Bus stop nightmare prompts call for change
A woman who is partially blind and chronically ill wants OC Transpo to reconsider when it allows passengers to request special stops after she says she was left stranded by the side of a road.
A transit program called Safe Stop allows passengers to ask drivers to stop at safe spot along their route, but closer to their destination, after 7 p.m. When Sophie Levesque asked a driver to let her off the bus closer to her Beacon Hill townhouse at around 6:20 p.m. on May 11, she said, the driver refused.
Levesque, 35, was returning from an appointment at The Ottawa Hospital’s Eye Institute. In addition to her central blindness, drops to dilate her pupils had left her with next to no peripheral vision.
She said she approached a driver on Route 24, showed her priority seating and Para Transpo cards and explained the problem with her vision. Levesque also had a white cane, which she uses because of her vision impairment.
She asked to be dropped off at an Esso gas station on the northeast corner of Ogilvie and Montreal roads, about 200 metres before the bus stop and considerably closer to her house.
Levesque said the driver refused, telling her, “I’m not losing my job over this.” She said she pleaded, telling the driver, “I’m not going to be able to get home from here.”
Not his problem, she says he told her when he dropped her off at the regular stop. Then he drove away, laughing, Levesque alleges.
Left on the side of Ogilvie Road, unable to see a thing and fearful of crossing four lanes of traffic, Levesque called one of her roommates and asked him to meet her at the bus stop and walk her home.
“Quite frankly, it’s humiliating,” Levesque said. “The situation has to change.”
People with disabilities often feel trapped in their homes because the transit service “refuses to acknowledge we’re human,” Levesque said.
“It seems like society doesn’t want us.”
She said people with disabilities have a legal right to accessibility and accommodation and should not be discriminated against because of their health.
The chair of Ottawa’s transit commission apologized for the treatment Levesque described in an email sent to all members of council and top transit officials.
“What she described does not meet my expectation and it’s very frustrating that that kind of thing can take place,” Stephen Blais said.
OC Transpo must be a friendly, compassionate, customer-focused service, he said.
Officials are still trying to identify the driver, who will be spoken to by supervisors and asked for his description of the situation, said David Pepper, Transpo’s manager of customer service.
The driver will not lose his job as punishment.
Even though Levesque’s request fell outside the normal hours when Safe Stops could be requested, Pepper explained that drivers, at all times of day, can exercise their discretion to provide the “safest possible service” to the roughly 400,000 people who get on or off buses every day.
“The customer had a legitimate request and it should have been addressed. It should not have been simply left at, ‘I will drop you at the next stop, that’s it, that’s all,’” Pepper said.
“(The driver) should have acted differently.”
Levesque’s city councillor, Beacon Hill-Cyrville rep Tim Tierney, said he was waiting to hear back from the Transpo officials looking into Levesque’s complaint. He held off on recommending any policy changes, but said the city had to “look out for vulnerable populations.”
“Leaving someone to walk across four lanes is probably not the best idea,” he said.
Levesque has a Para Transpo pass, but rides must be booked in advance. If the rider can guarantee when their appointment begins and ends, perhaps it’s a safe bet to book. But, Levesque said, if a rider doesn’t know when the appointment will end or if they’re having a good day and feel like leaving the house, Para Transpo isn’t really an option.
That’s when she opts for traditional OC Transpo bus service. Yet even with her priority seating card — which entitles holders with “invisible disabilities” to co-operative seating at the front of buses — Levesque says she is often mocked or ridiculed by fellow passengers.
Wearing glasses and her blond hair tied up in a tidy ponytail, Levesque acknowledges she doesn’t “look sick.”
But what exactly does a person with lupus, arthritis, fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome, migraines and chronic pain look like?
Her recent experience, which Levesque said is the kind of thing people with disabilities face constantly, has compelled her to push for change.
In her letter, she offered several suggestions to make public transit more hospitable.
Levesque wants Transpo to create an official policy allowing people with disabilities to request a safe-stop drop-off any time of the day.
Failing that, she suggested Transpo create an initiative similar to the Priority Seating card that would allow a rider with a doctor’s note to qualify for a new safe-stop card that would permit them to request a stop closer to their destination.
Pepper said expanding the Safe Stop program would pose some operational challenges and force bus drivers to make all kinds of additional judgments each shift. The extra stops requested by passengers, for example, could cause delays, while stopping between stops could make buses less predictable to other road users.
Blais, the transit commission chair, said Levesque’s suggestions seemed logical and reasonable, but he wanted to understand the implications before wholeheartedly endorsing them.
“These are the types of suggestions from customers we need to listen to,” he said.
Levesque said such changes would make a tremendous difference in the lives of people with disabilities and those who sometimes need to request special stops before 7 p.m.
“If I don’t do it, who will?” Levesque said.
“If I don’t help fix the system so disabled people are treated as people, I am as culpable as the people who created the system.”