Paratransit Driver Salary in 2027: Transit Agency Pay, Contractor Pay, and the Metro Gap

Paratransit drivers do not have a pay number of their own. The federal wage survey has no paratransit category, so this page puts three kinds of evidence side by side: federal pay for the two driver groups that bracket the job, the union pay scales of transit agencies that employ their own paratransit drivers, and what the gap means for a company that bids to run the service. For Medicaid trip pay, see NEMT driver pay. For the contracts themselves, see how to become an ADA paratransit contractor.

What federal wage data says about paratransit drivers

The Bureau of Labor Statistics sorts drivers with its 2018 Standard Occupational Classification, and that list has no paratransit code. Two groups come close. Shuttle drivers and chauffeurs (53-3053) drive passengers on a planned or scheduled basis, and the definition names nonemergency medical transporters. Transit and intercity bus drivers (53-3052) drive regular routes, charters, and private carriage. Neither definition mentions paratransit, so treat the two groups as the low end and the high end of the job.

The latest survey is May 2025. This table splits each group by who employs the driver and shows median hourly pay, with the number of drivers employed in parentheses.

Employer type	Shuttle drivers and chauffeurs	Transit and intercity bus drivers
Private urban transit systems	$23.57 (2,050)	$27.80 (27,240)
Local government, not schools or hospitals	$18.90 (12,060)	$31.06 (87,530)
State government, not schools or hospitals	$21.50 (940)	$33.99 (7,810)
Private other transit and ground passenger companies	$18.09 (61,520)	$23.24 (5,530)
Private interurban and rural bus companies	$17.69 (500)	$22.53 (8,610)

Private companies that run special needs and other ground passenger service are counted in the fourth row, so its $18.09 is the closest federal figure for a contractor’s van driver. Public agencies and their own employees are counted in the local and state government rows.

Nationwide, the van-driver job does not pay much more in government. Local government shuttle drivers earned a median of $18.90 an hour, only 81 cents above the private companies in the fourth row. The big jumps are for bus drivers, who usually need a commercial license, and for private urban transit systems, where the shuttle median is $23.57. What a van driver earns at an agency depends on the local union agreement, so the next section reads two of them.

The survey counts employees only, and only straight-time pay. Overtime, shift differentials, and the cost of benefits are left out, and self-employed drivers are not in it. See NEMT drivers: 1099 or W-2 for that difference.

What transit agencies pay their own paratransit drivers

Some agencies run paratransit with their own employees under a union agreement. Two publish a paratransit pay scale, and a third shows its bus scale beside a paratransit clause.

Pierce Transit, Tacoma area, Washington

Pierce Transit’s agreement with Amalgamated Transit Union Local 758 runs from January 1, 2024 through December 31, 2026. It creates a Paratransit Driver class and defines the job as operating paratransit or microtransit routes that do not require a CDL. On January 1, 2026 the class pays $29.01 an hour at the first step and $30.03 at the second. A new driver moves to the second step after a probationary period of 1,040 hours worked. The agreement sets raises of 6.0 percent in January 2024 and 4.0 percent in each of January 2025 and January 2026. It also lets Pierce Transit subcontract the work with 60 calendar days’ notice to the union.

The federal median for shuttle drivers and chauffeurs in the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue area was $22.20 an hour in May 2025. The first step of the Pierce Transit scale sits $6.81 above that, which comes to $14,165 a year for a full-time driver over 2,080 hours, before payroll taxes. The comparison sets May 2025 survey data against a January 2026 scale. The CDL job pays more: the transit operator class at Pierce Transit starts at $33.08, which is $4.07 above the paratransit driver. See do NEMT drivers need a CDL for where the license line falls.

Clallam Transit, Port Angeles, Washington

Clallam Transit’s agreement with Amalgamated Transit Union Local 587 covers January 1, 2024 through December 31, 2026. Its Paratransit Division scale pays a paratransit operator $23.43 an hour at the first step on January 1, 2026, rising each year of service to $29.29 at the fifth step, which a driver reaches after three years in the job. The fixed-route operator starts at $27.57, which is $4.14 above the paratransit operator.

Clallam County sits in the Bureau’s Western Washington nonmetropolitan area, where shuttle drivers earned a median of $18.56 in May 2025. The first step is $4.87 above that median and the fifth is $10.73 above it. As of October 2026 the agency also lists employer-paid medical, dental, and vision insurance for its employees and a state public employee pension, so the wage is only part of what a driver compares.

Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority, California

VTA’s agreement with Amalgamated Transit Union Local 265 runs June 5, 2025 through June 4, 2029. It is a bus and rail scale, not a paratransit one. In the rates effective June 9, 2025, bus operators start at $29.25 an hour and reach $45.00 at the top step, a climb of up to 36 months. A 3.5 percent raise in the first full pay period of June 2026 moves those rates to $30.27 and $46.58 in the agreement’s wage table. The federal median for shuttle drivers and chauffeurs in the San Jose area was $24.06 in May 2025.

The clause that matters for paratransit is short. VTA may contract paratransit out to private industry, and if VTA decides to use its own employees for the work, they must be employees within the bargaining unit. A company that wins paratransit work in a market like this competes for drivers with an agency whose bus job starts near $30.

Van driver and bus driver pay by metro area

Federal data shows how far the van-driver job (shuttle drivers and chauffeurs) and the bus-driver job (transit and intercity bus drivers) sit apart in each large metro area. The table shows May 2025 median hourly pay across all employers, with the gap in dollars.

Metro area	Shuttle drivers and chauffeurs	Transit bus drivers	Gap
Seattle	$22.20	$40.11	$17.91
San Francisco	$23.26	$37.93	$14.67
New York	$21.83	$37.56	$15.73
Boston	$20.96	$33.71	$12.75
Los Angeles	$21.37	$32.70	$11.33
Chicago	$18.41	$31.35	$12.94
Washington, DC	$21.94	$31.35	$9.41
Dallas-Fort Worth	$17.74	$26.98	$9.24
Houston	$16.31	$24.24	$7.93
Miami	$16.64	$23.22	$6.58
Atlanta	$16.84	$22.32	$5.48

In the two agency scales above, the paratransit job sits between the two columns for its area and starts about $4 an hour below that agency’s own bus job, so treat the bus median as a ceiling, not a target. Your best comparison is the agency’s own paratransit scale if it publishes one, then the shuttle driver median for your metro area.

What the gap means for your bid and hiring plan

If you bid for agency work, your applicants will hold your offer up against the agency’s own scale and the bus job. Plan for four things.

1. Price wages per revenue hour. Some contracts pay by the revenue hour, and your drivers are paid for more. The federal National Transit Database counts a vehicle revenue hour as service time plus layover and leaves out deadhead, which includes leaving or returning to the garage. Maple Grove, Minnesota’s 2025 agreement for its My Ride demand-response service, which the city council approved on October 7, 2024, pays a variable rate of $52.79 an hour in 2026 plus a fixed $40,123.19 a month, adds the fuel invoiced, and subtracts the fares collected. It bills the hours a vehicle is in service inside a set span, 5:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. on weekdays and 7:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on Saturdays, and its definition of a revenue hour leaves out pre-trip inspection, fueling, and the drive from the garage to the first pickup.
2. Do the arithmetic once. Suppose a driver is paid for 8 hours and 7 of them are revenue hours, an example to replace with your own timesheet numbers. A wage of $29.01 an hour then costs $33.15 for each revenue hour, from $29.01 times 8 divided by 7. Add 7.65 percent for the employer share of Social Security and Medicare under IRS Publication 15 (2026), and the cost is $35.69, before workers’ compensation and unemployment tax.
3. Ask the agency for its wage and labor terms. Ask whether the solicitation sets wage terms or attaches labor protections, and whether it scores driver pay. The ADA paratransit contractor guide shows one agency that gave employee pay and benefits as many points as price.
4. Plan the raises. Scales move every year. Pierce Transit’s agreement added 4.0 percent in January 2026, and Clallam Transit’s drivers climb a step each year until the fifth. Both agreements end December 31, 2026, so ask for the new scales before you rely on these. A contract rate that never escalates falls behind them.

Federal transit grants also carry labor protections. Under 49 U.S.C. 5333(b), the Secretary of Labor must find arrangements fair and equitable, and they include provisions, as necessary, to preserve rights, privileges, and benefits under existing collective bargaining agreements and to continue collective bargaining rights. The statute names one contracting case: when one private transit bus service contractor replaces another through competitive bidding, decisions on job assurances follow a Labor Department decision of September 21, 1994. The law sets no paratransit wage. Ask the agency which arrangement its grants carry and whether it reaches your drivers.

Hiring is the other half of the plan. The license, training, and testing a paratransit driver needs are in paratransit driver requirements, and where to find drivers is in how to hire NEMT drivers. Put your own wage into the NEMT driver cost calculator before you set a bid price.