Auckland Transport is removing more than 800 bus trips from its daily timetable. Photo:
Auckland Transport is removing more than 800 bus trips from its daily timetable across the region in response to the ongoing driver shortage.
From Sunday, bus trips that are regularly cancelled will be temporarily deleted from timetables.
The cancelled trips make up around 6 percent of total trips. Photo: Auckland Transport / Screenshot
AT group manager of metro services Darek Koper said they were 500 drivers short and the timetable change reflected the fact the full scheduled bus service had not been running for some time.
"This year we have struggled to operate our full bus timetable because of the effects of the national driver shortage, which has led to far more cancellations across our network than we would usually see," Koper said.
"We're not taking anything away that's currently running. We are just temporarily removing them in the timetable, so they won't show up and then appear as cancelled."
There will still be around 12,000 bus trips a day and AT said it would add services back as soon as bus operators were able to recruit more drivers.
The cancelled trips make up around 6 percent of total trips.
Koper said there would still be some cancellations to bus services due to operational issues or staff unavailability.
Temporarily suspending some services was not the answer to the driver shortage and would not help to grow public transport use, he said.
"We will continue to work with the government to help address the driver shortage and we will promptly restore full timetables as more drivers come onboard."
Recent increases to the base wage for drivers from Auckland Council and Waka Kotahi were followed with another increase through government funding yesterday.
Earlier this month Metlink cancelled 67 bus services which affected 14 Wellington bus routes during peak times due to a driver shortage.