While an official response has not been released from Busit or the Waikato Regional Council about the Raglan bus service, we do have an explanation for the cancellation of the after-work bus from Hamilton on week-days:
According to spokespeople from both Busit and WRC, it appears they don't have enough drivers to do the extra driving that is now required for the detour as the drivers have to start work 1hr and 20 minutes earlier at 4:50am to cope with the extra driving time.
This is eating into driver availability at the end of the day and with the current driver shortage it looks like there is no one left to drive the evening bus. There may also not be enough money in the current budget for these drivers either but we'll have to wait to find out if that can be resolved)
The Regional Council was in the news late last year after a driver shortage forced them into giving a pay rise to their drivers and while this should be helping it hasn't done enough to help with the current problem.
We understand a meeting is being held tomorrow between Busit and the Regional Council to try to resolve these issues and we'll be in contact with our Regional Councillor to make sure they're pushing our case.
It's also likely that the current temporary schedule will change again now that all the schools in Hamilton are fully open. Once they've seen the results of the extra pressure on the todays bus run we expect revisions will be made to the schedule.
As soon as we hear from the Regional Council we'll confirm and/or update this info