Buses sent out on brink of breakdowns: mechanics
To hit quotas, STM will use vehicles that aren’t roadworthy, manager says
Mechanics for the city’s transit agency say they are under so much pressure to get buses on the road that they routinely send out vehicles they know are at a high risk of breaking down. Both Gleason Frenette, the president of the mechanics’ union, and a non-unionized manager within the Société de transport de Montréal’s maintenance department agree that the STM is so concerned with hitting its benchmark for the number of buses that are available for a morning rush hour, that it will press buses into service when they are not roadworthy. “I’ve seen it happen that a supervisor will take a bus off a lift and send it out for the day even though the work has not been done on it; the bus driver called back 10 minutes later asking for a tow because it broke down,” said the manager within the STM’s maintenance department who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retribution. Frenette agreed, saying the STM has cut back on preventive maintenance that could reduce the rate of breakdowns.
“One of my colleagues told me a lot of good maintenance work is just shut down by managers before it can be done in order to get the buses out in the morning,” Frenette said. “The morning rush is so important for them. Even if they know a bus will break down during its route, they will send the bus out anyway. The tow truck will go and get them.” When asked, the STM declined a reporter’s request to answer the charge that it routinely pushes out buses that are not road worthy. Craig Sauvé, the STM’s vice-president, and the executive committee associate councillor in charge of mobility issues, also declined to comment saying it was an internal STM matter. However, Alan DeSousa, the opposition critic for mobility issues, said the Plante administration owes Montrealers answers about the poor state of the STM’s bus fleet. “The vice-president of the STM is Craig Sauvé, and the buck should stop with him,” DeSousa said. “Craig has to be able to answer for why buses are being pushed out of the garage when they are likely to stall or to fail. Management has to be called into account. If people are just trying to meet their numbers simply by putting out buses that are not going to go anywhere fast, that serves nobody. To the general public, it’s a huge black eye.” The source said bad management is the biggest problem with the STM’s fleet of 1,808 buses, because preventive maintenance is put off, and mechanics are often ignored when they flag problems with buses. He added the STM is in a hiring freeze, with just 390 full-time mechanics compared to 417 in 2012. “We are mandated only to do the inspections that are required by the Société de l’assurance automobile du Québec, so mechanics will write down a list of items that need to be repaired on the buses, and then managers will cross off half the items on that list because they’re not required,” the source said. Among the items most often crossed off the list is doors, which the source said are the parts that break down most often because they are used so much. When asked this week about the STM’s high rate of breakdowns — twice and three times as frequent as in Toronto and Manhattan — Renée Amilcar, the STM’s executive director of buses, said the STM has a more taxing winter to deal with than those other cities, and that its breakdown rate compares favourably with those of other agencies in Quebec. But STM buses break down twice as often as those in Laval: Société de transport de Laval buses drove an average distance of 8,987 km between breakdowns, compared with 4,153 km for the STM buses. In the same year, the STL’s rate of buses parked for maintenance or repairs was 11.4 per cent, compared with the STM’s 21.1 per cent. Both agencies primarily rely on Nova Bus as a supplier of buses. The source also agreed that buses are routinely running out of gas, an issue Frenette highlighted on Tuesday. “There used to be a team of people to fuel up and clean the inside of buses. Now, it’s just one person, so he doesn’t (do it) as often. That’s why you can see so many buses that are filthy these days.”