There's a Bus Driver Shortage. And No Wonder.

Hauling passengers on a 40-foot city bus has never been glamorous. But Ryan Timlin could at least see the potential back in 2006, when he was earning nearly minimum wage at a St. Paul hardware store and hungry for a change. A friend who worked at Metro Transit, the public transportation agency for the Twin Cities, convinced him that driving buses meant good pay and a stable future. So Timlin donned the striped Metro uniform and got behind the wheel, ferrying passengers around Minneapolis and St. Paul every day for 11 years.

Timlin, now 38, recently settled into a new role as president of his local Amalgamated Transit Union chapter. He has no regrets about his career. But if he was younger and searching for a new job today, he isn’t sure he’d choose the bus route. “I loved that job, even with all its baggage,” he said over the phone last week. “But it’s hard to say that I would do it again, because of how it’s gotten.”