Driver Shortages Mean Buses Will Run On Temporary Timetables

Bus company East Yorkshire has announced that from Sunday 19 September it will be temporarily reducing some timetables in Hull & Beverley in the face of the nationwide bus driver shortage.

Along with many other industries, bus operators across the country are experiencing a shortage of staff, leaving the company with not enough drivers to operate routes each day.

The situation has worsened since the return of students to school and college last week, as the company operates over 60 journeys to schools and colleges every day.

The problem has also been compounded by issues at the DVLA, where delays in issuing licences to bus drivers mean that the company has had to wait weeks, or even months, before newly recruited drivers can start their training.

The few services that will be affected are in Hull and Beverley, including Services 54, 56/57, 63, 66, 105, which will run less frequently (for example, Service 66 will run every 15 minutes rather than every 10 minutes).  Hull Service 103 and Beverley Service 122 will be temporarily suspended.  All other services will continue to run as normal.

Ben Gilligan, East Yorkshire’s Area Director, said:

“Due to circumstances outside our control, we’ve been unable to run services to the standards our customers expect over the last few weeks, and we are very sorry for the inconvenience this has caused people in the local area.”

“Bringing in these temporary timetables should help to create more certainty for those travelling by bus, and allows us time to recruit and train more new drivers.”

“Over the past 6 months as our services ramped up following lockdown we’ve taken on more than a hundred new drivers, but we’ve found that many are having to wait weeks, or sometimes months, before their provisional licence is issued, meaning that we can’t start training them straight away.” 

“Training a new driver obviously takes several months, as trainees must achieve a high standard of proficiency before they take to the road.  However, we currently have 20 new drivers at different stages of progress in our training school at the moment, with more due to start when their licences are ready, and we will be bringing in even more as soon as we can.” 

The temporary timetables will be available from Thursday 16 September at eastyorkshirebuses.co.uk, and on the East Yorkshire Buses app. 

Those without internet access can get the new times from Thursday by ringing the travel advice service BusLine, on 01482 59 29 29, which is open Monday-Friday, 7am-7pm, and Saturday 8am-6pm.  Lines are expected to be very busy, so we would ask that only those who cannot access timetables online call.