Struggling to hire new drivers, Miami-Dade delays ‘Better Bus’ routes until 2023

Miami-Dade County can’t hire enough bus drivers for the $28 million reworking of transit routes known as the “Better Bus Network,” with a planned June launch now scrapped until the spring of 2023.

“The entire transit industry is suffering from a shortage of bus operators,” said Eulois Cleckley, Miami-Dade’s director of Transportation and Public Works. “We’re no different.”

Miami-Dade needs about 400 new bus operators to launch the Better Bus plan, designed to cut wait times in half on some of the county’s most popular bus routes.

Increased frequency of buses at some stops, along with some new routes, require more drivers, and Cleckley said a tight labor market has left Miami-Dade unable to find enough people to sign on for a starting pay of less than $19 an hour.

He said the county loses applicants to commercial driver positions at Amazon, FedEx and UPS. Now the county is rolling out $5,000 starting bonuses for bus operators and offering transit employees $500 for referrals. “We’ve got to be as aggressive as possible,” he said.

The new Better Bus plan means a year delay for a route map, approved in October, that was supposed to start operating between April and June. If implemented, it would be the most extensive reworking of Miami-Dade’s bus routes since the 1980s.

Advocates touted the plan as vital for Miami-Dade’s worsening prosperity gap, since reliable bus routes would allow commuters to live in more affordable suburbs without a car and travel faster to better jobs by public transit.

“It’s essential we get the Better Bus Network off the ground,” said Grace Perdomo, director of Transit Alliance Miami, the nonprofit that managed the creation of the plan and a three-year public outreach campaign to set priorities for the new routes.

In January, Miami-Dade cited the omicron COVID surge and driver shortages when it suspended two bus routes and cut service to others, reductions that remain.

Miami-Dade’s hiring struggles come amid transit still in pandemic mode, with bus operators enforcing federal mask mandates that remain in place for public transportation. Transit operators have been on the front lines of the pandemic, with Miami-Dade drivers falling ill and dying from COVID-19 as the county continued providing service at the peak of local outbreaks.

“COVID happened,” said Jeffery Mitchell, president of the local Transportation Workers Union chapter. “It made people a little leery to get behind the wheel.”

This story was originally published April 5, 2022 at 8:22 PM.