction is better to evenly distribute service than to leave larger gaps with staff you don't have. You can't say "don't touch the schedule" and then a missed trip leaves 46 pax on a bus. That could have been avoided if that missed trip is somewhat regular. A regular data collection process would help. A FOIA for pullout data by route could also be useful. In theory, someone familiar with how that information is structured could let us know what info is collected with regards to pullouts and a monthly tabulation could be done by depot and/or route to determine if a regular shortage exists and is being ignored. That is another specific piece of info that the MTA can address.

With the BM2, pretending to run overnight service when you are not is malpractice. The ridership comes in as trash and an analyst will say there is no demand for the service when they have been sabotaging it. I expected the MTA to do that deliberately in a lot of places to justify ditching most of the enhanced overnight service.

[Via Garibaldi 8]

6 hours ago, SoSpectacular said:

Well if you want something to really get done, by all means go on up to Albany and march right on up in their faces and keep screaming until you get what you all need. Otherwise, this whole thing falls on deaf ears.

No need to go up to Albany. Advocacy groups have been pretty involved in pushing for the  to restore services and getting elected officials involved.

5 hours ago, JAzumah said:

Better yet, VG8 can get his crew to keep a missing trip log. It's one thing to say that the MTA needs more drivers (which is true) and it is another thing to document a list of trips that go missing each day. If a pattern develops, then you can get politicians to amplify a call for more resources. This is how they forced NJT to increase their supply of locomotive engineers. They were caught cancelling trains on a regular pattern to mask the shortage and they were forced to fix it. If the data shows that a depot is short 20 drivers on a regular basis, you can tell the MTA to hire 20 drivers for that depot while monitoring other places to make sure they are not stealing them.

I am not saying that is VG8's job. I am just saying that a specific issue is easier to fix than a generic one. The driver list issue is a specific thing that the MTA can fix to improve its driver supply. A temporary service reduction is better to evenly distribute service than to leave larger gaps with staff you don't have. You can't say "don't touch the schedule" and then a missed trip leaves 46 pax on a bus. That could have been avoided if that missed trip is somewhat regular. A regular data collection process would help. A FOIA for pullout data by route could also be useful. In theory, someone familiar with how that information is structured could let us know what info is collected with regards to pullouts and a monthly tabulation could be done by depot and/or route to determine if a regular shortage exists and is being ignored. That is another specific piece of info that the MTA can address.

With the BM2, pretending to run overnight service when you are not is malpractice. The ridership comes in as trash and an analyst will say there is no demand for the service when they have been sabotaging it. I expected the MTA to do that deliberately in a lot of places to justify ditching most of the enhanced overnight service.

I have always used data to deal with the  from the beginning and continue to do so. That's the only way to deal with such a situation. Logged data is something I had been doing from the beginning. The BM2 situation is very easy to document since they literally list the missing trips every night, and yes, for the last several months, I would say on most nights, 80% of the service does not run. That means out of the 12 trips, only two of them run, which is usually the 5am trips. Everything else from 1am - 4:30am does not run. They are claiming that they have driver shortage issues as to why they can't run the service, but they've had a hiring freeze since before the pandemic, when the economy was booming and ridership was doing fine, so this notion that the hiring freeze is tied to ridership being so low is total BS. 

This is their way of saving money. I have been contacting the Comptroller's Office with data for a while now pushing for a new audit, and I'm hopeful that the next Comptroller will take it up.

It is not just the express side either. They don't run a ton of local bus service either esp. overnight. Service is almost non-existent on some lines, so with no service running, naturally ridership will be "low".

Edited April 24, 2021 by Via Garibaldi 8

[B35 via Church]

3 hours ago, JAzumah said:

Better yet, VG8 can get his crew to keep a missing trip log. It's one thing to say that the MTA needs more drivers (which is true) and it is another thing to document a list of trips that go missing each day. If a pattern develops, then you can get politicians to amplify a call for more resources. This is how they forced NJT to increase their supply of locomotive engineers. They were caught cancelling trains on a regular pattern to mask the shortage and they were forced to fix it. If the data shows that a depot is short 20 drivers on a regular basis, you can tell the MTA to hire 20 drivers for that depot while monitoring other places to make sure they are not stealing them.

I am not saying that is VG8's job. I am just saying that a specific issue is easier to fix than a generic one. The driver list issue is a specific thing that the MTA can fix to improve its driver supply. A temporary service reduction is better to evenly distribute service than to leave larger gaps with staff you don't have. You can't say "don't touch the schedule" and then a missed trip leaves 46 pax on a bus. That could have been avoided if that missed trip is somewhat regular. A regular data collection process would help. A FOIA for pullout data by route could also be useful. In theory, someone familiar with how that information is structured could let us know what info is collected with regards to pullouts and a monthly tabulation could be done by depot and/or route to determine if a regular shortage exists and is being ignored. That is another specific piece of info that the MTA can address.

With the BM2, pretending to run overnight service when you are not is malpractice. The ridership comes in as trash and an analyst will say there is no demand for the service when they have been sabotaging it. I expected the MTA to do that deliberately in a lot of places to justify ditching most of the enhanced overnight service.

They're not going to sit there & play musical chairs with schedules (cut service due to a driver shortage in the now & revert service to what it was prior, when the riders start coming back), full knowing they don't want to make service in the first place..... That notion, at best, is predicated on good faith - something that this agency brings up the rear in..... You continue to speak as if tailoring service to the dwindled amount of available drivers is some sort of cure all, when it isn't much more than a scapegoat that dances around the main issue of not hiring more drivers...

No passenger is fond of missing trips, sure - but this idea that they're going to be somehow pacified by intentionally increasing headways (on paper), given the scope of this whole issue, is bunk.... You classify it as an even-ing of service, I classify it as being tantamount to splitting hairs either way, because both scenarios (passengers being screwed over by missing trips, or passengers having to deal with decreased service by way of schedule tinkering) stem from skirting around not hiring the necessary personnel to make service... This isn't about "don't touch the schedule", nor is this some unfortunate situation that has the MTA's hands tied... This is a situation that quite frankly that's being induced (a la, a hiring freeze)....

The same games they're playing with the overnight BM2 or whatever, are the same games that's being played with not putting more drivers withering away in the free agent pool to work....

[Via Garibaldi 8]

11 minutes ago, B35 via Church said:

They're not going to sit there & play musical chairs with schedules (cut service due to a driver shortage in the now & revert service to what it was prior, when the riders start coming back), full knowing they don't want to make service in the first place..... That notion, at best, is predicated on good faith - something that this agency brings up the rear in..... You continue to speak as if tailoring service to the dwindled amount of available drivers is some sort of cure all, when it isn't much more than a scapegoat that dances around the main issue of not hiring more drivers...

No passenger is fond of missing trips, sure - but this idea that they're going to be somehow pacified by intentionally increasing headways (on paper), given the scope of this whole issue, is bunk.... You classify it as an even-ing of service, I classify it as being tantamount to splitting hairs either way, because both scenarios (passengers being screwed over by missing trips, or passengers having to deal with decreased service by way of schedule tinkering) stem from skirting around not hiring the necessary personnel to make service... This isn't about "don't touch the schedule", nor is this some unfortunate situation that has the MTA's hands tied... This is a situation that quite frankly that's being induced (a la, a hiring freeze)....

The same games they're playing with the overnight BM2 or whatever, are the same games that's being played with not putting more drivers withering away in the free agent pool to work....

At the end of the day, they are going to see how much they can get away with before elected officials come to them asking what's going on. The focus has primarily been on the subway, since ridership is still down a good 70% on the trains. The buses haven't received as much attention, but the reality is, some people not taking the subway ARE taking the buses, hence why ridership is almost back at 50%. I do wonder if their goal is to destroy as much bus service as possible, particularly overnight service. The BM2 is separate since that is running while the subway is shut down, but the local bus routes.... A lot of them overnight have a chunk of service missing and has been now for several weeks.

Last night, looks like 30 trips did not run on the regular local bus line (B44, Q32, Bx15, Bx1, etc.) Do that every day... That's a lot of service not running that they're saving money on.

Edited April 24, 2021 by Via Garibaldi 8

[B35 via Church]

1 hour ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

At the end of the day, they are going to see how much they can get away with before elected officials come to them asking what's going on. The focus has primarily been on the subway, since ridership is still down a good 70% on the trains. The buses haven't received as much attention, but the reality is, some people not taking the subway ARE taking the buses, hence why ridership is almost back at 50%. I do wonder if their goal is to destroy as much bus service as possible, particularly overnight service. The BM2 is separate since that is running while the subway is shut down, but the local bus routes.... A lot of them overnight have a chunk of service missing and has been now for several weeks.

Last night, looks like 30 trips did not run on the regular local bus line (B44, Q32, Bx15, Bx1, etc.) Do that every day... That's a lot of service not running that they're saving money on.

There's no pondering from my end at all on the matter.... I'm definitive & defiant in my stance in regards to this - at minimum, I believe that to be the end goal with public transit in this city.... Buses are simply the easier targets to want to do away with, in going about trimming a budget.... The instances you bring up here is only proof of it all.

 

[Via Garibaldi 8]

1 hour ago, B35 via Church said:

There's no pondering from my end at all on the matter.... I'm definitive & defiant in my stance in regards to this - at minimum, I believe that to be the end goal with public transit in this city.... Buses are simply the easier targets to want to do away with, in going about trimming a budget.... The instances you bring up here is only proof of it all.

 

Yeah, and so if the service is unreliable or doesn't run, naturally people will be hesitant to use it.

[B35 via Church]

6 hours ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

Yeah, and so if the service is unreliable or doesn't run, naturally people will be hesitant to use it.

Lingchi.....

The MTA knows what they're doing.

[Bill from Maspeth]

On ‎4‎/‎23‎/‎2021 at 2:02 AM, JAzumah said:

As we speak, I am at the UMA Motorcoach Expo. Hiring back drivers is a major issue across the country. A lot of folks went to drive trucks and the trucking industry needs them badly. Why should people go back to driving buses if they are doing ok in trucking? There is still a high demand for skilled commercial vehicle drivers and companies are finally beginning to pay drivers properly.

And why should they go back to driving buses if they have to constantly have to worry about being assaulted?

[JAzumah]

2 hours ago, Bill from Maspeth said:

And why should they go back to driving buses if they have to constantly have to worry about being assaulted?

I think drivers have an obligation to meet their own needs. They should drive whatever pays them and makes them happy.
 

11 hours ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

At the end of the day, they are going to see how much they can get away with before elected officials come to them asking what's going on. The focus has primarily been on the subway, since ridership is still down a good 70% on the trains. The buses haven't received as much attention, but the reality is, some people not taking the subway ARE taking the buses, hence why ridership is almost back at 50%. I do wonder if their goal is to destroy as much bus service as possible, particularly overnight service. The BM2 is separate since that is running while the subway is shut down, but the local bus routes.... A lot of them overnight have a chunk of service missing and has been now for several weeks.

MBTA tried to stick that money in the bank instead of stopping the service cuts and they got hammered from everywhere at the same time. Frankly, it was a thing of beauty. I was ok with them reducing commuter rail service and restructuring it to a depeaked all-day schedule. I was not so happy about them cutting bus routes and trying to keep them cut after the money train arrived. I think that is possible with actual data. 

 

11 hours ago, B35 via Church said:

No passenger is fond of missing trips, sure - but this idea that they're going to be somehow pacified by intentionally increasing headways (on paper), given the scope of this whole issue, is bunk.... You classify it as an even-ing of service, I classify it as being tantamount to splitting hairs either way, because both scenarios (passengers being screwed over by missing trips, or passengers having to deal with decreased service by way of schedule tinkering) stem from skirting around not hiring the necessary personnel to make service... This isn't about "don't touch the schedule", nor is this some unfortunate situation that has the MTA's hands tied... This is a situation that quite frankly that's being induced (a la, a hiring freeze)....

Who ordered the hiring freeze? If it was Cuomo, getting rid of it is an easy fix since he is under political pressure. If it is someone else, let's get their name and see how that can be reversed. 

 

[Trainmaster5]

On 4/24/2021 at 9:22 AM, B35 via Church said:

There's no pondering from my end at all on the matter.... I'm definitive & defiant in my stance in regards to this - at minimum, I believe that to be the end goal with public transit in this city.... Buses are simply the easier targets to want to do away with, in going about trimming a budget.... The instances you bring up here is only proof of it all.

 

Some of us pointed this out in the forums over a decade ago. Word filtered down to some of our RTO folks that the MTA looked at the rising payroll and benefits costs as unsustainable and cuts had to be made somewhere. A two man RTO crew can carry 1000+ people on a rush hour train. Our railroad counterparts can top that,  albeit with a larger crew and major union backing.  That leaves Cleaners, Station Agents,  and Bus Operators in the cross hairs. The pom pom wavers in some Surface threads on SBS,  especially the B44 variant, missed or ignored the obvious end game. This pandemic has been a gift to the bean counters at the agency. Not enough cleaners to fully sanitize everything? Hire some outside contractors to do the job. Not enough Operators to cover the scheduled runs? Drop them because there's not enough personnel to cover the missing runs. I'm not trying to minimize the health risks of the Bus Operators and their families. I am saying that these missing runs coupled with the pandemic WFH is going to be the rationale for making major reductions  in local bus service across the board. Even if they start hiring from the existing lists I'm betting that not all retirees will be replaced and the previous scheduled service will be reduced .  Just my opinion.  Carry on. 

Edited April 25, 2021 by Trainmaster5
Spelling

[Deucey]

On 4/23/2021 at 2:02 AM, JAzumah said:

As we speak, I am at the UMA Motorcoach Expo. Hiring back drivers is a major issue across the country. A lot of folks went to drive trucks and the trucking industry needs them badly. Why should people go back to driving buses if they are doing ok in trucking? There is still a high demand for skilled commercial vehicle drivers and companies are finally beginning to pay drivers properly.

 

On 4/23/2021 at 2:04 PM, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

Yeah, but in the  's case, they haven't been hiring, so it's a moot point. 

Which is stupid since if they're losing higher-paid operators to retirement or other attrition, hiring rookie operators at the new hire pay scale saves more money.

[Via Garibaldi 8]

12 minutes ago, Deucey said:

 

Which is stupid since if they're losing higher-paid operators to retirement or other attrition, hiring rookie operators at the new hire pay scale saves more money.

I think the way they're looking at it is they still have pensions to pay and other costs that are rising. They were likely hoping to cut costs with the redesigns by cutting the run times and cutting the spans and frequencies of a number of lines. The public was vehemently opposed to that. Now they have to go back and figure out what's the next step.  They have been obtaining cost savings by not filling those trips and cutting back on overtime as well, but that is a temporary solution.

[Deucey]

3 hours ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

I think the way they're looking at it is they still have pensions to pay and other costs that are rising. They were likely hoping to cut costs with the redesigns by cutting the run times and cutting the spans and frequencies of a number of lines. The public was vehemently opposed to that. Now they have to go back and figure out what's the next step.  They have been obtaining cost savings by not filling those trips and cutting back on overtime as well, but that is a temporary solution.

To me the "logic" is a bit like not taking paper currency on buses - yeah there's savings from not having to empty the boxes during runs, and from not having as many armored car runs, but given how many evade because they'd have to carry 11 quarters per passenger, are the savings offsetting the evasion?

Or scrapping bus stop paper schedules to save $500k/year on printing and labor but still printing things that go in the bus stop info boxes - Bus time codes, route maps, etc.

Basically not spending money on customer-centric things to avoid expenditure on ops things that result in things being harder on customers enough that they find easier alternatives that deprives  of current and future revenue.

[EastFlatbushLarry]

22 hours ago, JAzumah said:

Who ordered the hiring freeze? If it was Cuomo, getting rid of it is an easy fix since he is under political pressure. If it is someone else, let's get their name and see how that can be reversed. 

historically, there's usually a hiring freeze or pause when a new president (or governor for that matter) is elected.

[B35 via Church]

19 hours ago, JAzumah said:

Who ordered the hiring freeze?

If it was Cuomo, getting rid of it is an easy fix since he is under political pressure. If it is someone else, let's get their name and see how that can be reversed.

The NYS budget director.

1 hour ago, Trainmaster5 said:

Some of us pointed this out in the forums over a decade ago. Word filtered down to some of our RTO folks that the MTA looked at the rising payroll and benefits costs as unsustainable and cuts had to be made somewhere. A two man RTO crew can carry 1000+ people on a rush hour train. Our railroad counterparts can top that,  albeit with a larger crew and major union backing.  That leaves Cleaners, Station Agents,  and Bus Operators in the cross hairs. The pom pom wavers in some Surface threads on SBS,  especially the B44 variant, missed or ignored the obvious end game. This pandemic has been a gift to the bean counters at the agency. Not enough cleaners to fully sanitize everything? Hire some outside contractors to do the job. Not enough Operators to cover the scheduled runs? Drop them because there's not enough personnel to cover the missing runs. I'm not trying to minimize the health risks of the Bus Operators and their families. I am saying that these missing runs coupled with the pandemic WFH is going to be the rationale for making major reductions  in local bus service across the board. Even if they start hiring from the existing lists I'm betting that not all retirees will be replaced and the previous scheduled service will be reduced .  Just my opinion.  Carry on. 

Well what can I say, some people are more perceptive than others... Good breakdown BTW....