Editor's note: If you
have had issues while aboard a Double Decker bus, or have a story about a
Double Decker experience, drop me a line at cj@thiscrazytrain.com.
Special
to This Crazy Train
By
GO Voyageur
Household dust and so
much more
In
my last report on the
dirty DD’s, I said the reply from GO Transit’s Customer
Relations Supervisor scared me. I’ll
elaborate, but first, let’s revisit the following line in the supervisor’s
response:
·
“I have looked into the results of the
investigation of the Indoor Air Quality report conducted on our GO buses.”
Buses? Plural?
More than one bus was tested? No. As was pointed out in the comments to the
prior article, only one bus was tested — apparently it was a relatively new (at
the time) #8201. Why didn’t GO Transit
test any of the buses given as evidence in this blog? I should mention the supervisor did not attach
a copy of the report as evidence to support their assertions.
The
following line is the one that scared me:
·
“The results concluded that no unusual
particulate materials were identified and the composition of the dust samples
was similar to that observed in typical household or office settings.”
Shortly
after receiving the supervisor’s e-mail, the Toronto Star ran an article titled
New study highlights health
hazards of household dust.
More details can be found in the article Not Just Dirt: Toxic
Chemicals in Indoor Dust from the Natural Resources Defense
Council (NRDC). What I find particularly
vile is that Metrolinx paid money to a company whose job it is to know this
information, but neglected to apprise Metrolinx, who then turned around and quoted
the report as if it were gospel.
Why
does this black soot fiasco rile me so?
I was raised in Sudbury. Before
INCO built their Superstack, three smaller
smokestacks belched sulphur dioxide, denuding the
countryside with acid rain. On days when
low clouds trapped the stacks’ emissions, the smoke would roll into the valley
where we lived. I could feel the gas
searing into my lungs, which x-rays revealed later had become scarred (I’m a
non-smoker). I would sit in the basement
waiting for the SO2 haze to dissipate. So, yes, I have an aversion to dirty
air. Do those folks who are exposed to
this soot, i.e. regular passengers and GO Transit drivers, need to be featured
in a Toronto Star investigation like GE employees in
Peterborough?
Why
have I waited so long to share all of this?
Around the time the supervisor’s e-mail landed in my Inbox, GO Transit
replaced all double-decker buses on Route 12 with the new DDSL model (#83xx). Here is the inside of #8342 on its inaugural
trip on Route 12. It was pristine; it
still had its “new” smell.
Did
Metrolinx management roll the dice and bet that since the new buses did not show
the black soot stains, I no longer had a reason to discuss the problem? If that were the case, I took it as a victory
— my fellow passengers and our drivers had clean air to breathe. However, my gut told me to wait; this saga
wasn’t over.
And
I was correct. I boarded #8318 not long
ago and was dismayed to discover the following tell-tale markings:
Just
as Philip Kives implored
us to “wait, there’s more”, well, there is more. The latest SNAFU on Metrolinx’s
double-deckers is diesel exhaust fumes inside the cabins, e.g. #8353. This problem isn’t really new; it was
reported to GO Transit over a year and a
half ago…
Five
days later…
Even
before that, in November 2012, CBC reported that OC
Transpo admitted their double-decker buses — also built by Alexander Dennis
Ltd. — leaked diesel fumes into the cabin.
Who
allowed these substandard Scottish-engineered monstrosities into Canada? Was it Transport Canada? Why has Ontario’s Auditor General kept mum on
these Metrolinx vehicles? Perhaps it’s
time to escalate this mess to Ben Spurr at the Toronto Star, or CBC’s
Marketplace, or CTV’s W5.
In
Part 6 of this series, I
included a photo of bus #8142, which had white dust covering the inside of the
bus. It was a mystery how the interior
got to be in that state. There have been
times when I’ve noticed a fire extinguisher sitting on the floor in the
accessibility area of a DD rather than being strapped to the wall. My conjecture… The straps are so flimsy, they can’t hold the
fire extinguisher when the bus hits a significant bump in the road. The extinguisher falls to the floor, and on
rare occasions, the pin pops and the trigger is activated thereby dumping the
contents. Plausible? Ask your driver.
Back
to the supervisor’s e-mail and the following line:
·
“I would like to assure you that we continue
to remain committed to ensuring our buses are maintained to the highest
standard.”
Maintained
to the highest standard you say? The
following photo is of the grill above the rear seat in the lower saloon on DD
#8317. It looks like it has NEVER been cleaned.
Enough
of these assurances from Customer Relations management! They are past the point of triteness. They are now downright insulting. Isn’t it time Metrolinx’s new CEO, Phil
Verster, had “career discussions” with his staff?
