Representatives of the bus industry are sounding the alarm: According to forecasts, there will be a shortage of 87,000 bus drivers by 2030. The current number is significantly higher than before. So far, the shortage has been estimated at around 76,000. The industry representatives are therefore calling for changes in training.
Based on current company surveys, the bus industry has significantly adjusted its forecast for driver shortages up to 2030. The Federal Association of German Bus Companies (BDO) now assumes that around 87,000 drivers will be missing in the next seven years, as the association announced. So far, the industry has always estimated the expected shortage at around 76,000 employees by 2030. According to the survey, the bus companies are currently missing a total of almost 7,800 people.
Many of the companies would therefore already have to reject orders or could not participate in tenders, said Patrick Orschulko, legal and tourism officer at the BDO of the German Press Agency. "On the one hand, we have a very high number of age-related departures," he emphasized. "And we have to prepare for a doubling of passengers as part of the traffic turnaround."
Many companies would have had to switch to short-time work during the Corona crisis because long-distance bus travel was not possible for a long time during the pandemic. As a result, many drivers have left the industry and exacerbated the shortage, Orschulko said.
The association therefore calls for a simplification and a reduction in bureaucracy in the training for bus drivers. In Germany, the training is therefore divided into two parts: On the one hand, prospective drivers have to acquire a bus driver's license. On the other hand, they have to complete the so-called professional driver qualification, which enables them to transport passengers. From the point of view of the BDO, this means that training in Germany is significantly more expensive and lengthy than in other EU countries such as Austria.
The association therefore demands that these two training paths be merged. "With a "2 in 1" training, bus drivers would be ready for action after a lesson, a theory and a practical test," says a position paper from the association.
He also criticizes the fact that the job of bus driver is not listed as a so-called shortage job in the official statistics. In the statistics of the Federal Employment Agency, bus and tram drivers are listed together according to the BDO. A BDO spokesman emphasized that this distorts the situation among bus drivers, who represent their own profession.
