SPOKANE, Wash. – Single mom of four, Danielle Boucher, used to make her almost 40-minute commute downtown using the bus, but after facing delays for months, she had to take matters into her own hands and use her personal car.
"I have a plan B but a lot of people don't have a plan B, and that kind of trickles on; your boss doesn't really care why you're 10 minutes work habitually," said Boucher.
According to the Spokane Transit authorities website, some delays are due to staffing issues. But when we spoke with Carly Courtright an STA Spokeswoman, she told us this doesn't paint the complete picture and called these delays a temporary issue.
"Again, I would just call it a temporary lack of staffing. They're not available at that specific day; it's not a long-term issue," said Cortright.
Cortright added that the STA is adding an additional 30,000 hours of service in July and an additional 28 drivers every two months.
Cortright hopes commuters can be patient with them, but Boucher is out of patience because she says it's impacting her bottom line, "it's a little frustrating, the way gas prices are right now, it's just extra out of my budget, plus paying for parking downtown, it's an unexpected part of the budget that kind of crunches it."
Cortright says they empathize with those who rely on public transit daily and do their best to cancel routes outside peak hours.
