Hamilton facing school bus driver shortage

Some Hamilton students arewaiting longer at the bus stop this September, as there just aren't enough drivers to go around.

There's currently a shortage of bus drivers across the province and Hamilton is no different, Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board chair Todd White told CBC News.

"It has been an extra problem this September," White said.

• Ontario's ombudsman will probe school bus driver shortage

The city has 503 bus routes with the public school board, and 18 of them don't have a bus driver right now. That means some drivers are driving double and triple routes to keep up with the demand.

All told, about 1,000 studentsroughlyfive per cent of the 18,500 kids who take a bus daily in Hamilton facedelays each day, White says.

It's a problem on the catholic school board side too, where 17 routes do not have a full-time driver.

It's not as simple as, 'hire 18 bus drivers and your problem is solved.'- Todd White, HWDSBchair

The public school board has been shifting which routes end up affected, White says, so the same busses don't end up late every day.

On Tuesday afternoon, 21 local bus routes were facing delays, ranging from ten minutes to half an hour.

"The goal is to not have any route affected for more than 30 minutes," White said.

Four different transportation companies are under contract to provide buses and drivers for the city's public and Catholic school boards, and White says as he understands it, they are having trouble recruiting and retaining drivers.

On the surface, it seems like an easy problem to fix you need more drivers, so hire more.

But it's not that easy, White says. Anyone hired as a driver has to go through a six-week training program and a police check.

"So it's not as simple as, 'hire 18 bus drivers and your problem is solved,'" he said.

There are drivers currently in that training program, he says, and so by October there should be enough drivers to cover off all of the city's routes.

The shortage has been a problem in Toronto as well, prompting Ontario's ombudsman to look into whether a systemic investigation is warranted into the problem.

"Over the past few days, we have heard media reports as well as complaints from frustrated parents who waited for their children to be picked up or dropped off, only to have no bus show up," Paul Dub said in a news release last week.

"Among other things, our staff will look into what happened, what plans the school boards had in place, and what was done to inform parents," he said.

An ombudsman's investigation could see Dub make recommendations to solve the problem as well as to improve transportation services for the future.

adam.carter@cbc.ca