If you felt you waited a little too long for your bus this week, it might be because your bus was at the "graveyard," as Ottawa bus drivers call it.
The large garage is housing a backlog of over 200 OC Transpo buses that should be on the road. This is causing a service reduction for some routes.
"We have drivers that are not getting paid and not working because there are no buses," explained Andre Cornellier, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union, which represents OC Transpo's operators, dispatchers, and mechanics.
He said this backlog is the only reason why OC Transpo is pulling rush-hour buses and putting them on express and rural routes from Feb. 18 until the end of March. Understandably, many riders aren't happy.
"We expect the announcement is going to help things, but for the past three weeks we have been seeing a deterioration of service and obviously calls coming in to us and coming in to OC Transpo. People aren't happy when they miss a bus," said Ottawa Councillor Alex Cullen.
OC Transpo said it was forced to cut service because of staffing shortages and unforeseen breakdowns, something that Cornellier doesn't buy.
"The definition of unforeseen is something they have no control of. They have over 200 buses in the graveyard that they know of that need to be fixed. How can they call that unforeseen?" he said.
OC Transpo Fleet Services Manager Ron Gillespie admitted the problem has been brewing.
"The issue is not so much the unforeseen as it is a scheduling issue that we're having with maintenance. The root cause for that is that the facility here is very overcrowded," Gillespie said.
He added that a new garage is being built to put buses back in service more quickly.
Those representing workers behind the wheel said with service already affecting ridership, some passengers may be too frustrated to come back.
With a report from CTV's John Hua.
