Nipissing-Parry Sound Student Transportation Services is making route adjustments because they have lost a handful of bus drivers since the beginning of the school year.
That’s according to Dan Johnston, who is the operations manager for the Nipissing-Parry Sound Student Transportation Services.
They utilize about 18 different school bus companies in the region and currently, Johnston admits they are about six drivers short on permanent routes.
“It’s something we are working very closely with our school bus operators,” said Johnston.
Johnston says about three of the bus companies are facing driver shortages.
“We have been mitigating the delay problems by coupling routes together and putting students on different buses so it minimizes any delay issues,” explains Johnston.
“We still had a few but we didn’t really see any driver shortage issues until about the third week of school and that’s when drivers started dropping off and they reported having a shortage.”
Johnston says that could be caused by drivers going down south for the winter months.
“Typically, I’d have to think that the biggest problem is demographic; It’s older drivers wanting to enjoy retirement days I think,” he said.
Johnston adds that the new private school bus training courses are more demanding and if you fail your test, you have to pay to do it again.
“Every driver that has shown up this year for testing has been automatically failed the first time,” said Johnston.
“Now, some of these drivers that have gone in for testing have been tractor-trailer drivers who have come off the road after 30 years, and they’re being failed...that they can’t drive the bus.
“It’s kind of ridiculous, they’re failing them on very trivial, minor issues that aren’t really issues. Like you didn’t put on your parking brake at the stop sign, well there’s no law that says that they have to. They’ll fail them over that so they have to come back, pay the 200 dollars again, and do their testing, which really backs up the system.”
