Ottawa Transit Commission
It is reflective of human nature that we complain to anyone who will listen, in earshot of our grumbling plaints. Relatively rarely do people go to the trouble of taking their complaint and formalizing it by writing a letter outlining the reason for their dissatisfaction and addressing it to the entity that is responsible for their state of mind.
OC Transpo, the public transportation agency operated by the municipality of Ottawa, will not accept formal complaints over the telephone. Nor will they give credence to any complaints that might come in by the use of email through the Internet; in fact they do not publicize an email contact. They will exclusively engage with complaints that are written, signed and submitted by fax, mail or delivered by hand.
Clearly, they have their standards.
People who use the public transit system would appreciate having the drivers call out stops so they may know where they are at any given time. People travelling routes they are unfamiliar with are acutely sensitive to the potential of missing the stop they want. Even people travelling familiar routes have difficulty seeing out winter-fogged and -iced windows and could use some help.
OC Transpo drivers contend they are drivers, not hand-holders, and people can look after themselves. The transit authority was forced to look into an added expense of purchasing an automatic place-call system because drivers and their union were not thrilled with the prospect of taking on an additional onerous task of calling out stops.
Bus passes for OC Transpo are the most costly in the country. It is a fairly good transit system, but there have been recent cut-backs in routes that have also made riders distinctly unhappy. Those cut-backs occurred even while, paradoxically, the ridership was steadily increasing. The ridership has found reason to be annoyed for a good many other reasons, including those bus drivers who will not stop to pick up waiting passengers or who decide to miss a stop to let off passengers.
This past January the transit service received no fewer than 2,344 written complaints, which works out to an average of 75 per day. Accusations that bus drivers were speeding, running red lights and stop signs, that drivers were operating their vehicles so poorly they constituted a danger to other vehicles on the road. Complaints that bus drivers were placing the safety of cyclists and pedestrians at risk.
Those complaints do not come out of empty air. It is empty air when people complain and then don't bother to follow up. But these people who followed up, at the rate of 75 each day were serious about what they experienced and what they observed. And the transit company and its senior managers should be concerned about the situation.
To balance the 2,344 complaints there were five letters commending drivers. Five drivers were not fantasizing themselves to be motor-driven cowboys. Deputy city manager Steve Kanellakos has a response to those concerned bus riders who go out of their way to describe "discourteous" drivers.
He contends that people have "lost all sense of compassion and understanding". He responds that "Bus operators are human beings - they're not machines. We've somehow lost a little bit of humanity in how we deal with people on the job."
Actually, no. People pay handsomely for reliable service and they have a right to feel entitled to same. A certain standard of reliability should be a given in a well-run operation like OC Transpo, where the drivers take pride in their work. Drivers complain that they are subject to abuse, and that is dreadful and regrettable. But that does not excuse poor job performance.
And Mr. Kanellakos should look a little more carefully at his own statement about "how we deal with people on the job". For OC Transpo fired a driver close to retirement with an otherwise unblemished record who, after having been provoked incessantly responded by shouting profanities at a passenger. Would not a disciplinary action have been more appropriate?
Yet when another bus driver was charged with failing to yield safely after his articulated bus crashed into another bus on the Transitway causing a dozen people to be sent to hospital, delaying the commuters on that route at rush-hour, there was no discipline as rash and as immutable as withdrawing that driver's employment.
OC Transpo, the public transportation agency operated by the municipality of Ottawa, will not accept formal complaints over the telephone. Nor will they give credence to any complaints that might come in by the use of email through the Internet; in fact they do not publicize an email contact. They will exclusively engage with complaints that are written, signed and submitted by fax, mail or delivered by hand.
Clearly, they have their standards.
People who use the public transit system would appreciate having the drivers call out stops so they may know where they are at any given time. People travelling routes they are unfamiliar with are acutely sensitive to the potential of missing the stop they want. Even people travelling familiar routes have difficulty seeing out winter-fogged and -iced windows and could use some help.
OC Transpo drivers contend they are drivers, not hand-holders, and people can look after themselves. The transit authority was forced to look into an added expense of purchasing an automatic place-call system because drivers and their union were not thrilled with the prospect of taking on an additional onerous task of calling out stops.
Bus passes for OC Transpo are the most costly in the country. It is a fairly good transit system, but there have been recent cut-backs in routes that have also made riders distinctly unhappy. Those cut-backs occurred even while, paradoxically, the ridership was steadily increasing. The ridership has found reason to be annoyed for a good many other reasons, including those bus drivers who will not stop to pick up waiting passengers or who decide to miss a stop to let off passengers.
This past January the transit service received no fewer than 2,344 written complaints, which works out to an average of 75 per day. Accusations that bus drivers were speeding, running red lights and stop signs, that drivers were operating their vehicles so poorly they constituted a danger to other vehicles on the road. Complaints that bus drivers were placing the safety of cyclists and pedestrians at risk.
Those complaints do not come out of empty air. It is empty air when people complain and then don't bother to follow up. But these people who followed up, at the rate of 75 each day were serious about what they experienced and what they observed. And the transit company and its senior managers should be concerned about the situation.
To balance the 2,344 complaints there were five letters commending drivers. Five drivers were not fantasizing themselves to be motor-driven cowboys. Deputy city manager Steve Kanellakos has a response to those concerned bus riders who go out of their way to describe "discourteous" drivers.
He contends that people have "lost all sense of compassion and understanding". He responds that "Bus operators are human beings - they're not machines. We've somehow lost a little bit of humanity in how we deal with people on the job."
Actually, no. People pay handsomely for reliable service and they have a right to feel entitled to same. A certain standard of reliability should be a given in a well-run operation like OC Transpo, where the drivers take pride in their work. Drivers complain that they are subject to abuse, and that is dreadful and regrettable. But that does not excuse poor job performance.
And Mr. Kanellakos should look a little more carefully at his own statement about "how we deal with people on the job". For OC Transpo fired a driver close to retirement with an otherwise unblemished record who, after having been provoked incessantly responded by shouting profanities at a passenger. Would not a disciplinary action have been more appropriate?
Yet when another bus driver was charged with failing to yield safely after his articulated bus crashed into another bus on the Transitway causing a dozen people to be sent to hospital, delaying the commuters on that route at rush-hour, there was no discipline as rash and as immutable as withdrawing that driver's employment.
Labels: Ontario, Ottawa, Particularities
posted by Pieface @ 6:39 PM
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