Contract with Fredericton bus drivers would give them double pay on Sundays
CBC
Implementing Sunday bus service in Fredericton could cost the city up to $2.4 million a year, an amount one third higher than what it would be without a quietly kept detail in the drivers' collective agreement.
Fredericton is the only one of New Brunswick's three largest cities that doesn't offer transit on Sundays. The collective agreement for drivers stipulates they be paid double their regular wage — up to $54 an hour — if they were to work on that day.
That stipulation has long gone unmentioned in the reasons given by the city as to why it still hasn't acted on demands to introduce Sunday service.
But it's a sticking point that's been cited in a consultant's report and in emails among top city staff, obtained through a right to information request.
CBC News asked the City of Fredericton for all records related to studies and discussions around the potential implementation of Sunday bus service.
Among the documents provided: a spreadsheet outlining the estimated costs from October 2021, a consultant's report pointing to the current "prohibitive" cost of the double-pay rate and emails among staff discussing the high cost.
"If our existing service from Monday to Saturday costs about $5 million, how does adding one day equate to half?" asked Dylan Gamble, director of engineering, in an October 2021 email responding to the estimated cost of Sunday service.
"I get the double-time piece but it's all just such a drastic difference."
The October 2021 estimate, which hasn't before been publicly released, was calculated based on what it would cost to operate buses on the same schedule as on Saturdays.
The estimate shows the city would need six new full-time equivalent transit drivers and an additional dispatcher, mechanic and service worker.
The six transit operators would cost $1.4 million, while the three other staff positions would cost about $260,000, for a total of more than $1.7 million in personnel costs, annually.
Fuel alone would also cost $260,000, in addition to $386,503 in annual depreciation from using the buses more frequently.
In 2019, the city released a strategic transit plan, which included possible options for implementing Sunday service, and at the time estimated the cost of running buses on the same schedule as Saturdays was $534,075.
However, that estimate didn't account for the extra cost of filling coverage gaps due to sickness and vacation time, having drivers on standby, nor the double-pay rate for drivers under the current collective agreement, according to Meredith Gilbert, former transit manager, in a 2021 email.