Lining up spare bus drivers can sometimes be a challenge for some routes in the Southeast Cornerstone School Division, the board of trustees heard at their monthly board meeting on Wednesday.
Andy Dobson, manager of facilities and transportation, gave a bi-annual update as of the end of December on how the bussing department is going, and said the number of route cancellations due to the lack of a spare driver has gone up.
Cornerstone is in the midst of building a new bus shop in Weyburn on land adjacent to the board office on 18th Street, but construction had to be halted last week due to the bitter cold.
Other than this delay, he said, the new shop is “on time and on budget. It should be handed over to us by June 17.”
The new shop measures 120 feet by 100 feet, the same size as the shop in Estevan, with a second section to be added to the south.
Cornerstone transported 4,158 students on 155 routes, and there were 78 route cancellations from September to December, which is down by 39 for the same period a year ago.
The number of route cancellations due to mechanical reasons was 19.5, up by four from last year, and weather-related cancellations were 17.5, down by 40, while cancellations due to a lack of substitute drivers was 48, which is up by 14 from the year before. In addition, there is one route in Moosomin that remains unfilled with a driver.
“We’ve had driver recruitment, but I’m not sure what else we can do. That’s the challenge, finding drivers and retraining them,” said Dobson, noting that drivers have to have a medical and be recertified every five years.
The average age of the bus fleet is 2010, and in Weyburn, there are 42 regular bus route, 11 spare buses and 20 fleet vehicles.
In Estevan, there are 48 regular routes with 14 spare buses and 12 fleet vehicles, and in Moosomin there are 22 regular routes with 11 spare buses and 15 fleet vehicles.
These numbers do not include nine new school buses which Cornerstone is buying this year to upgrade the fleet, said Dobson.
“We are running into problems with the spare buses, as these buses are getting tired. We’ve had to replace engines on some of them, which costs $40-50,000 each,” said Dobson, noting that they replaced three engines in the last year.
The capacity utilized on the buses, on average, is 52 per cent with two per seat, and 71 per cent with three per seat.
The average one-way ride time is 48 minutes, and the longest one-way ride in Cornerstone is Estevan to Torquay, a ride of 90 minutes.
