By Joe Maniscalco

Sacha Alvarez was barely six months into her new job driving the BX40 bus route in The Bronx for MTA New York City Transit when a crazed man swinging a foot-long tree branch burst onto her vehicle and started clubbing her on the head. The February attack understandably left her dubious about her future behind the wheel — but she’s not alone. Cities across the country are discovering hardly anyone wants to drive a bus anymore.

In California, Los Angeles Metro Rail still needs to fill hundreds of bus operator slots just to get back to inadequate pre-Covid staffing levels. DART — Dallas Area Rapid Transit — lost about 160 bus operators to a voluntary retirement program at the outset of the pandemic, forcing the agency to scale back service and cancel 15 percent of bus trips. King County Metro was down 100 bus operators in Washington State long before the pandemic even started. Miami had an ambitious plan to redesign its entire bus network and increase transit access to jobs, but had to shelve it due to a lack of people to put behind the wheel.   

This past summer, the New York City-based TransitCenter advocacy group issued a report called “Bus Operators In Crisis” in which it found attacks on bus operators across the country are increasing and many have a “legitimate fear that their job could put them in harm’s way.”

“Many potential employees are wary of, if not opposed to, taking a job that could involve hostile interactions with the public,” the report finds.

Always a strong and independent person, the on-the-job attack Alvarez suffered last winter in New York City has left her so uncomfortable about being alone in public, she seldom ventures outside. She won’t even go to the grocery store without her partner and is undergoing physical therapy and seeing a psychologist. Returning to the job is an open question.

“I was happy to be called for the opportunity,” Alvarez told Work-Bites. “But I’m very disturbed and unhappy. I was so new on the job [when I was attacked]. I just need to take my time. When I’m ready, hopefully, things’ll be different —because it’s getting worse out here.”

The Threat to personal safety is one of the many important factors keeping new bus operator hires away. Chronically low pay is another.

The average starting salary for bus operators in the top seven transit ridership regions in the country — New York City, Los Angeles, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago and San Francisco — is less than $24 an hour.

Heading into the pandemic, the starting salary for Metro bus operators was less than $18 an-hour. In Philadelphia, the starting salary for bus operators remains less than $20 an hour.

According to TransitCenter, bus operators often need to log several years on the job before they can expect a better wage, making the job less attractive to new entrants.

SMART-TD — the union representing Metro bus operators — only just recently inked a fresh five-year deal with the city, bumping the starting salary for new hires from $20.49 an-hour to $23 an hour.

Still, Jessica Meaney, executive director of Investing In Place — an advocacy group dedicated to helping L.A. communities improve their public spaces — says the bus operator crisis at Metro has left residents with “the worst bus service we’ve seen in 30 years.”

“For whatever reason, we have not invested in the access to buses in the way we have invested in the access to rail,” she told Work-Bites. “It’s undeniable that systemic racism in part of that. Who rides the buses in Los Angeles? The poor. Black people. Brown people. The people with the least amount of access to power and money.”

Los Angeles was just climbing out of a 10-day heat wave with temperatures soaring over 100 degrees when Work-Bites contacted Meaney. The city has some 8,000 bus stops — only about a quarter of them provide any semblance of shade.

“A lot of the things that improve working conditions for bus operators parallel the things people who ride the bus want,” Meany adds. “But here in Los Angeles, it’s hard to advocate for better better bus service when we don’t have anyone who wants to drive the bus.”

While low wages and L.A.’s housing shortage continually threaten the lives and well-being of Metro buses riders earning less than $25,000 a year — the “Bus Operators In Crisis” report finds many bus operators themselves “can’t afford to live in the cities they serve.”

In San Francisco, for instance, less than half of the bus operators working for San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency actually live in the city.

Long commutes to work, the report finds, is forcing some bus operators to sleep in their cars between shifts — narrowing the gap between what used to be a “great middle-class job” and the tens of thousands of people and their families forced to live on the street.   

Chris Van Eyken, author of the “Bus Operators In Crisis” report, says transit agencies around the country need more “operational support” from the  federal government in order to “continue running service the way they want to for their customers,” while also “building up facilities for their operators, raising their wages and making sure they can implement safety measures so they feel comfortable on the road.”

“The federal government gave record support just a few years ago to help states get through Covid,” Van Eyken told Work-Bites. “Some of those state agencies have used that money to raise wages and get more operators on the road. But, unfortunately, over the next year or two we’re gonna start seeing agencies get to the end of that money.”

So, while the U.S. continues to spend billions of dollars on war in Ukraine, some states will soon start looking to “adapt their highway funding formula” to “make sure they’re getting more money towards transit.”

Earlier this month, NACTO — the National Association of City  Transportation Officials — held its annual Designing Cities Conference in Boston. Hard-pressed bus operators working for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority attending the event said their needs are as fundamental as finding safe and clean places to relieve themselves along their routes.

When Work-Bites asked Alvarez if she would ever consider recommending the job to a friend or family member — she quickly replied, “Nope. I really don’t like the job. I do have the opportunity to think about [returning] because I am on worker’s comp. But in the meantime, I’m just trying to get all the help I can.”