Temporary bus timetables on Yorkshire Coast due to lack of drivers
Bus company East Yorkshire is running reduced timetables on some routes
Bus company East Yorkshire is temporarily reducing some timetables in the face of the nationwide bus driver shortage.
Along with many other industries, bus operators across the country are experiencing a shortage of staff, leaving the company with not enough drivers to operate routes each day.
It says the situation has worsened since the return of students to school and college, as the company operates over 60 journeys to schools and colleges every day.
It adds that the problem has also been compounded by issues at the DVLA, where delays issuing licences to bus drivers means that the company has had to wait weeks, or even months, before newly recruited drivers can start their training.
Ben Gilligan, East Yorkshire’s Area Director, said:
“Due to circumstances outside our control, we’ve been unable to run services to the standards our customers expect over the last few weeks, and we are very sorry for the inconvenience this has caused people in the local area.”
“Bringing in these temporary timetables should help to create more certainty for those travelling by bus, and allows us time to recruit and train more new drivers.”
“Over the past 6 months as our services ramped up following lockdown we’ve taken on more than a hundred new drivers, but we’ve found that many are having to wait weeks, or sometimes months, before their provisional licence is issued, meaning that we can’t start training them straight away. Training a new driver obviously takes several months, as trainees must achieve a high standard of proficiency before they take to the road. However, we currently have 20 new drivers at different stages of progress in our training school at the moment, with more due to start when their licences are ready, and we will be bringing in even more as soon as we can.”
Visit eastyorkshirebuses.co.uk for more information about the temporary timetables.