Fatal bus crash inquest hears of 'not great' OC Transpo candidates and driver 'leniency'
Former manager of bus operations offers candid look at driver hiring and training
- The Westboro bus crash inquest resumes Friday, April 25. Stream it live here.
The years 2018 and 2019 were a rough time for OC Transpo, Ken Gordon says.
Because of the expected launch of Ottawa's LRT service, the city's transit agency put roughly one-fifth of its bus drivers on layoff notice in August 2018, prompting the early exit of many employees.
But when the LRT opening was delayed to September 2019 and OC Transpo still needed bus drivers during the protracted interim, the agency kept hiring.
During this period, according to Gordon, safety "wasn't at the forefront" for OC Transpo.
Manager of bus operations starting in October 2018 (and program manager of employee operations before that), Gordon said the organization allowed the same applicants to reapply for bus operator training — even though they'd flunked the interview or other screening stages designed to weed out unsuitable candidates — and then gave trainees and operators "a lot of leniency."
"Looking back on things, in my opinion, the quality of candidates was probably not great," he said.
OC Transpo also shifted its recruitment focus at some point from people with prior professional driving experience to those more versed in customer service, not necessarily resulting in the most capable or safe drivers, he said.
"They just don't know the city and that's how errors happen," he said. "And errors lead to collisions or injuries and mishaps."
Gordon's candid behind-the-scenes view comes courtesy of an ongoing coroner's inquest into a fatal bus collision in January 2019, when the driver shortage remained extreme amid pressure for OC Transpo to deliver service.
The driver in that fatal crash, Aissatou Diallo, had been recruited the previous summer despite no declared experience driving a bus.
In December 2018, a few months after finishing her training, Diallo's 60-foot articulated bus careened into another bus at St-Laurent station. One month after that, on Jan. 11, 2019, she smashed a packed double-decker into a Transitway shelter canopy at Westboro station, leaving three passengers dead: Bruce Thomlinson, Judy Booth and Anja Van Beek.
The inquest, which will resume on Friday, is trying to learn from that tragedy and prevent others like it.
But while the inquest has heard OC Transpo has made positive changes since 2018, Gordon testified that hiring and training efforts remain challenged to this day.
"I can't sit in front of you and say that we train every person the exact same way, because we don't," he said.
Touting free licences
Gordon is currently on leave from OC Transpo after last working there in a training and development capacity.
He testified at the inquest last week, offering unprecedented insight into why Diallo was allowed back on the road despite only receiving one day of retraining following her December 2018 collision.
A good chunk of Gordon's remaining testimony focused on what he described as a weakened safety culture at OC Transpo as it struggled to hire and keep drivers in 2018 and 2019.
During the pre-LRT hiring crunch, OC Transpo was recruiting people "off the street" for full-time permanent positions, only to tell them after they graduated from the New Bus Operator Training (NBOT) program that they weren't going to have a job anymore, Gordon said.
Many applicants didn't have anything higher than a car licence, and a lot of people tried to get into the training program "over and over and over again" until they did.
"We had people fail out in training and at the time we would put them back through the process and they'd be back in the next training class because there was no policy or limit on how many times they [could] reapply or go through the program," Gordon said.
The result was "not great" candidates, though Gordon added that other "really good" workers came out of that time and remain with OC Transpo.
"Looking at how we do things now versus how things were done previously, it's not the best practice to just keep on going over the same practice or process over and over and over until you finally get it," he said. "That doesn't yield a good, safe driver."
Limits are now in place, the inquest heard. If candidates don't pass cognitive tests now integrated into the recruitment process, for example, they have to wait six months before reapplying. And if they fail out of the training program, they have to wait two years and complete a defensive driving course on their own before they can reapply.
Suspended drivers kept at work
After her St-Laurent station crash, Diallo was placed on three-week investigatory leave and found to be at fault in the collision.
She was dubbed a "low risk" driver and underwent one day of refresher training with an experienced instructor before being cleared to go back behind the wheel of a bus.
In 2018, bus operators didn't get sent for refresher training as much as they do now, nor was there any requirement for "cyclical" training, Gordon testified.
"In theory, somebody could graduate from NBOT and never really have to go back to the training department," he said.
The focus was to keep people on the road.- Ken Gordon, manager of operations at OC Transpo in 2018
If a driver broke a law under the Highway Traffic Act, such as running through a stop sign, operators were either disciplined or "coached" on how to do things properly.
"Not to say that we didn't send operators for ... retraining, but the focus was to keep people on the road," Gordon said.
Oftentimes, when people were suspended for a day, "they never actually had a day where they weren't paid or had to miss a day of work. And again, this was to maintain operations," he added.
Promoting overtime hours
Whether in 2018 or later — Gordon couldn't pinpoint when — OC Transpo began placing more emphasis on hiring drivers with experience in customer service, as opposed to professional or commercial driving time.
"Just because somebody is good at customer service doesn't necessarily make them a good driver, and just because somebody's a good driver doesn't make them good at customer service," he said.
"Somewhere along the line, we lost sight of the two, and we were focused on just the delivery of service."
Peter Napier, one of the lawyers leading the inquest, asked Gordon how that shift affected the safety culture at OC Transpo.
Between lengthy pauses, Gordon replied that "a lot of leniency" was given to operators and applicants.
"There [were] a lot of things that were done to, again, try and maintain operations," he said, including allowing operators to work a "tremendous" amount of hours.
It's not healthy to be working that many hours that long and working that hard and under those conditions- Ken Gordon, manager of operations at OC Transpo in 2018
Nothing exceeded federal work rules, Gordon said, but the transit agency advertised the fact that people could make a lot of money working overtime.
A lot of this happened during and after the launch of the LRT in the fall of 2019, he added.
"It's not healthy to be working that many hours that long and working that hard and under those conditions," Gordon said. "We lost sight of that."
Gordon said he did not believe Diallo worked overtime between her return to the road in January 2019 and the Westboro crash.
She worked the previous day but had the two days before that off, according to one inquest document, which says nothing about overtime.
WATCH | Looking back on the Westboro crash and its lingering impacts:
'They just don't know the city'
In 2023 and 2024, OC Transpo experienced its busiest hiring periods ever, according to Gordon.
At the same time, he said, the training program saw a lot of drivers who didn't know the city of Ottawa — to the point where some drove the wrong direction on one-way downtown streets, or needed help getting from the east end to the west end.
The union local representing OC Transpo drivers was concerned that NBOT trainees "couldn't navigate," according to Gordon, so it made some helpful suggestions, including reviving a program where new drivers accompany more experienced ones. That program initially saw some good uptake.
But a longer mentorship period to offer more "real world" experience is needed, he added.
"There are so many people that go out ... and they don't understand what it's like with a busload of school kids that you just picked up on a Friday afternoon or going to a Redblacks game with a load of drunk people," he said.
Getting "quality time" on double-deckers and articulated buses also remains a challenge, Gordon said.
"The last two years, it was a constant back and forth with operations and maintenance. 'We couldn't do this, we can't do that. Here, we'll give you this 40-footer as opposed to a double-decker' and it just — it throws things into disarray," he said.
The inquest heard from Sabrina Pasian, the city's chief safety officer, on Wednesday.
Pasian agreed with the union lawyer that OC Transpo's training program turns out capable drivers. The inquest has also heard that total NBOT training hours have increased and mandated hours on each bus type are in place, unlike before.
Like other inquest witnesses, Pasian and Gordon both expressed their condolences to the families affected by the Westboro crash.
"I truly hope that as a result of this inquest and having to go through this difficult situation yet once again, some good recommendations will come as a result," Gordon said.
The inquest will resume Friday at 9:30 a.m.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
