There is also a rule about not being in front of yellow line to obstruct the driver’s view of mirrors. There is a ponying where the bus gets too full I safely take anyone else on board. If you let people up to the windshield and get cut off by a small car a short distance later and have to slam the brakes, somebody will go through the windshield. Often times the driver is just doing his job and asking people to move back. People either ignore tr driver or don’t want to get close to others on bus. The driver doesn’t want to leave anyone behind but if no one moves then that is what is going to happen. It’s all about safety. The bus driver is 100% responsible for the personal safety of people riding the bus.

Level of rudeness of Transit Operators varies from those who don’t even look at your bus pass to those who simply yell at passengers to jam to the back of the bus so that they can pack more people in during rush hour.

Calling your Alderman (Councillor) will be more effective, but only if more of your neighbors also make similar calls.

BTW – for anyone wondering, the C-train Driver who was caught doing a crossword puzzle while driving C-train and subsequently fired, has now gotten his job back and is now driving buses for Calgary Transit. Calgary Sun would love this story.

Im sorry if it seemed like I was blaming the bus drivers that wasnt what I meant. I was placing blame with the planners and I have placed an official complaint with the city.

I agree with the 20 minute trip to crowfoot and although the 408 is a good route as it works for COP, market mall, u of c and so on it DOES NOT work for the ctrain, which should be the primary concern.

The 408 goes to Brentwood. It never went to Dalhousie. As a bus operator, I found it to be one of the best routes to drive (except in the snow).

It seems a bit silly the way the route has to go into Canada Olympic Park TWO times PER TRIP regardless of anyone wanting to go there or not. The Route goes from Brentwood down 32nd Ave to Market Mall, turning left around at around 49 st. Then it goes down the hill on Home Road, intersecting Bowness Road and then turning right onto 16 Ave westbound. It then exits to Sarcee Tr towards Bowness and you end up at Bowness and 77th. A left turn at 83 St, thru Bowfort Road and into COP. Then westbound 16th to Valley Ridge, there’s two time points there. At each one, the operator has to back up the bus as their is no proper turn around. This is despite the fact that it has been over 6 years since they converted the route from community shuttle bus to conventional bus. After servicing both sides of Valley Ridge, the bus then does a loop in Crestmont. Afterwards back to COP and the rest of the routing is the same in reverse back to Brentwood. 45 minutes is one complete trip.

Most times the bus has to kill excess time at 2 timepoints in Valley Ridge, 1 timepoint in Crestmont, and twice in COP, and occasionally even kill time at Bowness Rd and 77th.

45 minutes to and from Brentwood from Valley Ridge is too much time. A 20-30 min round trip could be easily designed to Crowfoot and I am sure an even faster route could be designed going to the new Tuscany LRT station.

The problem is not the people driving the buses. The problem is the people who design these routes who have never had the chance to ride these routes or drive a bus in service on them. Another problem is lack of people calling to complain to 403-262-1000 to officially complain. A more effective way would be to get in touch with your Alderman (City Councillor?) or you could tweet Nenshi.

I live in Valley Ridge, and for the last two years I went to SAIT, which I’m sure you know has a CTrain Terminal at it, so naturally (as I’m required to pay $110 per semester for a stupid pass) I attempted to use transit one day. I didn’t know much about it other than I had taken the 408 from Valley Ridge to Bowness High School when i was there, and it seemed okay. At that time, the closest NW C-Train station was Dalhousie, and the 408 went to brentwood, not a big deal as it’s only about 3-5 minutes away.

When I looked up the (what I thought logically would be updated) route for the 408 to the new crowfoot station, I was amused to find out that CT had decided to keep the 408 running to brentwood, instead of crowfoot (which is much, much, much closer)

So, breaking down my average day of taking calgary transit to school with a class at 8:00 am looked like this:

Get on 408 @ 6:00, arrive at brentwood @ 7:15, on train @ 7:25, arrive at SAIT @ 7:55, rush to class.

Now I am graduated from SAIT and going to MRU in the fall, I’m not even going to attempt to work that out, CT should just grab me by my ankles and shake my $115 per semester out of my pockets.

Anyways, to my main point, does it make any sense at all, that the 408 (Valley Ridge) bus goes to brentwood instead of crowfoot? The tuscany, and scenic acres, rocky ridge all go to crowfoot, why would we be any different? It’s extremely inconvenient

This week: multiple overhead power problems Monday to Wednesday. 1 and a half hours to get from Somerset to Downtown each of these days. 3 days to figure out a problem? really?

Continuing this week’s shame: Thursday: accident right at 4:30pm. Of course, good old CT had no shuttle buses for anyone going NW until 5:30 pm. Thousands gathered at 8 st and 7 Ave West waiting for shuttle buses that never showed until the accident cleared.

Seriously, someone’s ass should be getting fired for GROSS INCOMPETENCE. How do senior management at CT keep their jobs and actually get bonuses for providing shitty service year after year?

The problem is not the punctuality of bus drivers. Most (99%) are highly punctual when showing up for work. Within 30 seconds of a no show at a garage, the standby driver goes out and the guy who didn’t make it on time has what is known as a “late report” and he will have other work for the day. They have to do that because of the way the buses on the lane are arranged. One usually can’t leave if the guy in front hasn’t reported for work.

On the road, the guy who doesn’t show gets a late report (along with lost pay) and different work. The unfortunate soul driving the bus on the road with no relief has to carry on at least usually for another trip or whenever they can find someone else. He does get double-time for a missed relief, but at the end of a long day, most of us just want to go home.

Talking about being running off schedule, 90% of it is due to poor amateur schedule making. A lot of routes have well known traffic patterns and passenger loads (at certain times of day) that Calgary Transit refuses to recognize. Their way of doing things is to have the same timing for a trip 3:30am, 7am, 11am, 1pm, 4:30pm, and 10pm. Obviously at 7 to 9 am everyone is racing to get to work so more time is needed to get to whatever station the bus is going to. The reverse is true around 3 to 5pm. In the middle of the day, they don’t need as much time to do a trip. What happens in reality is during rush hour, they cut trip times, so you are always racing and behind. They expect drivers to cut short cuts to make times. If you get caught doing that, you are looking at disciplinary action. Sometimes even doing that its impossible on some routes like the 301 for example due to passenger load and traffic. Off peak, buses sit 5-10 minutes at each time point. Fundamentally that is what is wrong with Calgary Transit’s schedules. They never consult drivers either.

I have advocated to senior schedulers at CT about running separate schedules in winter time, especially on hilly routes with permanent detours setup (Routes 77, 101,104, 76,174,299,6, 7, 199 come to mind). No more suggestions from me as I’ve been laughed at every opportunity. “can’t be done” is one thing I keep hearing from them.

What this city needs now more than ever is a Bus Riders union. Other cities have it and it does help in getting better service.

Firstly, I want to address the fair issue. $2.75 is a bucket load of money every time a citizen enters the bus. It is the citizens of Calgary’s environmental responsibility to promote public transit and car pooling. I know we are talking about over-consuming Alberta (Let’s mine through our landfills inefficiently after we have thrown all our recyclables in it – Alberta), but something’s gotta give. More of our tax dollars should be spent supporting lower fares and the employment of bus drivers. Incentives should be given for punctuality and the scheduling department (as I was told directly from an anonymous Calgary Transit bus driver) should not be reinforced to cut scheduled bus times. This brings me to my next point: buses that are supposed to run every 7 minutes SHOULD run every 7 minutes. We should not have our citizens waiting in rain and snow for half an hour at these peek bus times, risking contracting colds or being fired from work because of unpunctuality. Sure money should be spent on expanding the public transit scope as our city expands, but it should also be spent making sure the system we already have functions efficiently.

Remember, this is a problem in which not only Calgary Transit as a service system should take accountability for. Bus drivers should still be taking pride in the punctuality on their jobs. Citizens should be standing up for the service they are entitled to . Everyone should be advocating public transit as a necessary means of transportation and that cannot happen until some glitches in the system are ironed straight. It will take more than one voice, and I know the people of Calgary are educated enough to realize public transportation is the future of inner-city/city travel.

http://www.metronews.ca/calgary/local/article/864996–union-cites-concerns-over-training-on-new-c-train

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/story/2011/05/16/calgary-ctrain-drivers.html

i think CT need alot of updates fast, like the OLD OLD buses, the paper transfers…. etc
i don’t take transit that often, but every time i’m on it,honestly i see no less than 5 fare evaders with their lame excuses and the bus driver doesn’t seem to care and just let them ride most the time, i am sure CT’s 15% revenue goes to those people, i usually take the 73 for 1 hour to go to work if i don’t have my car that day,so 1hr = 5 x $2.75, on 1 bus, that’s alot of money there if count all the buses and C-train over a 24hour period. ouch to CT. they should make a better system for that, i know is courteous public service, but to see fare evaders everytime i use the service means there’s little problem. yet i haven’t got the face/guts to ask for free ride. *sadface*
also is nice to have bus driver as friend for updated closesure,detours,break down, etc, because CT doesn’t do too well informing riders about them!

Something like this is strictly damage control and in the hands of management as to whether they shut a line down, use shuttle buses, make announcements, or have other plans.

Whenever there is an emergency such as a power problem, accident, signal problem, a gate crossing problem, switching problem, or even a security situation causing a delay the response is either non-existant or there is poor coordination of an emergency plan. It would not be wrong to say that management is incompetent and inconsisent with their responses to emergencies. Today was no different.

Today’s problem was a power problem. All that kind of work is farmed out to Enmax.

The issues at CT are not the same as Enmax. At Enmax they have top executives getting millions of dollars in bonuses and base pay which they can’t justify. They were also partying it up on taxpayers dime.

With Calgary Transit there are 3 main issues. Firstly, they are very adverse to change. They refuse to leave the 1980s or 1970s. The evidence is how they still use paper transfers for proof of payment and how they refuse to change many internal processes because “this is how its always been done”.

Secondly, CT likes to float itself as a separate entity from the City. They barely get half of their revenue from fares. The other half comes from property taxes. They are setup as a NOT-FOR-Profit Organization. Their processes for simple things like assigning buses to drivers or setting up a telephone number that is updated so that the public can get real time information on schedules are totally flawed in their design and even more in execution. There is no accountability what so ever to anyone. They just jacked bus fare prices to $90 a month starting in January. Their justification for the hike was service expansion. What they didn’t tell the public is that all that expansion has been cut along with 140 Transit Operator positons which they will not fill. There will not be layoffs thanks to our pro-transit Mayor Nenshi but those positions not being filled means they are going back to the days of regularly relying on overtime to fill work. What that means is to the public for runs that don’t have a regular driver, you might get your bus one day and another they are out of manpower well you are s.o.l. Especially bad on days when lots of people call sick around the same time (in cold weather).

The third issue with CT, which I find is probably the biggest is sheer incompetence of management as a whole. We can cite many examples. Simple one would be the route 19. There’s 20 min between 19 and 119 all day until 6pm when the 119 stops running. Effectively they are the same route except for 32nd Ave to Sunridge and the loop back to Vista Heights. 19 or 119 by itself each has 40 min between buses. The timing of the route is the same for 5 am, 8 am, 11 am, 3 pm, 5 pm, and 12:30 am. Most of the time points have 8 minutes between them. When 16 Ave was being ripped apart, they made no schedule adjustments. 16 Ave even now has heavy traffic in rush hour. Effectively, the route runs from Sunridge Mall to Vista heights, thru Renfrew, on 16 Ave, to Lion’s Park, back on 16 to University and then the whole thing repeat. Often 3 or 4 buses will be in excess of 20 min late, thus killing the schedule. This is a problem since at least the early 1990s (if anyone rememebers 16 ave between Center and Edmonton Tr used to be a major choke point for traffic). There has been no schedule adjustment. 3 buses sometimes run together in rush hour and then after that its more than an hour til the next 19 or 119. Customers have been complaining for decades. Drivers regularly report on radio how late they are but the person answering the radio on the other end tells them to just “carry on”. The same thing happens on Routes 23, and especially Route 20 (due to Crowchild). They help the late night buses get back on time by having out of service buses who were supposed to goto the garage, stick around and do a trip or 2 on overtime. The original driver and everyone else late also does overtime. Why not make a correct schedule for post-1990s Calgary Traffic and take into account higher passenger loads during specific times of day?

Whenever they design a new bus loop or buy new equipment, they never consult the drivers. Crowfoot bus loop along with the one at McKnight are too tight. Crowfoot was such a fiasco they that to reconfigure which bus stopped at which stop because buses couldn’t go around each other in the loop. The Arboc shuttle buses have major blindspots, and the kneeling feature had to be removed because it gave drivers major discomfort. The new Nova buses have no power to go up hills. Naturally, they are deployed on the hillier routes in the NW. The new Ctrains about to come into service have a number of flaws too. They have cameras instead of mirrors. Sounds cool except, when the driver doesn’t see someone running over the trucks from the side of the train. The Articulated Flyer buses have been a disaster in the snow. These are all things that they could ask either drivers or maintenance people about for input. There’s a lot of experience at CT amongst the workers that management never utilizes.

Continuing on the issue of incompetence of management at CT, lets look back to Nov 23, 2010. A bus was originally dead on the outbound tracks near the 14 St NW crossing for LRT. The bus had lost air pressure for its own brakes below 60 PSI, when that happens the parking brakes lock on. Outbound trains were stopped. Inbound trains could still make it. The City has an execulsive towing deal with CITY WIDE Towing. They couldn’t send a tow truck. After a few hours and the bus eventually blocking both sets of tracks (how did that happen?), some brainiac in management decided to use another bus to push the bus that was dead, except forgot to check if it had a bike rack on the front.

On top of these problems, they are treating their employees like trash. Discipline should be used to correct behaviour at work and not to turn the work area into a police state, which is what CT has done.

That’s too bad about the drivers. There certainly seems to be a lot of nonsense floating about. Maybe the new council will see fit to investigate that as they have the nonsense with Enmax? One can only hope…

I had a feeling that maybe CT got to you. You know, forced you to shut the blog down. They have been monitoring all kinds of sites critical of them lately. They even started up a twitter page to counter anti-CT talk and perception as well as to try and give out announcements on delays and detours. It seems like it is run by the same guy who writes the internal city propaganda called “CT News Clips”.

A bus driver as recently fired for going on a private Facebook group and saying some remarks about some supervisors that he didn’t like. Someone else in the group forwarded the remarks to management personnel who didn’t waste time in starting the discipline process and ended up dismissing him.

Calgary Transit has become a police state. It seems like just because they have a new contract with the union (which runs out yet again in about a year), they can discipline whoever they like. It is to the point where it is easier to name people they haven’t called for disciplinary hearings then people they have suspended, written up, or dismissed. Morale amongst bus, ctrain drivers, maintenance personnel, and even mechanics as a whole is very low. Lots of drivers are on stress leave or thinking about going on it. Grievances against CT are at an all time high. They have imposed an unofficial hiring freeze since last year. They hire shuttle bus drivers to move up to bus driving one class at a time. Whenever things turn around, they will have a hard time attracting people to even apply. Especially after how they mis-treated the drivers they brought over from not only Toronto, but also the ones from England. “The Brits” as they are known were lead to believe that whom they would get permanant residency but then reneged on that promise. Alberta’s heartless minister of labour (don’t know the official title) said NO. Those poor souls are now working for Winnipeg Transit all 18 of them.