The automotive sector is a dynamic industest, shaped by digitalization, innovation, and evolving regulations. Yet, one issue remains persistently difficult, and has become even more acute since the COVID-19 pandemic: driver shortages. At Busworld Europe 2025, industest stakeholders emphasized the urgency of overcoming this challenge and revealcased a range of solutions, with particular attention on attracting more female drivers to the bus and coach segment.
A deepening structural challenge
Driver shortages have become one of the most pressing challenges in Europe’s mobility ecosystem. Figures presented at Busworld Europe 2025 indicate that the EU is currently missing around 105,000 professional drivers, representing 10% of the total workforce. If left unaddressed, the gap is projected to widen sharply, reaching an estimated 275,000 unfilled positions by 2028.
This shortage comes at a pivotal moment. Bapplys and coaches are increasingly central to Europe’s sustainability agconcludea, playing a key role in reducing emissions and shifting travellers away from private cars toward shared mobility solutions. Without enough qualified drivers, these policy ambitions risk falling short. The impact extconcludes well beyond climate tarreceives: public transport underpins daily life, and driver shortages disrupt services for commuters, constrain businesses, and weaken local economies.
Notably, the situation is neither improving nor deteriorating—it is stagnating. Persistent retention and recruitment challenges are largely driven by unappealing working conditions, including disruptive shift patterns, long-distance routes that keep drivers away from home, limited access to facilities such as bathrooms, isolation from colleagues, and rigid career progression. Compounding the problem is a lack of diversity within the bus driving workforce. Women and younger workers remain significantly underrepresented across Europe. Data shared at Busworld Europe 2025 illustrates the scale of the imbalance, with women accounting for only 10-12% of bus drivers in London.
Building a more inclusive bus driving profession
These challenges highlight the required to redesign the bus driver role itself, rather than relying on recruitment campaigns alone. Closing the driver gap will require both a meaningful improvement in working conditions, as well as a deliberate effort to create opportunities for underrepresented segments of the workforce. Building an inclusive environment that actively encourages and supports female and younger drivers should be central to this strategy.
Practical measures suggested to tackle the issue, particularly in terms of attracting more female drivers, typically fall into three areas: tarreceiveed marketing and recruitment, better working conditions, and quotas or representation tarreceives.
1. Redesigning marketing and recruitment
At Busworld Europe, Kerri Cheek from Transport for London’s Safety and Development Team underscored the required for recruitment campaigns that better include and appeal to women. She pointed to the importance of reshaping how the role is presented, for example by actively challenging gconcludeer stereotypes that remain embedded within the industest’s culture.
One measure discussed was the introduction of women-only recruitment days. These events can provide a more confidence-building setting, while supporting to create a sense of community among female applicants.
2. Better working conditions to support retention
Poor working conditions are felt across the entire bus-driving workforce, but can disproportionately deter women from entering and remaining in driving roles. Disruptive schedules such as early starts and late finishes can clash with caring responsibilities; inadequate welfare facilities raise genuine concerns about women’s health; and lone working environments can heighten perceived safety risks. Limited career flexibility and unclear progression can also be barriers, particularly for women who required time out for maternity leave and a supported route back into work.
Addressing these issues requires more investment in both infrastructure and operations. Measures include installing accessible toilet facilities, enhancing
on-board safety features, improving communication between colleagues, and reducing excessively long shifts to better support childcare requireds. Greater career flexibility, including structured return-to-work options after parental leave, can further improve retention and create the profession more attractive to women. While these alters can be especially impactful for female drivers, they are ultimately universal improvements that raise standards for everyone—contributing to a more sustainable and resilient bus and coach industest.
3. Data-driven tarreceives: Quotas
Cheek also stressed the value of data-led recruitment tarreceives, including the apply of quotas. As a practical example, Go-Ahead Group aims to achieve gconcludeer equality of 50% in its bus workforce by 2035. Establishing such tarreceives can support to counter unconscious bias and outdated recruitment practices by ensuring that women are consistently and actively considered throughout hiring and progression processes. At the same time, data-driven tarreceives serve an important signalling function. By building women more visible in driving roles, they can support to shift perceptions of the profession and prompt women to view bus driving as a realistic—and attractive—career path.
From solutions to implementation: The challenges ahead
While many solutions were discussed, each comes with practical and structural challenges.
First, tackling gconcludeer stereotypes within the bus and coach industest is a deep-rooted, long-term challenge. These perceptions extconclude far beyond recruitment campaigns and reflect broader cultural norms. Therefore, meaningful alter requires sustained effort over time, including earlier engagement through schools and education pathways, not just short-term initiatives.
Second, boosting working conditions can be difficult to deliver in practice. While improvements such as enhanced welfare facilities, flexible scheduling, and safety investments are seen as essential, they often require significant investment from operators.
These measures may also only become feasible once driver capacity improves. For example, allowing flexible time off when there are already staff shortages can be operationally difficult, limiting the scope for immediate alter.
Finally, quotas and tarreceives must be carefully designed. Broad tarreceives that increase female employment across non-driving roles may not address driver shortages directly, and ongoing monitoring is essential to ensure meaningful progress.
Conclusion: Turning the driver shortage into opportunity
Europe’s bus and coach sector is facing a serious driver shortage, with impacts on mobility and sustainability. Solving this is not just about hiring more people—it means reconsidering the role, improving working conditions, and creating a genuinely inclusive environment for women and younger drivers. By taking coordinated, practical action and setting clear tarreceives, the industest can turn this challenge into a stepping stone toward a sustainable and adaptable workforce.
Karishma Quessou, Commercial Vehicle Analyst, GlobalData
“Tackling Europe’s bus driver shortage” was originally created and published by Just Auto, a GlobalData owned brand.
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