TriMet, operator of the nation’s 11th largest bus fleet, will hire a private contractor to shuttle employees between sites in Southeast Portland.

The transit agency’s board approved a plan Wednesday to hire SP+, a Chicago-based transportation company, to run a 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week shuttle, from a park and ride lot to the Powell Operations Facility a little less than two miles away. The shuttle will operate every 15 minutes, the same as the 14 frequent service lines TriMet operates in the metro area.

Hiring a private shuttle is necessary, TriMet argued this week, for a variety of reasons.

Although many employees take transit to work, the 453 at the 9800 S.E. Powell Blvd. facility will no longer be able use the parking lot as a three-year $100 million construction project ramps up. The construction project is a key part of the agency’s service expansion, funded by a payroll tax increase and the 2017 statewide transportation package.

Going the private route costs $65 per hour for labor and operations, TriMet said, “significantly less than it would take to do the shuttle in-house,” spokeswoman Roberta Altstadt said in an email. The TriMet board approved a one-year contract with the shuttle company this week, with possible extensions through five years. The contract is not supposed to exceed $2.8 million over a five-year period. Doing the plan in-house, according to TriMet’s rough estimates, would cost $1.7 million annually or $8.5 million over five years.

Altstadt said the cost wasn’t the primary driver. “The decision was based on the lack of manpower and the lack of vehicles," she said. She added that TriMet came to the decision not by choice, but by necessity.

But the decision not to work with its own Amalgamated Transit Union Division 757 workforce has enraged the union, which has called for TriMet to suspend the “absurd” shuttle before it even begins. TriMet plans to begin shuttle service Sunday.

“It is the height of absurdity that Oregon’s largest transit agency would contract out an employee shuttle,” ATU executives wrote to the board and TriMet General Manager Doug Kelsey on Thursday, “redistributing public tax dollars to an Illinois-based corporation, when you already employ over 1,300 professional bus operators who are eminently qualified to provide shuttle services for their fellow employees.”

The union represents nearly 3,000 bus drivers, light rail operators, mechanics and others across the transit agency.

Altstadt said executives did talk to the ATU and looked at “operator staffing and scheduling” to see if it could create its own shuttle. “It just didn’t pencil out,” she said.

TriMet has 352 bus drivers based at the Powell facility.

The union is also frustrated with the timing of the vote, which it says occurred on the same day of company holiday parties across the system. Board chairman Bruce Warner was not at the meeting, nor were Directors Kathy Wai and Lori Bauman.

“TriMet simply didn’t want us to rock the boat,” the union leaders wrote, “and so scheduled this vote on a day when we were unavailable. This is deeply disturbing.”

Altstadt said while the agency’s holiday parties did occur on the same day, those staff events stretch until 5 p.m. “This provided the ATU executives ample opportunity to participate in both the Board meeting and the holiday meal,” she said, adding that Kelsey and other executives attended staff events later in the day. She said TriMet had also sent the union a copy of the plan Sept. 27.

The union said it has consistently told TriMet its members don’t want to get to work on “buses driven by non-union, third-party drivers.”

The board members who were at the meeting approved the resolution unanimously.

TriMet said it would “re-evaluate” the shuttle every three months, which runs in concert with the quarterly schedules for bus drivers.

“If it becomes possible to sustain the shuttle bus services in-house,” Altstadt said in an email, “we have the option to make that change.”

-- Andrew Theen

atheen@oregonian.com

503-294-4026

@andrewtheen