Magazine serving the bus and rail transit & motorcoach operations since 1904
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dents working on the campus may even- tually be excluded from the ACA. ■ Barr: Not directly yet, although I have been told the rising costs of health care at our university will affect any subsidies I receive based on upcoming union nego- tiations and what the university has to pay into employee health benefi ts. Ours do tie to the regulations and laws put forth in the ACA, and it is costing individuals more for seemingly less so far. emption to allow publicschool bus drivers to be 18. OSU Transit Services is currently drafting a proposal to allow an additional exemption for public transit agencies that receive federal and/or state funding. ■ Stam: Currently, we are struggling to retain full-time drivers. Since we are on a university campus, most of our positions are nine-month driver positions. ■ Barr: The constraints overall in try- ing to keep the rising cost of tuition to a minimum. My department took a greater hit this past go-round than others at our university in that our transportation fees were level funded — same as last year — but our employee wages and benefi ts as well as the cost of fuel all went up. ■ Sandin: Finding good people to fuel the growth. We're looking for people that score touchdowns and not people the sit in the stands and watch the game being played by the team. ■ Sherrell: The biggest challenge is staff- ing. We continually work at maintaining our commitment to guest service, with ongoing training to keep the consistent service level our guests expect. What is the most urgent social, economic or political trend affecting your operation today and why? ■ Duncan: As with any rural transit pro- vider, we constantly work to disprove the stigmas associated with transit. To [pro- mote] our image, we spend a signifi cant amount of resources on vehicle appear- ance both inside and out. We are always watching the politi- cal climate, local to national, so we can keep track of any trends that might have an impact on transit in general. We were pleased to see the sixth round of TIGER grants was recently released with a sig- nifi cant dollar amount available for proj- ects. ■ Stam: Rising cost of education is always a concern. ■ Barr: The push to divest in fossil fu- els. Our campus has its fair share of stu- dent and faculty activists who [respect] my service but not the way I operate. We are certainly more accepted than our lo- cal transit authority, [because] we use alternative-fueled fl eet vehicles, but it is getting increasingly diffi cult, with higher petroleum-based product taxed fuels, to continue service with less revenue coming in and higher priced fuel expenditures on the other end. ■ Sandin: We have a lot of companies that try to duplicate our marketing and busi- ness plan, but they don't operate with the same standards as us and give a bad name to our industry. Are changes brought on by the Afford- able Care Act (ACA) impacting your staff- ing or business? ■ Stam: Possibly. We have a signifi cant student driver workforce. We have to monitor their hours to ensure they do not exceed the threshold. We're hoping stu- www.espar.com /// (800) 387-4800 Espar... Because Off-the-Rack Just Isn't Good Enough Hydronic M-12 42,000 BTU Hydronic D5 17,000 BTU Hydronic LII 122,000 BTU Contact an Espar Tailor Near You And Get Your Fleet Measured for New Heaters Sales Rep Espar Climate Systems a member of the Eberspächer group of companies A7 APRIL 2014 BUS OPS M E T 4 B u s O p s _ s h u t t l e 1 4 . i n d d A 7 MET4BusOps_shuttle14.indd A7 3 / 1 8 / 1 4 1 : 2 3 P M 3/18/14 1:23 PM