From Sunday 6 November, bus service trips that are being regularly cancelled because of the national shortage of drivers will be temporarily suspended from timetables to improve service reliability and customer confidence.

AT’s Group Manager of Metro Services, Darek Koper, says the ongoing bus driver shortfall means AT hasn’t been able to deliver the full scheduled service for some time now.

“We’re not taking anything away that’s currently running. We are just temporarily removing them in the timetable, so they won’t show up and then appear as cancelled.

“We will still be running around 12,000 bus trips a day and will be adding services back to our timetables as soon as bus operators are able to recruit more drivers.

“This year we have struggled to operate our full bus timetable because of the effects of the national driver shortage, which has led to far more cancellations across our network than we would usually see,” Mr Koper says.

“By making these changes customers will have more confidence and certainty, significantly reducing the level of cancellations after customers have already planned their trips.”

Ongoing driver shortage means there will still be cancellations on the network

Although these changes will make it easier for customers to plan their journeys, there will still be some cancellations to services across the network due to operational issues or late staff unavailability.

Darek Koper says that because of the timetable changes being made from 6 November, these remaining cancellations will be significantly fewer than those currently being experienced.

Temporarily suspending some services is not the answer to the driver shortage and will not help to grow public transport use.

“We will continue to work with the government to help address the driver shortage and we will promptly restore full timetables as more drivers come onboard,” Mr Koper says.

“There have been some positive movements around bus driving as a vocation, benefiting both existing drivers and supporting recruitment drives. With funding support from Auckland Council and Waka Kotahi, there has been two recent increases in base remuneration for drivers with a further increase through government funding announced on 30 October. However, in the short term we still need an additional 500 drivers.”

East Auckland - full timetable restored

In east Auckland, where more drivers have been recruited by Go Bus, the service recently returned to its full timetable - restoring 5,000 trips per month which were removed in May.

“We’re thankful to our customers for their continued patience through this driver shortage crisis and their ongoing support for public transport in Auckland,” Mr Koper says.

© Scoop Media