OC Transpo criticized for handling staff shortages following canceled bus trips

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The woes of OC Transpo riders continued Friday, with hundreds more bus trips canceled, adding to the roughly 650 that were axed Wednesday and Thursday combined.

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More than 200 bus journeys were canceled on Friday morning alone – leaving many would-be passengers in the dark, or marooned in the scorching sun, as they waited for a bus – and then another, in at least one case – which didn’t never came.

The cancellations, according to OC Transpo, are the result of many factors, including staffing shortages and summer holidays, higher than usual sick leave absences and overtime worked recently due to maintenance. from line 1 of the O-Train.

Changes to the federal labor code, allowing bus drivers a 30-minute break for every five consecutive hours worked, have also posed a challenge.

But Transit Commissioner Sarah Wright-Gilbert says responsibility for much of the problem lies entirely with OC Transpo management, which she says has been experiencing staff shortages for months, but said his drivers to take vacations during the summer because I can’t promise vacation will be available this fall.

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“They knew they were short between 80 and 200 operators,” Wright-Gilbert said. “I asked them about it and got the usual ‘Well, there’s no schoolyard. People are on vacation. Fewer people come to the office. We’ll handle it.’

But tell that to someone who was waiting for the No. 6 Rockcliffe bus from Greenboro on Friday afternoon, unaware that OC Transpo had canceled the 1:01 p.m. departure, with its website notifying passengers that the next one would arrive in 15 minutes. And say that to the same strandee who may not have been armed with internet access and therefore didn’t learn that the 1:16 p.m. bus was canceled as well.

“OC Transpo seems to have an inability to plan ahead on so many things,” Wright-Gilbert said. “They are very reactive and not proactive.

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“We were talking about this issue of drivers taking vacations in the summer months ago. And instead of proactively going out there and saying, ‘Look, we’re going to have route cancellations, and we’re prioritizing the routes that have the most people or that serve the hospitals, they just stay quiet. ”

But Troy Charter, the city’s director of transit service delivery and rail operations, said Friday “the hindsight is 20/20.”

“We are always looking for ways to improve our communications and better inform our customers. You want to give your clients enough time to be able to make other arrangements or plan their day, plan their week, but at the same time we have staff here working 24/7, making its best to complete as many trips as possible. possible. So it’s always that balance between when you go and say, “We have a challenge.”

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“But I understand everyone’s frustrations,” he added. “We have a great team of people here who are proud of what they do, and it’s also tough for them. I am not trying to minimize the impact this has on our customers, and I think, above all, that we should apologize to our customers for any inconvenience they experience.

Among the priority bus journeys, Charter added, are the first and last of the day on each route, those on routes that are infrequent or where other travel options are limited, routes carrying school children and those serving hospitals. .

On Friday, OC Transpo general manager Renée Amilcar sent a memo to city council outlining Transpo’s plan to hire “up to” 300 new operators. “Customers,” the memo notes, “can expect service reliability to increase in mid-August, when a group of 32 new bus operator trainees graduate.”

The memo also assured the board of OC Transpo’s commitment to providing customers with “accurate, relevant and timely” information about service disruptions, while acknowledging in the next sentence that this is not the case.

Wright-Gilbert argues that OC Transpo has lost public goodwill. “And the way to get it back is not to cancel 300 buses, or if you absolutely have to cancel them, give people a few days’ notice so they can change their plans.”

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