Responsibility for running OC Transpo should come in out of the rain under one umbrella, the union representing transit employees is suggesting.
With four major administrative branches now taking responsibility for various areas of transit service, Amalgamated Transit Union executive Randy Graham said yesterday council should restructure OC Transpo under a single branch of city management, or create a separate commission to manage it.
“It has to be brought under one umbrella. We don’t necessarily care if it’s changed to a commission or that it’s brought to some form of umbrella under the city,” Graham said. “Right now there is no one really accountable for the level of service to the people on the street.”
Graham said the bureaucratic overlap in the system has, for example, the director of transit services planning bus routes and managing drivers, yet having no control over the buses that operate on the routes, or the mechanics that fix them.
The situation in February, when OC Transpo was forced to reduce service because of a backlog in repairs and a shortage of trained drivers, was a good example of the inefficient system, Graham said.
In a document entitled A Transit System In Crisis!, the union takes aim at a range of issues. The document charges that OC Transpo’s administrative structure has virtually excluded the union and individual employees from bringing forward grassroots ideas that could improve the system.
“The union submits that the present administrative structure simply is not working,” the document says.
