Staff shortage causes bus delays for Transpo

SOUTH BEND, Ind. - The wheels on the bus haven't been rolling through all their stops in South Bend, due to a staff shortage at Transpo.

Staff shortages have already caused Transpo to miss nearly two-dozen trips this month with more than half of those, just Monday.

At Tuesday's Transpo board meeting, General Manager and CEO, Amy Hill told ABC57 it's actively working to stop this from being an ongoing issue.

While Transpo still has openings, Hill says five new drivers just finished training with three more onboarding soon.

"Weather can impact us, you know, when you have cold temperatures or a lot of snow, there can be some, you know, weather related delays. But all our routes have been running, we didn't have any missed trips today. So, we certainly do encourage people to keep an eye on our social media and the website, especially with these colder temperatures. So, if there are any delays or missed trips, they can plan accordingly."

Along with social media, passengers can call the Transpo information line at 574-233-2131.

Even with Monday's cancellations, this month is on pace to be an improvement from December, when Transpo saw 55 missed trips.

After this story published, TRANSPO sent ABC57 additional numbers on canceled bus trips.

According to TRANSPO, just 1% of trips were missed in 2023 (1,138 total).

TRANSPO says that’s a 66% reduction in total missed trips compared to the year before (3,374 missed trips, 3% of total service).