Hiring needed for a transit switch
Returning to the old transit system means using it like it was, without adjustments, and hiring 10 people, says the city.
“If we are to go out and revitalize/re-start the old system the first thing we have to do is hire and train 10 people,” said CAO Merete Heggelund. Five full-time bus drivers were offered part-time positions on Aug. 15.
“We left vacancies. We had people retire. At the time this was implemented we had five vacancies in the system. We did not hire because we knew change was coming,” said Heggelund. “So it is going to be quite a task to find 10 qualified people.”
This was in mind when Heggelund mentioned at a Sept. 18 council meeting that it could take three months to return to the old system after councillors voted 6-3 in favour of scrapping the new transit system and returning to the old one.
“That was a guess based on how long does it take to get a recruitment process in line, get everybody in house, get them trained because they have to be trained, and that’s several weeks training process to get them going,” said Heggelund. “So, I’m not talking about a big analytical piece or the time to move bus signs, I’m talking about getting our labour force up and running and ready to run the old system again.”
Dave Marshall, who uses transit regularly, believes the system was operating until Sept. 3 without five of those people and could do so again until people can be hired.
There were some minor tweaks to the new transit system this week but it has not helped, said Marshall. He just missed a connecting route bus at the hospital on Tuesday and waited 36 minutes for the next bus. That wait was not too uncomfortable, he says, but if it had been the middle of winter it would have been unthinkable.
At a public services committee meeting Monday, Coun. Celina Symmonds said she had not heard from people complaining about the transit system until the new one was introduced on Sept. 5.
“I don’t know what the option is except to put it back,” said Symmonds.
Coun. Les Pearson questioned what would happen to the parkade bus terminal downtown.
“I hope we never go back to that,” said Pearson.
The terminal was key for transfers under the old system. Pearson said it had the “stench of urine.”
Looping through that terminal creates a lot of waste, said Heggelund.
Many seniors from Cypressview Foundation are affected by the new system and walking more than 800 metres in winter, which is unacceptable, says Coun. Julie Friesen.
Council wants to ensure vulnerable people have access to transit, said Symmonds.
For those who can’t walk the 800 metres to a bus stop there are solutions, said public services commissioner Karen Charlton.
Symmonds says providing “special transit” is even more expensive than regular transit.
In order to cut services and reduce the budget for transit — to meet requirement for the financially fit program — transit is no longer reaching every area of the city, Heggelund acknowledged.
Estimating the cost of tweaks to the system is not as simple as crunching a few numbers.
“It’s taken a year to design and implement this system. People think it was two days or five days or whatever. No, it’s been a year of work, of trying to cover the biggest part of the community we could with an efficient lower-cost transit system,” said Heggelund.