Officials of the city of Transit hope that a new payment that could help the schedule to attract the drivers | Local news

From February 22nd, the operating hours on weekdays from 5:30 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., on Saturday from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Sunday to 7 p.m. to 8 p.m., were reduced every day from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. The reduction is temporary, but there is no defined hours.

Gabrielle Chavez, Transit Director of Administration, said that the hours after the sudden death of two drivers within several weeks at the beginning of this year and the abrupt departure of a third due to a personal problem she said of the close department.

The reduction of the hours is intended to send a message to the employees that the managers want to work in a healthy environment, but she said that it was a difficult decision to make the department after work to recreate the services that were shortened due to the pandemic.

“For us it is really disappointing to have to take a step back and reduce the service, but I think it is the best thing we can do to relieve the stress and reduce the driver burnout,” she said.

The department has big plans for the future, including a new route system that brings buses into areas that are not served now. But first, according to the officials, it has to hire more new drivers.

A new wage structure of transit officials hope to adopt soon.

The department currently has 24 drivers and 56 driver positions, a vacancy rate of around 59%. Of the 125 budget positions in the department, 56 are occupied.

After a flood of retirement at the beginning of the Covid 19 pandemic, Chavez said that the department was relatively stable in terms of storage, with some of the drivers had been with the department for more than a decade.

“We keep the drivers we have, we just don't recruit people,” said Chavez.

According to Baca, the biggest problem of division in terms of its driver administrators is that younger people cannot be on board to replace people who age from work, as they did in earlier generations.

“It is an additional responsibility in which you are responsible for life and traffic, and passengers and people who surround them … and there is a little less motivation to do this nowadays,” he said.

The legalization of marijuana at the state level has also made a challenge: Since the transit agency is financed by the state, it must comply with the federal guidelines for drug and alcohol tests that do not allow marijuana consumption.

Now that people can find “jobs who pay the same or more and are still able to smoke weeds”, which has also created a recruitment challenge, said Chavez.

The transit division currently has a budget of around 8 million US dollars, which comes from the city tax and the knowledge of the city of the North Central Regional Transit District. Chavez said she was “hopeful” that the department will continue to be financed nationwide and that it is not in danger of losing previous grants.

“We have not received any kind of grants for clean energy, so we are clear because we did not have the ability to apply for this kind of grants,” said Chavez.

In her 19 months with the city, Chavez submitted grants to the Department of 9.1 million US dollars and said how money is a bigger problem than the need for more money overall.

The department tries to show that People Transit is a stable job for people who are not interested in a university degree. This can be helped by a new wage structure that makes the department more competitive.

While the city has “amazing advantages”, Baca said that its hourly payment is in the “medium to lower range” compared to the surrounding agencies such as Blue Bus or Atomic City Transit, which is a challenge for recruitment for recruitment.

“If you put on this younger audience, don't necessarily think about retirement, then think about how much it is per hour,” said Baca.

The Transit management is currently in negotiations with the city's HR department in order to create more levels for the dividing system of the Department for Drivers. According to the current system, BACA said that all drivers who have a commercial driver's license make a similar payment.

“I have a driver who has been here for four to five years, compared to a driver who gains his CDL with us, and within a year they could be with the same wage rate,” he said. “So there is no real animal system.”

What the new structure will look like is still being negotiated, but Baca said that the system would develop both the incentives and the reward of storage.

“How long you've been here will definitely have a value,” he said.

City officials only provided limited information in response to questions about the new salary scale.

“In cooperation with the negotiating unit, the city evaluated a proposal to increase the payment for transit drivers on Friday,” the spokeswoman for the city, Regina Ruiz, wrote in an e-mail on Friday and found that the payment changes to the employees in the American Federal, District and Community Authorities and the municipal administration would require communication with the union management.

Louis Demella, Vice President of the Union Local, said that he expects the union to support the new wage structure for bus drivers and that they earn more support so that the department can expand.

“I understand [cutting hours] Since the administration takes up a regressive attitude in relation to public transit in Santa Fe – should increase the hours and expand the days of service, but instead it is worked together, “he said.

The union has been negotiating with the city about its master contract, which expired in mid -2020, for about five years and is currently in the binding arbitration process, which Demella will probably complete within the next two months.

At the beginning of the current financial year according to a class and remuneration study, the urban employees in the millions and found that many city instructors were underpaid compared to the market conditions. Similar to the potential new salary structure of the transit division, the increases should reward the lifespan.

The city and the union made an agreement on the first 25% of the class and compensation increases in August, but Demella said that the second 25%, which should come into force at the beginning of 2025, were bound to negotiations for the master contract and was not handed over to Afscme members, which he said disappointed.

“We didn't think the city would try to use this as a negotiation chip,” he said.

In the meantime, transit -specific discussions have not yet been completed. City Councilor Alma Castro, who gave a joint town hall in February, which focused on Transit, said that it supported a graded structure for bus drivers.

“You have a really good idea of ​​what you need, we just have to implement it,” she said.

The reduction of the service for some drivers who use the bus to get to their workplaces in the early morning, including Margo Sanabria, who said it had become difficult after the new schedule to reach her job on the south side of the city. She described the city's on-demand driving service as unreliable.

“If you call Santa Fe Trails and complain, you cannot get to work on time because you have a schedule change.

In an environment in which the department tries to “do more with less,” said Baca that it had to be strategic about which routes they do.

According to BACA, the driver is within 15% of the prepared level, but not fully declined, which applies to most transit agencies in New Mexico. The current driver floats around 30,000 per month, with the vast majority of drivers on Route 2 along the Cerridor Cerrillos Road. The department has worked on plans to create a new “microtransite” system that would probably replace all routes with the exception of routes 1 and 4.

Various areas in the city would be divided into geofenzied zones under the new system. Large buses would have routes along the circumference, while smaller “cut” vehicles could lead to places in every zone on planned trips to places in every zone, including roads that could not be navigable on larger buses. People could move between zones at the transfer stations.

Several cutaway vehicles were ordered and the department is located to order another. There are mostly plans for the system. To start, more drivers are needed.

Baca, who started as an apprentice bus driver in the division almost seven years ago, said he believes that people will fall in love with the job he did when they simply try it out.

“We only need drivers,” he said. “… As soon as you come in here, you can see: 'Oh, we like it.' And then they stay.