Juneau residents are able to once more take an Capital Transit bus to the airport, University of Alaska Southeast and social service providers on Teal Street on weekdays.
Capital Transit suspended the routes in December. 2022 due to an issue with drivers. Both routes are operating on weekdays and during peak times only, with a pause in service at the end of the morning and in the early afternoon.
Capital Transit Superintendent Rich Ross said that driver recruitment increased during the summer months, after the city shifted on to a web-based application process. In winter there was a shortage of about eight or nine drivers. Since then, they’ve employed five drivers. They also hired a second maintenance worker.
“We have an array of 18 buses. I’d guess that, on average, this summer, five were broken down in a row,” Ross said.
The hiring of the maintenance worker reduced that number to a couple of or three people, Ross said. Capital Transit is still looking to recruit a mechanic and an engineer.
The city has resumed service on routes 5 as well as 6, on the morning of Monday. Route 5 is which is the University Connector, runs from the Valley Transit Center to Auke Bay and UAS. Route 6 is the Airport/Riverside Connector includes stations at UAS, Nugget Mall and Teal Street.
Furthermore, routes 1 as well as 4 will be able to start early in the day. The route 1 connects downtown and Douglas Route 4 is for those in the Mendenhall Valley.
“Every every time that we introduce to our earlier services we see more people taking a ride than we initially planned, and it appears that there is a gap in need,” said Matthew Carpenter Capital Transit’s chief operator.
The earlier route 4 service will allow passengers to travel at Bartlett Regional Hospital before 7 a.m. The first bus of route 4 will depart in the Valley Transit Center at 6 a.m. and arrive at the hospital at 6:45 a.m. According to the latest schedule.
“We had received information that people were trying to reach the hospital in the early morning prior to 7 a.m. on shifts that begin early in the early morning,” Ross said.
The latest schedules are available posted on Capital Transit’s site .
