We received a complaint from a Lake County citizen about Lake Tran’s services to seniors, so we contacted Mr. Ben Capelle, CEO of Lake Tran. We would like to thank Mr. Capelle for his timely response and transparency in answering our questions.
Here is our original email to Mr. Capelle:
Mr. Capelle:
We would like to bring to your attention some complaints expressed to us by a Lake County citizen on the declining services provided by LakeTran.
1. He no longer can get a bus to the Kirtland Senior Center.
2. Making a doctor’s appointment using LakeTran has become a problem for him.
3. There is a lack of bus drivers because they quit soon after being hired because of an abusive supervisor.
We certainly do not know the veracity of these claims, so we do not view them as statements of facts at this point in time.
Is there a problem hiring and retaining qualified drivers? If yes, what are the reasons?
Has there been a change in any policies that would lessen the services provided to seniors?
Has LakeTran changed their focus from local services to a more regional transit authority – Lake County combined with Geauga County?
I can make myself available to discuss any issues with you. Transparency is a key to good governance.
Brian Massie
Lobbyists for Citizens
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Here is Mr. Capelle’s response to our questions.
Hey Brian,
I did my best to answer your questions below, I would be happy to schedule a time to go over them if you would like. I chose to answer the first three at the end, I think the answers will make more sense.
Is there a problem hiring and retaining qualified drivers? If yes, what are the reasons?
We were having a challenge hiring drivers. Our driver positions generally compete with UPS, Amazon, etc. Our union agreement previously had a step system where an employee’s wage went up gradually over 3 years, this made our starting wage lower than UPS, Amazon, etc. and we were not attracting candidates. So we changed our wage structure to pay the wage a person would get after 3 years right away, but we did not raise our top tier of wage. There is some additional complexity to it that I can get into if you want.
We made that change in the middle of May, which fixed our ability to attract new employees. I don’t have the most recent hiring events on the graph yet, but below graph shows where we in a low spot for attracting employees. Because of how long it takes to hire and train drivers we are still behind where we need to be, however; we do have around 40 drivers in various stages of training. This lead to a shortage of drivers, which I will go over in the answer to your next question.
We have not had a problem retaining drivers beyond the normal retirements, etc
02/20 10/21 01/22 02/22 05/22
Has there been a change in any policies that would lessen the services provided to seniors?
The short answer is yes, we did make a change. It was not targeted at any one group of people. Until recently, we used a system which used what we called “essential trips”. An essential trip was a category of trip that we never denied, regardless of capacity. In theory, that meant that every resident of Lake County could have called for a trip on the same time and same day and we would have booked the trip. Essential trips were defined as the following: work, medical, Americans with Disabilities (these are legally required), senior center, adult daycare.
This policy was putting immense strain on our employees, so we did have employees upset with us, to the point I was concerned some would leave further exasperating the issue.
We always intended to change this policy, but we wanted to do it in a way that would have less impact on riders. Unfortunately with the shortage in drivers the problem began to compound itself and service quality fell below our standards, October was a particularly bad month, it also happens to be our busiest month of the year, along with March.
As a result I had to make the unpleasant decision to move to a “first come, first serve” system for all trips. We had always been “first come, first served” for non-essential trips. This has resulted in the denial of some trips due to capacity, but it has improved on-time performance. [Emphasis added by LFC]
Our trip volumes trend down in the winter and begin to go up again in Feb/March. I anticipate the number of denials to drop significantly as trip numbers lower for the winter and drivers complete training, so when ridership picks up again in March customers will not experience the issues they have endured this fall.
I have attached an internal memo regarding the topic of first come, first served trips.
Has LakeTran changed their focus from local services to a more regional transit authority – Lake County combined with Geauga County?
This one might be easier to explain in person or over the phone, but I will give you the cliff notes version.
The short answer is no, our focus will always be on Lake County.
We are involved in a study right now that may see us operate Geauga Transit under a contract to the Geauga County Commissioners. Laketran would not expand or merge with Geauga. A copy of the study commissioned by ODOT is attached. If we did consider a contract, the following would be mandatory:
- Silos would be created to ensure Lake County money stays in Lake County and vise versa.
- Both agencies would maintain there current separate identities
- Drivers would be segregated to ensure there was no impact on service for either agency due to staffing issues.
- A defined benefit would need to be demonstrated for Laketran/the citizens of Lake County.
1. He no longer can get a bus to the Kirtland Senior Center. We did not stop going there, but it maybe harder to get a trip due to the situation I explained above.
2. Making a doctor’s appointment using LakeTran has become a problem for him. This would be the same as #1
3. There is a lack of bus drivers because they quit soon after being hired because of an abusive supervisor. We did experience a lack of drives, and some were very burnt out. We tend to loose between 10-20% of new employees in the training process, but this is due to our high expectations and some people realize the job is not for them.
I am not aware of an abusive supervisor causing anyone to quit. If someone is communicating that I would love to get more information so I could deal with it directly, I take pride in treating people with respect and dignity and I would be very upset if this was taking place.
Let me know if you would like to go over any of this, or any other topic in detail. I will be happy to meet with you or discuss on the phone. Thanks!
Ben Capelle | CEO
Direct (440) 350-1001
555 Lakeshore Blvd. Painesville Twp., OH 44077
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Categories: Lake County - General, Uncategorized