Fine comes after CBC Ottawa report of riders flagging problems with automated call system CBC News, Posted: Mar 13, 2018.
Terrance Green, right, complained successfully to the Canadian
Transportation Agency in 2006 about OC Transpo drivers failing to call out stops. More than a decade later, an automated system is in place to call out stops, but he and his wife Lorraine, who is also visually impaired, have said it frequently doesn’t work properly.
The City of Ottawa has paid a $25,000 fine to the Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA) following a CBC Ottawa report about failures with OC Transpo’s automated bus stop announcement system.
In a memo issued to city councillors Tuesday, OC Transpo general manager John Manconi said the fine was paid and that OC Transpo has wrapped up its investigation into the problem.
It is at least the third time OC Transpo has been fined for not calling out bus stops.
Visually impaired riders told CBC some stops were not consistently being called out. The Next Stop Announcement System was installed for $12 million in 2010 following a complaint by a blind rider who said drivers were failing to call out stops as required by the transit agency’s own policy.
Wrong departure time, faulty speakers
Tuesday’s memo said two CTA officials took 26 different bus trips Nov. 14, 2017, and found that on 22 of those trips (or 85 per cent), the automated system worked properly.
The officials narrowed down some of the issues with the four problematic trips. In one trip, for example, the bus driver began a route before the scheduled start time, which caused announcements of the first few stop to be missed. In another case, faulty speakers on the bus were to blame.
OC Transpo has now beefed up maintenance inspections on all buses and have started doing random spot-checks to make sure the system is functioning as intended, Manconi wrote.
OC Transpo is also encouraging riders to provide feedback if they notice any problems with the automated system.
Original at http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/city-ottawa-fine-calling-out-oc-transpo-bus-stops-1.4574729