The city has announced that Access-A-Buses will be on the road Monday, driven by managers. Union members say they have safety concerns about managers driving, but city spokesperson Shaune MacKinlay tells me that the managers have Class 2 licences, which are superior to the Class 4 licence required to drive the Access-A-Buses.
MacKinlay says the managers are going through an intensive two-day training on the handling passengers side of the business, but union people tell me this training typically takes weeks.
“When training drivers go out and drive, they get used to the feel of the bus for a while,” explains one driver via email. “Stop go over the steps, hands on… on how to load and unload a passenger and properly secure the passengers. Trust me, doing that in two days is unsafe. What happens if they get into a stiuation where a passenger gets stuck on the ramp and the driver doesn’t remember what to do? An AAB union driver has been put through the tests time and time again, and there wouldn’t be that uncertainty.”
I don’t know how to assess the two sides of the argument, but there’s at least some concern that the managers may not be up to snuff—today, one of the managers drove a conventional bus into a door at the Ragged Lake transit garage, taking out the door, confirms MacKinlay.
The union people tell me the driver in that accident was none other than the manager responsible for…. collecting accident reports. MacKinlay couldn’t confirm that.
This article appears in Feb 16-22, 2012.
Training is normally 6 weeks
It takes 6 weeks for a union person to complete the training. Those not in the union can finish it in a matter of days. Not surprising.
Boy, I’ll bet there’s some pissed off managers right now…now they’ve actually got to do some work.
By the way, Bo, before you jump all over the union’s ass, please note that the “6 weeks” came from another poster, and he or she mentioned “training”…whatever the hell that exactly means. In fact neither you nor I have any idea how long the training takes that is specific to Access-A-Buses. I daresay it’s longer than 2 days, and probably justifiably so – jamming managers through two days of “intensive” training, under the circumstances, certainly translates to a week minimum of normal training.
What a load of ATU BS.
Six weeks or 240 hours to learn how to operate, load and unload an Access-A-Bus ?
Come on ATU, give Tim a training schedule to back up your claim. Or does the training include First Aid training ?
If the union is so concerned about the safety of the people of HRM then maybe they should drive the bus that helps there parents around and stop being greedy traditionalists. And i can see that it takes 6 weeks to train the uneducated people that drive are buses; cause they need a reason to justify the fact they make more then teachers that educate the province.
Get back to work.
For all you Noobs to Para-transit please refrain from commenting. If you had a para-plegic spouse, son would you want someone escorting them who had two days of training? I drove for suce a service in another town and another bus service and we had to be legally certified to perform this service. It is about many things. You do not grasp a person’s wheel chair before asking their permission, it is an extension of their person. Will they be able to properly assist people who need physical help or injure them when they drop them. Will they be able to properly restrain a passenger… and will they be able to do all this an maintain the schedule that the service requires… with two days of training. I doubt it.
So please don’t try to put the managers into a situation that they can’t handle. If they are not trained or trainers for this service, then they have the potential to do more harm to the patrons than good. The patrons are people not cargo and need to be treated with respect. It has nothing to do with the Motor Vehicle level of the drivers… it is about proper training for the patron. So make sure you make the distinction first.
So that’s one accident by the managers to the 600+ for the union members from last year. Hmm…I guess the managers are better drivers after all.
Ok hipsters bring on the thumbs down now.
Yeah. After a few days one of them hit a door doesn’t make them better drivers considering the 600 or so accidents that nearly 500 drivers were “involved in”. Do note that the average driver can drive upwards of 200km per day 4-6 days per week; 2080+ hours/yr. Also consider that at least 350 of those nearly 500 drivers don’t have any accidents. It’s usually the same 100 or so accident prone bus drivers who shouldn’t be bus drivers having a few or more accidents per year. And many of the accidents some of them do have are not a result of any wrong doing on the bus drivers’ part. Like the idiot that hit the back of a stopped bus on parkland drive (stopped for a crosswalk at that). That’s remarkable when you look at the stupid things the other motorist do on the roads around the buses (like speed up the wrong side of the road the cut in front of a moving bus because your stupid ass didn’t want to wait for the bus to pull out of the stop but the bus keeps pulling out anyway because the driver knows you’re a stupid asshole; or pull out in front the bus just to get stuck in front of it at a red light- look at the time you saved; and passing the bus up the left-hand lane to cut in front to make a right turn). Remember, ALL these buses have cameras that see all of this. So you people can absorb all the numbers and BS the city and media throws at you but before you start barking, use some brain power and find out what you’re barking about. I drive a school bus myself and easily avoid and avert about 4 accidents a day because of motorist impatience and stupidity, and that’s just in the 5 and a half hours per day I drive.
But you got to listen to me. Just keep on criticizing everyone else like you people love to do. After all, you people are perfect and never make mistakes and are experts in what everyone else should do.
The training also includes learning to drive all the types of buses, learn ALL 67 routes as well as policies, procedures first aid and some other classroom crap. – And for ignorant people who assume bus drivers are uneducated. Get over yourself and educate yourself.. You don’t know who these people are beyond the seat of those buses. These people (like the people who use buses) come from a wide variety of backgrounds. Some having been pilots, university profs’, teachers, cops, many are ex military, and yeah… some are just plane stupid. But, you should paint them all with the same brush. That just makes you as inept as you perceive them to be.