Tallahassee, FL – MHAction
I moved to Tallahassee in 2008 from Dayton, Ohio. I worked in health care for a number of years, and was 50 credits away from being a nurse, but I started having my own health issues. Being a nurse was no longer a career option for me, so I signed up for a temporary job, labor pool.
That gave me the chance to begin my career as a bus driver. I was given an opportunity to take coach operator classes. It was really interesting to learn about how a bus works, because I didn’t ever really ride the bus. I passed my license test, and became a coach operator, which is the term we prefer to call ourselves as bus drivers in Tallahassee.
I really like my job, but from where I sit I really see first hand how much more we need to invest in our public transportation system.
In a lot of the outlying areas surrounding Tallahassee, there is really limited public transportation available for families. In places outside of downtown, buses only run for a limited time, and there aren’t enough routes available to make it convenient for people.
This situation has only gotten worse. I know our transit agency is facing a budget issue, it’s been on the news lately. A number of the regular routes are being cut. Before the cutbacks we used to run about 20 buses on a regular day, Monday through Friday. Now that the budget is tight, they’ve cut the routes to where we’re looking at 14 buses, instead of 20. Buses are also less frequent. We used to run buses so they’d be at the stop every 30 minutes. Now, bus riders can be waiting for over an hour at a stop.
They cut back service on weekends too. 9:30pm is our last line up, when it used to be 10:30pm. Now, if you are a worker and you get off at 10pm, you’ll have to catch an uber or pray that someone can give you a ride back home.
We are also facing a large coach operator shortage. We just received a $11 million dollar grant to get more buses, but we just don’t have enough coach operators to drive them. That has led to a number of things happening. We are on a hiring freeze, and the current coach operators can’t work over 40 hours even if we know we don’t have enough people to cover the limited routes we offer.
Part of the reason for the operator shortage is also the pay. Being an operator, people’s lives are in our hands. I know Tallahassee is a smaller city, but I only make $21 per hour. Given how important our job is, I think coach operators deserve to make more money. Public transit really helps to fuel our economy. We get people back and forth to work, to medical appointments, and to go shopping. Our pay should reflect how important we are to not only getting riders around town safely, but what it means to our local economy.
We really need to invest more in transit operations. That would help to restore service we’ve cut back on and also open up some new bus routes. It would also go towards increasing operator pay which would help recruit and retain the personnel our system needs.