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 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: http: //www.youtube.com/wa tch?v=oYgPzGkPLmI&featur e=youtu.be.
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 rushhour 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 @KatieBell322. "I like how the only 2 buses I can take to work come every 30 min but at the same 30 min," wrote @ BrileeGibMac. "When the OC transpo driver pulls the bus over so he can stop and get a coffee and some chips #umf---you #getmehome," wrote @ samyeldon.
For Baldwin, who uses OC Transpo several times a week, his video is just the latest bad experience on the bus.
"I have also witnessed a driver actually getting off his bus and into the face of a teenage rider in a verbal altercation," he told the Citizen.
The 27-year-old said he has filed formal complaints in the past "to no avail." He's hoping that the "hard evidence" he captured in the video - along with the exact time, route and licence plate number on the bus in question - will put added pressure on OC Transpo to improve service.
Kanellakos said OC Transpo has already looked into this complaint - and the driver did nothing wrong. "Maybe (the driver) should have turned off the bus," but that he made quick judgment that the bus was secure.
"It's like we've lost all sense of compassion and understanding," Kanellakos said.
cfedio@ottawacitizen.com
© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen
This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
No comments:
Post a Comment