Drivers Rally For Safer Buses

CT Transit bus drivers rallied on the New Haven Green Tuesday to demand better bus design and more safety features. They left the Green with a commitment from management to meet later this week about how to make buses safer.

That was the upshot of a rally by members of the Amalgamated Transit Union to call attention to the life and death working conditions and passenger and pedestrian safety problems that they say have gone unaddressed for years.

Drivers called on CT Transit to provide buses with protective barriers for operators to guard them against assaults that they say are on the rise; redesigned rearview mirrors so they don’t create blind spots for drivers; workstations that are ergonomically designed to prevent use injuries; proper air filtering; and buses that are free of vermin and other insects like roaches and bed bugs. Union members advocated for buses built more like those in Europe that they say do a better job of protecting drivers, passengers, and pedestrians.

“We’re not here to bash any of the transit companies,” said Mustafa Salahuddin, president of ATU Local 1336 Bridgeport. ​“We’re here to tell them to meet us in helping them in asking for better workstations for our drivers, and ask for better, cleaner burning [fuel] buses.

“We’re not here to say they’re not doing their jobs, they have terrible buses, that they are facilitating things that are unsafe,” he added. ​“We’re here to partner with our transit companies to make this a venue that will change the way we look at transportation and transporting people.”

Except things did get a little tense between CT Transit Manager David Lee, who crashed the event, and Jerry Pizunski, who serves as chairman of the ATU Connecticut Legislative Council.

The council released a resolution at the end of September calling on transit agencies and bus manufacturers to make buses safer for operators and riders. (Read the resolution here.) (Read here about a CT Transit driver who was attacked by a brick-wielding man on the D bus last year.)

Before the official start of the rally, Pizunski told Lee that he has been pressing CT Transit over the blind spots created by the driver-side rearview mirror for the last six years, with no results. He said the buses would be safer for bus drivers, other drivers, passengers and pedestrians if the mirrors were mounted lower and offset to prevent the side of the bus from blocking the view.

“They could be safer,” Pizunski said of the buses to Lee prior to the rally.

“Everything could be safer,” Lee said.

“So we shouldn’t be doing it,” Pizunski asked.

“You’re saying that they are unsafe. That’s in the ATU’s press release,” Lee responded.

“We’re saying that the company is not listening to us,” Pizunski said. ​“They’re doing nothing to make sure the buses are safer, and….”

“We’re doing nothing to make them safer,” Lee said. ​“I disagree with that. Do you really feel that way?”

“Yes,” Pizunski said.

“I’m insulted by that,” Lee said. ​“That’s really an offensive thing to say. As much as if I said bus drivers aren’t doing anything to drive safer. That’s not true.”

From Insulted to Listening

Lee vehemently disagreed with the some of the union members’ position that CT Transit has turned a blind eye to safety. But he said if the union wants to come walk through a bus and point out the safety concerns and solutions for addressing them, he’s all ears.

“I’ve invited the union — and I’ve done it this morning — to look at the bus and show us what they think ought to be the solution,” he said. ​“We’re open to that discussion. It’s an open-ended invitation to tell us what the union’s recommended solution to the barrier issue is. What they have in Bridgeport is one of many different designs. One gentleman suggested that the perfect solution is in Frankfurt, Germany. That’s not available in the United States. I’m open to this discussion. If you want to tell us what looks like the optimal solution from your point of view, we want to listen.”

Doug Holcomb, general manager for Greater Bridgeport Transit Authority, said that the Park City has been working with the union on many of the concerns outlined in the resolution and has been undergoing a pilot to test the deployment of a two-panel barrier system for drivers on about 70 percent of its 57-bus fleet.

“For us, safety is a path, not a place, so we’re constantly working on that,” he said. ​“We disagree with the union on many, many things, but safety is not one of them. It’s a place where we’ve found common ground.”

He said bus mirrors in Bridgeport also have been modified based on union concerns and the system has implemented a cleaning program. This weekend he plans to be down in Atlanta meeting with engineers for some of the largest manufacturers of buses.

But that is all happening in Bridgeport because the buses in that city are among the handful in the state run by an independent transit authority rather than the state Department of Transportation (DOT) which oversees CT Transit. That means if Bridgeport wants to run a pilot, or make upgrades independent of the rest of CT Transit, it can.

ATU Local 281-New Haven’s Ralph Buccitti said that while Lee is responsible for the management of the rest of the buses throughout the state, procurement of buses is left up to the state government bureaucracy. The union wants the state to have a procurement committee that includes the input of both bus drivers and riders. He said such a system would have informed officials that the new fare boxes don’t work well and that the manual vent openings at the top of the bus are too high for drivers to open and close safely.

“Bus features and design are decided by folks who are looking at dollars and cents,” he said. But if a feature designed to save money and not prevent injury results in an injury, was it worth it? he asked. ​“We bring the complaints [to the state] … and these things we feel falls on deaf ears,” Buccitti said.

Lee promised to meet with union members as early as Thursday.

“We’ll look at the mirrors. We’ll talk about barriers,” he said. He said if union members can come up with a barrier design that they will all agree to use, that could help drive the conversation about how to deploy them.

ATU Local 443- Stamford President Veronica Chavers said she’s holding Lee to his word.

“We want our drivers protected at all times,” she said. ​“These drivers are being spit on, and nothing is being done. We’re human too. We want to go home to our family and we want to have a safe haven just like everyone else and that’s not happening all the time.”