OCEAN CITY — With the arrival of mid-August, the resort’s public transportation system is limping to the finish line just like so many other businesses in town.
Throughout the spring and summer, there has been considerable discussion about the lack of reliable help for Ocean City’s public transportation systems, including the municipal buses and the Boardwalk trams. Like almost every other business in the resort, the town’s public transportation system has been getting by with a patchwork of part-timers, those willing to overtime and a reliable core of full-timers.
The result has been fewer deployments and longer hours for those on the payroll, but the public transportation system has kept up with the demand with few complaints. During Tuesday’s Transportation Committee meeting, members got an update on the ridership and deployment schedules along with an update on how the rest of the season is shaking out from Transit Manager Steve Bartlett.
“There will be a turndown heading into the shoulder seasons,” he said. “Our school bus drivers are going to be heading back. We’re down to about 58 bodies and we’ll probably have about 29 deployments per day.”
While the summer is waning, there are still considerable special events coming up including Sunfest and OC BikeFest. Bartlett said Bike Week is a big week for the municipal bus system because participants like to ride during the day and put the bikes away at night to attend the other festivities, including the major concerts planned.
“During those concerts, we’re going to have more deployments,” he said. “We need to define what we’re going to be able to deploy in terms of public transportation. Compared to 2019, we’re at about half of where we’d like to be. We do have more articulating buses now, which should make a big difference.”
Councilman and committee member Mark Paddack agreed the demand for municipal bus service will spike during Bike Week.
“They want the buses out there,” he said. “I can tell from experience, by nighttime, that’s what they want. They want to be able to ride the bus.”
Bartlett said the plan is to meet the demand during the shoulder season special events, but the staffing issues will make that challenging.
“We don’t want to assume something we can’t provide,” he said. “We need to know what level of service we can provide.”
Another issue discussed on Tuesday was the level of Boardwalk tram deployments. Like the municipal bus system, the trams have been faced with an acute shortage of drivers and conductors through much of the summer. Bartlett said the trams are currently running at a smaller percentage of what they normally would at this time of year.
“We’ve been running five deployments, including two during the day and three at night,” he said. “Unfortunately, lately we’ve been down to just four each day. We have 10 drivers and eight conductors. Usually at this time, we have 24 of each. We have one deployment at noon and three more at 3 p.m. If I can pull a rabbit out of my hat, I can get a fifth.”
There has been talk throughout the summer of pulling more tram drivers and conductors from other town departments with the promise of enhanced overtime pay, but that has not materialized for the most part, according to City Manager Doug Miller.
“We talked about paying double-overtime,” he said. “They’re not motivated by the paycheck. Most of them are retirees. They just want to get out and have a fun part-time job.”
Mayor Rick Meehan said the transportation departments would have to be creative in order to keep deployments up through the end of the summer and into the fall.
“Any way we can be proactive, we have to do it,” he said. “We have to get through about two months.”
