BRTA Looking To Reduce Bus Service By 50% In Berkshire County

Amid the ongoing driver shortage, the BRTA is actively working to find solutions. Last Thursday, new BRTA Administrator Kathleen Lambert and Berkshire Transit Management Operations Manager Ben Hansen proposed several changes to the board, including eliminating some routes and introducing a new one.

"Service alert" cancellations are updated daily on the BRTA homepage. Currently, BRTA employs 26 drivers with 36 weekday runs, leaving roughly 10 to 13 runs each day. The proposed new plan would cut weekday services to 30 runs, with five runs remaining open daily.

BRTA Routes Affected By This Reduction

Iberkshires.com reports that the proposed plan will cut evening service on certain routes and eliminate routes 1A, 2A, 21A, and 921. Furthermore, Route 14 will be discontinued and merged into an extension of Route 12. 

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

The proposed routes will also have later departure times reduced, as they are lightly used. For instance, the last bus from Pittsfield to North Adams currently departs at 8:30 p.m., but under the new plan, it would leave at 6:30 p.m.

"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, 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." - Operations Manager - Ben Hansen

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Proposed Plan, Meeting, Public Feedback, and BRTA Recruitment

The plan remains tentative, as the BRTA will hold both virtual and in-person hearings to review the route realignments. Public comments and feedback will be considered at the upcoming BRTA meeting on March 4.

The BRTA currently provides a $1,000 sign-on bonus, full employer-paid health insurance premiums, and additional benefits. It also offers paid training for obtaining a Commercial Driver's License. More details can be found here.