There is an manpower shortage transit industry-wide. It's impacting pretty much every transit agency in the US. During the height of the pandemic, most transit agencies did major service reductions to compensate for lower ridership and the growing transit manpower issue. Those agencies are now going through the process of restoring service as possible.

Meanwhile, MDOT MTA didn't do similar levels of service reductions. One of the reasons for that was that transit ridership in this area did not tank nearly as much as it did in other places. The drawback to this is that MDOT MTA wasn't immune to the industry manpower shortage and we're seeing that play out now with daily cut trips.

Over the last year, MDOT MTA has performed some planned service reductions to help with the daily cut trip issue. That effort is ongoing. The result is less scheduled service, but also less cut trips. For awhile, daily cuts were in the mid-teens, percentage wise; currently, it's averaging in the single digits.

One of the few things the Governor can do is budget for signing and retention bonuses for transit workers. People can make similar (or more) money in other jobs without having to deal with things like problematic riders (operator assaults are a thing) so why would someone opt to drive a bus instead?