Bus driver applicants line up at job fair as RIPTA offers paid CDL training

The Rhode Island Public Transit Authority held its monthly career fair at its Elmwood Avenue office on Tuesday, June 18, 2024. (Christopher Shea/Rhode Island Current)

PROVIDENCE — It only took five minutes for the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority (RIPTA) to run out of the dozens of pens handed out to driver applicants at a job fair Tuesday morning.

After a quick resupply two minutes later, another dozen pens quickly vanished as the line of applicants continued to grow out the door. It was a hectic start to the agency’s monthly career fair, but it was the kind of hectic RIPTA Chief of Human Resources Kathy Nadeau said could bode well for the bus agency.

“That’s a lot of potential new drivers,” she said in an interview Tuesday.

It’s a stark contrast to last year’s career fairs, where only a handful of applicants stopped by. But in recent months, agency spokesperson Cristy Raposo Perry said people have been lining up even before the RIPTA opens up its Elmwood Avenue headquarters.

Part of that draw can be attributed to a 16.7% hike in starting pay for new drivers RIPTA’s board of directors approved in late February. But the main factor in Tuesday’s turnout: a new initiative where RIPTA will pay for new hires to get a Commercial Driver’s License (CDL) permit.

Under the program, new hires are paid $25.33 per hour as they take classes through the Rhode Island Institute for Labor Studies & Research on what’s on the state’s CDL test. Classes are expected to take a total of 10 hours and will be offered Monday through Thursday or for five- hour sessions on two Saturdays, said Program Coordinator Kevin McElroy.

RIPTA still needs 20 new drivers to be up to full service. The driver shortage could still lead to potential route cuts, but may be averted if the new  pay bump and paid CDL classes can fill the gap. So far, RIPTA has managed to hold off reducing or suspending service to 20 underperforming routes identified in the spring.

The state is also giving RIPTA $15 million in the fiscal year 2025 budget, which is still not enough to cover a $18.1 million budget shortfall.

“Every month we lose people to retirement, we lose people to promotional opportunities,” Nadeau said. “So we hope to get back, but that’s just to get to the service we already have — I want to get beyond that.”

CDL training has long been the roadblock in onboarding new drivers, Nadeau said.

“People had to be motivated to study on their own, often with no resources,” she said. “So a lot of people just didn’t do that — we’d give them an offer, tell them to get their permit, and they wouldn’t come back.”

Jude Lenus, an applicant from Providence’s Elmwood neighborhood, said Tuesday he was already in the midst of studying for his CDL permit when his brother alerted him to RIPTA’s new initiative.

“I get paid to do what I was already doing — why not?” he said in an interview after accepting a conditional job offer from RIPTA.

So how long does the agency intend to keep this initiative in place?

“Until my workforce is over the FTE mark,” Nadeu said, referencing the acronym for full-time equivalent. “By the fall if I could have 400 fixed-route drivers, I’d be over the moon.”

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