Pullman bus service on track to end reductions

Reduction in bus services in Pullman due to a staffing shortage should not be permanent. 

Service changes include no Wheat or Lentil route service on weekday evenings or on Sundays. As well as, Apartment Land and Campus routes are only operating until 9 p.m. on weekday evenings.

The city is currently training new bus drivers and is hiring for part time drivers, said Meghan Ferrin, Communications Coordinator for the City of Pullman. 

It is not an overnight process to train bus drivers, she said. 

“You have to go through a variety of training and you have to really get to know both the vehicle and your routes before you’re going to be able to actually go and drive a bus,” she said. “So it takes several months to get people trained to the point that they can drive by themselves.”

Ferrin said October is a rough timeline of when drivers will be trained and routes can begin to be expanded again.

It is hard to determine if bus routes will be exactly the same as they were previously until everything is put into place, but the priority is restoring the temporary reductions. 

“The plan is to go back to how things were or a more efficient version of how things were as soon as possible,” she said. 

City of Pullman Ward 2 Council Member Nathan Weller is concerned about community member’s access to vital services during this reduction, like accessing services at the Community Action Center. 

“I was really disappointed because both the youth and older [people] rely on bus transit,” he said. “Also, those with the most amount of challenges as far as transportation need that to get around.”

Weller has used the Pullman bus system since childhood and relied on it in college. He still uses the bus service to go to the airport and different functions in his adult life. 

The staffing shortage was caused by a variety of factors, Ferrin said. The city had some bus drivers retire this summer, other drivers moved on to different employment and it can be difficult to find qualified CDL drivers to hire. The city does offer training to help incoming drivers get their CDL license if need be, she said.

“We ended up with a staffing shortage at the same time that we were doing a little bit of a hiring freeze,” she said. “We did not have transit frozen for very long.”

It is not yet known when the general hiring freeze will end in totality, Ferrin said, but when a position is opened it is evaluated on a case by case basis if that position needs to be refilled.

Weller said while the reduction in services is supposed to be temporary, funding and running transit services is a long term discussion. 

“I also know the City of Pullman is facing some very challenging economic times,” he said. “Which is the same as many, many cities across the nation. So I am sure we will have some future discussions on how we can serve those who use the transit system best.” 

Ferrin echoed this, saying city governments nationwide are struggling with their budgets.

Until transit operations are resumed as normal, many residents are left in a transportation gap, Weller said, as walking is not feasible for everyone and many cannot afford to pay for rides via taxi or rideshare.

“There is no good answer at this time, or easy answer,” he said. “It’s a very challenging time right now.”