San Francisco's Muni to address understaffing, according to report

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- Muni is addressing understaffing issues, which they hope to solve by 2021.

RELATED: Issues continue to plague Muni including equipment failure and manpower shortage

In an audit released in 2018, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency found hundreds of city buses not in service, simply because there's been a severe shortage of Muni bus and train operators. In Oct. 2018, the transit agency was short 411 positions to fully staff all planned transit service that month.

The SF Examiner reported that Muni will make it a priority to hire more drivers.

RELATED: SFMTA says bus operator shortage is causing commuter delays

SFMTA Director of Transit Julie Kirschbaum spoke to the SFMTA Board of Directors at city hall on Tuesday, reassuring they are making plans to restore bus and train reliability to their 700,00 daily customers, according to the Examiner.

"This board needs no reminder that we are currently not meeting our scheduled service," Kirschbaum said. "I'm proud that we've made some really key headways in solving this problem."

Kirschbaum told the SFMTA board that the agency is not meeting their hiring goals, even though they graduated 200 new bus operators in 2019, which is double the operators who graduated in 2018.

Approximately 100 drivers leave annually, mostly due to retirement. In the meantime, Kirschbaum told the board to remain focused on providing service to existing train lines and hiring new operators and use their upcoming 2021 to 2022 fiscal year budget for service improvements.

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