Effective Monday, April 25, Santa Barbara MTD will be temporarily lowering service levels in order to improve system reliability. Line 20, which provides transportation between Carpinteria and Santa Barbara, will have reduced weekday frequency.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, transit operators nationwide and many other industries have experienced workforce shortages, and MTD is no different. While MTD continues to recruit aggressively for bus operators, the agency has experienced a confluence of retirements and normal attrition causing a drop in the number of available bus operators. This drop coupled with the Omicron surge has meant that various bus trips are occasionally cancelled, causing uncertainty for passengers.
“The reliability of our schedules is crucial and due to the current labor shortage the temporary reduction of service is a necessary step,” said MTD General Manager Jerry Estrada. “We hope that these temporary reductions will allow us the time to staff up appropriately and return to higher levels of service later this year.”
The new schedule is available at https://bit.ly/3rbyZNv and the public can get further details at sbmtd.gov/reduced.
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