Punctuality of STM buses | “The pressure is too great” on drivers

The absence of hundreds of drivers is hampering service at the Société de transport de Montréal (STM), which has once again seen the punctuality of its buses decline since the start of the year. The carrier, however, promises to increase hiring to slow the slide.

“Clearly, the job of driver is less and less attractive. We have more and more pressure, more and more construction sites and the clientele is more and more difficult. The pressure is excessive to do our job,” says the president of the STM Bus Drivers’ Union, Frédéric Therrien.

His group estimates that there is a shortage of up to 200 drivers each day to provide the service properly, without delays. Around 40% of members on sick leave are due to mental health, exhaustion or stress.

At the STM, we confirm that around a third of absences are linked to “psychological factors”, specifying however that the causes are “multiple”, both personal and professional. In the last year, the absenteeism rate of drivers was approximately 14% at the STM, which is comparable to the rate of other transport companies in the metropolitan region.

Officially, 68 driver positions are to be filled out of a total of 3,533, a number which does not take into account drivers in training or absences.

Since the start of 2023, the operator claims to have hired “nearly 400 drivers, with several dozen hires every month”.

And the pace will increase further, we promise. “New cohorts of drivers have been entering training on a regular basis since the start of the year and the process has accelerated in preparation for our planned service increase at the end of August. It continues, since other hirings are expected in the coming months,” says the transport company’s corporate public affairs advisor, Laurence Houde-Roy.

“Our efforts are not over,” she insists, maintaining that the operator “is hiring drivers every month to meet current needs.” “That being said, the teams surgically adjust on a daily basis in the field to provide worry-free service for customers. The estimated service delivery rate is also at 99% for the month of September,” adds the spokesperson.

Punctuality still fragile

The union does not share this opinion. “It’s certain that it has an impact on service, quality and reliability,” retorts Mr. Therrien.

As of last May, barely 76.8% of Montreal buses arrived on time on their routes. This is a figure which is in every way similar to that of September 2022, which then represented the lowest rate since 2019.

In short, buses are late almost one in four times.

In March 2023, the bus punctuality rate had risen to more than 82%, but it then quickly fell back to 79.5% in April, then to 76.8% in May.

“The STM may tell us that we can arrive late, but the fact remains that customers have high expectations and that imposes a lot of stress. Before, a driver who returned to the STM spent his life there. Today, this is less and less true. We are less and less valued and the pressure is too great,” illustrates Mr. Therrien.

What solutions?

For the transport planning expert at the University of Montreal, Pierre Barrieau, the profession of bus driver faces several challenges. “It’s not an easy job with increasing congestion and the level of overload that goes with it. We can also and above all think about the whole question of civic-mindedness which is decreasing in public transport almost everywhere,” he notes.

The latest news was that acts of violence were the cause of more than a third of STM staff absences due to accidents. This is an increase of almost 5% in 2023 compared to 2022.

In addition to negotiations on working conditions, solutions exist to “revalue” the profession, maintains Mr. Barrieau. “We can, for example, think of a special program with a driving school which would guarantee job opportunities and certain salary conditions, or even examine what has been done with beneficiary attendants with guarantees and government subsidies,” explains -he.

“Just carrying out advertising campaigns to say that we are looking for drivers is insufficient. We need a much stronger gesture from the government, otherwise we are heading into a wall,” concludes Mr. Barrieau.