Transpo Got It Right, Then It Didn’t
If only there had been drivers for all the tested Trillium Line trains:
Technically Perfect is not Perfect
Mike Patton is the former communications director for Mayor Larry O’Brien and the president of the Ottawa West-Nepean PC Association.
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The question isn’t “Who wants to work on Thanksgiving weekend?” The question is “What project manager schedules testing on Thanksgiving weekend?” The answer? A project manager who doesn’t understand the impact of his/her decision and the fact that no one performed any due diligence on the decision. And one more question, “Why does city hall keep making the same mistakes again and again and again?” The answer to that is simple.
If they can’t rustle up enough drivers to do a one-off cover of routes on a holiday weekend with, presumably, at least time-and-a-half for working a stat day, how on earth are they going to have enough drivers when the service rolls out on a regular basis? Which, if you believe OC Transpo, is imminent.
We know they are constantly coming up short of drivers on the bus side of their operations with the result that route cancellations are a regular event. Is this the future of the Trillium Line as well? When they shut down the Line for renovations and to extend it, the existing drivers were either absorbed into the bus service or retrained for the Confederation Line. Are they now going to be returned to Trillium service which will create more holes elsewhere in the transit company?
This isn’t a zero-sum game – when you add multiple kilometres of new lines, you need more trains and drivers to cover them. When they’re already having trouble hiring and retaining drivers and other staff to keep the basic service operating, how do they plan to add and maintain service on a larger scale?
What percentage of the drivers needed to operate the Trillium Line with full service do they already have hired and either trained or undergoing training? Is this the real reason they cut the frequency of trains on the Confederation Line, i.e. to free up drivers for the Trillium Line?
Yes, they were running trains that were half-full on the other line but they’d been doing that for years without any remedial steps being taken. Then suddenly, when they need more drivers elsewhere, they take a step that is three or four years overdue which conveniently frees up a group of drivers. Cutting service at the end of August would give them enough time to retrain those drivers to operate the deisel trains on the Trillium Line when it eventually opens. Coincidence? I think not!