OTTAWA — An OC Transpo passenger posted a rant on YouTube including a video of a driver who left his bus idling with the key in the ignition to buy "a drink, a chocolate bar and a pack of cigarettes."
Josh Baldwin said the 121 Hurdman was already behind schedule when the driver stepped off the bus to make a four-minute pit stop at a gas station on Saturday night.
"Come on, this is ridiculousness. The buses have a schedule to keep and you have drivers doing this kind of stuff?" Baldwin says in the video. "This is an essential service that we pay for when we live in this city."
But OC Transpo is standing "100 per cent behind the operator," said deputy city manager Steve Kanellakos.
The bus was within "the five-minute parameter" of its schedule, he said. Kanellakos added that the driver was buying Halls and a coffee — not cigarettes — because he had a sore throat.
"Bus operators are human beings — they're not machines," Kanellakos said. "We've somehow lost a little bit of humanity in how we deal with people on the job."
The driver is captured running back to the bus holding a cup of coffee.
"Here he comes with his items now. Oh, oh! It's time to hurry. It's time to hurry, is it?" Baldwin narrates in the video.
The video is posted on the phexid4read YouTube channel. It can be viewed here: This is just the latest public criticism of OC Transpo.
Last fall, a driver was fired after a passenger caught him on video slinging obscenities at another passenger.
Another driver was charged with failing to yield safely after his articulated bus crashed into a second bus on the Transitway in February. The rush-hour crash sent 12 people to hospital and delayed many more commuters.
OC Transpo is also the subject of daily attacks on Twitter. Angry Tweets on Tuesday included: "Going to be late for class thanks #oc transpo," wrote@ottawacitizen.com
twitter.com/cfedio
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