How HR Shortcomings are Kneecapping Transit Agencies

A new report highlights major human resources shortcomings at transit agencies around the country that extend far beyond bus and train operator shortages to administrative and white-collar transit jobs, writes Kea Wilson in Streetsblog USA. “In a follow up to their much-discussed report on the national bus and train operator shortage, researchers at Transit Center dug into the structural factors behind the troubling ‘lack of people power’ happening at virtually every level of agency operations.” 

Poor working conditions are driving many workers away, and almost half of workers are over the age of 55 and approaching retirement. “And even as agencies step up to help struggling riders with nowhere else to go and fix broken systems they didn't create, they're not always given extra resources to do it; they just stretch their budgets, and themselves, thinner and thinner,” Wilson adds.

Laurel Paget-Seekins, the primary author of the report, says this “cycle of exhaustion isn’t inevitable,” but that transit agencies must boost funding and resources for their HR departments and build a “strong foundation without which the sustainable transportation ecosystem can't possibly be expected to thrive, and without which many agencies are struggling to simply survive.”