Advertisement

After hiring more drivers, GoTriangle restores express bus routes starting Monday

Commuters will again be able to catch express buses that connect Raleigh with Chapel Hill and Durham.

GoTriangle will resume the Chapel Hill-Raleigh Express and Durham-Raleigh Express routes on Monday, more than three months after it was forced to suspend them because of a driver shortage. With nearly a third of its driving jobs vacant last fall, the agency wasn’t able to reliably fulfill its schedule.

Since then, GoTriangle has been able to hire drivers, thanks to higher pay and an internal training program, says Vinson Hines Jr., chief of operations.

“We know that our riders depend on us to get to work, medical appointments, school and basic life necessities,” Hines said in a written statement. “During the pandemic when our numbers of operators kept dropping, GoTriangle employees from many departments — especially operations — were working hard to recruit, retain and train drivers so we could restore those routes and other suspended service.”

Some other cutbacks due to driver shortages, including weekday buses between Raleigh and downtown Cary, remain in effect. A scarcity of qualified drivers continues to plague other transit agencies and school systems in the Triangle as well.

Before they were suspended in December, the weekday CRX and DRX routes carried about 524 passengers a day on average, or 9% of GoTriangle’s total. For more information, go to gotriangle.org/.