PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The Berkshire Regional Transit Authority is looking to realign its routes because of a driver shortage.

 

New BRTA Administrator Kathleen Lambert and Berkshire Transit Management Operations Manager Ben Hansen last Thursday proposed the changes to the board that included eliminating a few routes and creating a new one.

 

"Over the last couple of months, I've been working with captain Bob [Robert Malnati] trying to come up with a solution to our reliability for our history customers," said Hansen. "As you may or may not know, we have many canceled runs on a day-to-day basis. So we try to realign this so it doesn't affect everyone, and we kind of tweak this over servicing people more than they were before in areas that we feel could use more service."

 

There are daily "service alert" cancellations posted on the front page of the BRTA website.

 

The BRTA currently has 26 drivers and 36 weekday runs, which means about 10 to 13 runs are open every day. The new plan would reduce weekday services to 30 runs and with five open runs a day.

 

The proposed plan would reduce evening services on certain routes, as well as eliminate routes 1A, 2A, 21A, and 921. Route 14 will also be eliminated and serviced as an extension of Route 12.

 

Route 1A runs between the Intermodal Center and the North Adams Walmart every two hours starting in Pittsfield at 5:30 a.m. Route 2A runs between the Intermodal Center and Lee Prime Outlets every two hours beginning at 6:30 a.m. in Pittsfield. Route 21A runs from the Lee Prime Outlets to the Fairgrounds Plaza in Great Barrington every two hours beginning at 5:30 in Lee. 

 

In each of those cases, the first run will be an hour later on the "B" route but the last run will earlier.

 

Berkshire Regional Planning Commission's principal planner for transportation Anuja Koirala, said she had wished the BRTA included the commission in doing its research.

 

Koirala believes the new route proposals will leave some people waiting longer, and affect those who use the system daily.

 

"First of all, the Route 1 and Route 2 both being a reasonable connection from one-hour headway, to moving into two-hours headway. I think that's not good. It's not the direction RTA should be going," she said.

 

The proposed routes will also lose later times as not many people ride them. For those who take the bus from Pittsfield to North Adams, the last bus out was at 8:30 p.m., the proposed plan will limit it to 6:30 p.m.

 

"At the same time we're making the regional connection with other RTAs like PVTA and FRTA in the evening, people who live here in the Berkshire County not being able to go from North Pittsfield to North Adams," Koirala said. 

 

"That's not fair, and I understand your part saying it's low ridership, but that one or two persons who takes that bus every single day, they come over here to work, or however, they live in North Adams, and they come and live here," she continued. "At least have another like after 6:30, either the 7:30 or 8:30 connection going back to North Adams."

 

Hansen introduced Route 999, a limited stop regional connector that will operate the Pittsfield Walmart Express (Route 912) a couple times a day to serve high demand places, as they said that is the most in demand place for those in Pittsfield. It was designed to replace the 1A and 2A trips, filling in the gaps left behind from those routes.

 

"I think what Ben and Kathleen have presented is thinking out of the box. What we've done in the past is always up the road, down the road, but because of the lack of drivers, they're putting on this Express trip," said board member Ray Killeen. "That's one of the most popular stops, the Express trips that fill in the 1A and the 2A, it satisfies enough where people can have some reliability ...

 

"You need the consistencies to provide the public with a generous product, and we're not doing that. We are failing as a board not to move forward on this." 

 

Lambert while it will take more time to make routes better for customers, it's important to reduce those cancelations as well as keep driver morale up.

 

"Our operators are public, it is demoralizing for our drivers to have their customers come up to them and say, 'jeez, what happened today… again?' You know, that's not good for morale for our group, and I think that is also an important thing. We need to retain the people we have," Lambert said.

 

The BRTA is currently offering a $1,000 sign-on bonus for new hires, 100 percent employer-paid health insurance premiums, along with other benefits. It is also offering paid training for a Commercial Driver's License. Find more information here. www.berkshirerta.com/employment-opportunities

 

The board had planned to meet at the end of February but because of the need for 30 days of public comment, the meeting was moved a week later to allow time for the public to review these changes.

 

The route realignment proposal can be found here. The BRTA will hold virtual and in-person hearings to discuss the route realignments. Public comments and feedback will be addressed at the next BRTA meeting on March 4.  

 

Comments can be send to info@berkshirerta.gov or online.