The city conducted an undercover audit of Muni buses and also audited their books to produce a report that, once again, shouts loud and clear that our public transportation system has problems. The report, which we're not finding on the city website yet, seems to focus primarily on bus drivers and the ongoing shortage of drivers that ends up slowing the entire system down due to too many drivers taking leave. But it also includes a delightful description of a Muni driving instructor asleep aboard a training bus while a rookie driver navigated through busy traffic.
As Matier & Ross are reporting, the report contains a bunch of other infuriating details:
- Muni cancelled 14,017 bus runs last year, or about 38 runs a day, due to drivers on sick leave, or the driver shortage in general. This is why that 22-Fillmore you were waiting for took so goddamn long to show up.
- They spent $4.7 million in extra overtime in order to make up for the shortage of trained drivers.
- They're short about 100 drivers, and no one has done a good staffing analysis to determine how many drivers they need to maintain in their ranks.
- They're also short on driving instructors, partly because the instructor gig doesn't pay overtime.
- Half of the new-driver training classes scheduled in the first half of this year were cancelled because of instructor absenteeism.
- The instructor caught sleeping on the job wasn't fired, and is now a Muni supervisor.
Think about that the next time you're tossed about on the 38-Geary and wondering where this guy/lady learned to drive.
