There’s a looming shortage of these critical workers and we need to start planning
We often talk about bottlenecks when discussing traffic – a wide road merges into fewer lanes, the flow of traffic slows and congestion increases.
Besides physical bottlenecks, our traffic system faces severe human bottlenecks too.
We are facing a massive shortage of bus drivers and truck drivers that planners on all levels must be made aware of and adjust their strategies.
A previous column of mine discussed the concept of the retirement cliff and asked what share of the workforce is aged 55-64 and what share is 65+. These workers will fall off the proverbial retirement cliff in a decade as they reach retirement age.
In many jobs, this looming skills shortage due to the aging workforce occurs on top of a current skills shortage.
Jobs and Skills Australia estimates that seven out of eight states and territories currently face a shortage of truck drivers while five states and territories could do with more bus drivers.
Let’s have a look at the age profile of bus drivers and truck drivers.
The charts can be summarised quickly: we will lose a bucketload of professional drivers to retirement in the coming decade.
You might like
Maybe the number of women behind the wheels can be pushed upwards a bit? Since about 13 per cent of bus drivers are women, there appears to be an option to entice a few more women into trucking where they currently only make up 4 per cent of the workforce.
The argument against this is simple as I laid out in a previous column: Australia is running out of workers and increasingly faces an almost universal skills shortage.
The easiest way out might be to simply import bus drivers and truckies from overseas.
Just over 32 per cent of all workers in Australia were born overseas.
Fewer truck drivers (27 per cent) were born overseas. Among younger truckies the number of migrants has been steadily increasing (now over 40 per cent of workers in their 30s were born overseas). Among bus drivers, the share of migrant workers is significantly higher (45 per cent) – especially among drivers in their 30s (75 per cent).
We can adjust the skilled migration scheme to allow in more foreign drivers, we can continue to run programs encouraging more women to take up driving jobs. Will this be enough to counter the worsening skills shortage in these jobs?
The consequences of insufficient numbers of bus drivers are serious when you consider the rapidly expanding nature of our cities. We build more car-dependent suburbs every year, intensifying our reliance on road-based transport.
Since we don’t build up new rail capacity quickly enough, the only public transport option in vast areas of our cities is buses. Are you hoping to see your local bus network improving its frequency? Think again, the shortage of bus drivers suggests a slow weakening of the bus network.
The shortage of truckies is even more universal. The immediate consequence is an increase in shipping costs. The cost of doing business is going to go up for everyone and the speed of deliveries might go down on average. Not fun at all.
Oof, that all sounds awfully negative. Surely, self-driving vehicles will come to the rescue?
Let’s start by thinking about self-driving trucks.
By 2035, it is unlikely that Australia’s truck fleet will be largely self-driving, though some level of automation will likely be in place. The transition to autonomous trucking faces several challenges, but partial automation and autonomous freight corridors could be widespread in certain areas.
While autonomous trucking technology is advancing, full autonomy (no human intervention) will not be achieved by 2035, according to industry experts I am talking to.
Semi-autonomy (think of a fully autonomous truck but in a tightly controlled environment) will occur first and will be tried out on specific long-haul routes that feature minimal complexity.
Stay informed, daily
We might see remote-controlled driving where one driver oversees multiple self-driving trucks in a transition phase.
Getting the technology right is one thing, getting the legal framework right is another challenge.
Australia has strict road safety laws, and I would be surprised if regulation will adapt quickly to solve all the challenges that driverless trucks will bring with them. Liability, insurance and compliance with state and federal regulations will be a nightmare to work out.
Australia’s vast distances make the establishment of a new support network for self-driving trucks expensive. This increases uncertainties and businesses will likely stick to the old-fashioned way of transporting goods for as long as they can.
Transitioning the national trucking fleet will be a gradual process. The average age of a truck in Australia is 13 years (16 for heavies). Any truck will be more or less be driven into the ground before a new self-driving one is purchased.
The aging of the trucking workforce, and the gradual phasing out of traditional trucks guarantees that there will never be hordes of unemployed truckies picketing against self-driving trucks. This will be a peaceful transition.
I am more optimistic about self-driving buses by 2035. Mostly, because we can use smaller vehicles. I expect the future of self-driving buses to start with van-sized vehicles.
These would come at a much lower cost than a large bus, their interactions with nuisances like pedestrians and cyclists are potentially less dangerous than with a full-sized bus. Public transport unions and safety regulators, however, will likely push for a slow transition towards self-driving busses.
Today, besides driving the bus, a bus driver provides a sense of safety for passengers. The bus driver can call police or even intervene directly in potentially dangerous or unpleasant interactions between passengers. The simple presence of a human minimises vandalism.
Many people might not trust a bus without a driver in the early years. The establishment of a fully autonomous bus network requires infrastructure spending (smart traffic signals, geofencing, and AI monitoring to support driverless buses), a legal framework, and a new approach towards passenger safety.
Upgrading existing bus fleets to autonomous tech will be costly and phased in slowly just like the introduction of self-driving trucks. Places like airports, university campuses, and maybe hospital precincts lend themselves to introducing such new technologies.
Where should we expect the most innovation in the field? In my opinion, there is one Australian capital city that is most likely to see self-driving buses and trucks at scale first. That’s Perth.
That’s where the first Australian driverless bus trial was conducted in 2016 (Navya shuttle).
Perth also had a self-driving shuttle (RAC Intellibus) servicing the South Esplanade for several years. Perth’s road network is less congested than Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane and dedicated busways and rapid transit lanes should make automation easier.
Most importantly, Western Australia has a workforce and economy that has experience with autonomous driving because of the common use of this technology on mining sites. Perth will also likely be in a better financial situation than the other capital cities.
As Perth continues to expand its airport and business districts, there are natural locations to test a self-driving bus network and trial self-driving trucking solutions before their eastern counterparts.
While I firmly believe that self-driving technology will rescue our bus network and trucking sector from a very intense skills shortage, the next 10 years will not be easy and everyone in the sector should brace themselves for serious interruptions.
Simon Kuestenmacher is a co-founder of The Demographics Group. His columns, media commentary and public speaking focus on current socio-demographic trends and how these impact Australia. His podcast, Demographics Decoded, explores the world through the demographic lens. Follow Simon on Twitter (X), Facebook, or LinkedIn.
