As many families in Calgary struggle with delays related to their children's school bus services, the company in charge of many routes say it's not completely their fault.
SOUTHLAND Transportation has been shouldering a great number of complaints from concerned parents in the city over massive delays over how long school bus trips have taken.
In one circumstance, parents of students at Brentwood School said their children's bus trip took four times longer than usual.
Now, following another number of delays affecting students at some of Calgary's FrancoSud schools, the company is offering a bit more of an explanation about what's going on.
"SOUTHLAND Transportation is currently experiencing a driver coverage challenge that is causing morning and afternoon delays at some of the FrancoSud schools. Further to this, we have experienced technical issues with the MyBusStop app and some parents have not been able to access information as to the status of their school buses," said Pamela Deadmarsh, director of communication at SOUTHLAND.
Deadmarsh also pointed to the former NDP government's rollout of the Mandatory Entry Level Training program on March 1. She says it ended up preventing them from putting any trainees through their own program for over a month.
"This, coupled with the lack of driver examiners at that time, put us behind at the end of the last school year. Furthermore, we had a higher than expected summer turnover rate due to employees leaving for full-time opportunities."
SOUTHLAND also sent a letter home with students affected by the most recent delays, apologizing to parents and confirming they are working on solutions.
The former NDP government introduced the MELT program requirements for all new Class 1 and 2 commercial drivers in order to enhance safety in the commercial trucking industry.
Part of the reason the government introduced the rules was to prevent such tragedies as the Humboldt crash on April 6, 2018.
