The Oregonian almost always supports Trimet management, but on the issue of public records they dispute the so called 'independent audit' of Trimet's public records process. Trimet also called KOIN liars when they published their story about those secret raises. Anybody that challenges is called a liar by the tax funded Trimet bureaucrats
It was startling to read that some TriMet
bus drivers spend a rummying 18 to 22 hours of a 24-hour period behind
the wheel, conveying trusting citizens through traffic and weather to
their destinations. It is yet more startling to think about the dumb
luck attending the phenomenon -- particularly when fare-paying riders
and TriMet supervisors over a 3 1/2-year period reported at least 21
instances in which bus or light-rail operators had fallen asleep on the
job.
Full stop: asleep on the job. In one instance reported this week by The Oregonian's Joseph Rose,
a snooze-bound bus operator stopped only briefly for a red light at
Beaverton's busy Tualatin Valley Highway before jerking awake, throwing
the 16-ton vehicle into reverse and backing up out of daytime traffic.
Where we come from, that's called a public calamity in waiting.
Sadly, where TriMet apparently comes from, that's called an internal
operations issue. Meanwhile, owing to the agency's financial plight and
recently ended hiring freeze, drivers hungry for work can step around
agency rules by ending a 12-hour work day that closes at 2 a.m. and
clocking in again at 4 a.m. for a new shift on the next work day. By
taking advantage of driver scarcity, eight TriMet operators, Rose found,
in 2012 managed to earn more than $100,000 by working too much.
It gets worse, however. Try finding out about it in the first place.
Over many months, Rose requested records pertaining to a runaway MAX
train, and bus and rail operator work schedules. He met roadblocks by
the transit agency, which argued the documents did not exist as he'd
requested them -- that they would need to be created and thus were not
public documents available for the asking. So Rose and his editors
capitulated and asked for the data as TriMet kept it. And TriMet's reply
was another roadblock: to convert its data into PDF files, forcing a
laborious process by Rose and his associates of "cut-and-paste"
searching across some 8,000 pages. Oh, and The Oregonian would
ultimately pay $500 for the privilege, pushing its total TriMet tab for
records to about $2,400.
Significantly, the release of information pertaining to the runaway
train required the intervention of the Multnomah County District
Attorney's Office. Despite TriMet's initial confusing reports about
whether a Yellow Line MAX train had even crashed -- it did, into an
abutment, with two passengers on board and withstanding $60,000 in
damage owing to a sleeping driver -- TriMet was forced to abandon its
position of cloaking the event as a personnel matter under
investigation. Then-District Attorney Michael Shrunk decided the public
had a right to know about it, ordering compliance with The Oregonian's
request, and noted in his May 3, 2012 report: "This was an extraordinary
event with seemingly very little investigation."
TriMet is in a world of hurt, perilously at odds with the union
supplying its bus and rail operators and brittle from reducing
systemwide service by 14 percent to cut costs. Contract negotiations are
ahead, too, in which some of the priciest health benefits to public
employees are on the table. But on Tuesday, TriMet General Manager Neil McFarlane
said in an interview he would bring driver fatigue to the table as a
first-tier problem in search of a negotiated solution. And separately, Amalgamated Transit Union Local 757 President Bruce Hansen said, "We're open to the discussion."
It must be so. The perverse incentive of near-unrestricted overtime
must go away when it has been shown, as Rose has, to threaten the
public's safety. And TriMet's practice of slowpoking and stymieing in
response to public records requests must change. If the agency is to
find a new day, then it must make its internal operations fully
accountable to the same folks who ride buses and trains with the trust
they'll make it to their destinations safely.
Asleep at the wheel: Driver fatigue and TriMet myopia threaten public safety | OregonLive.com
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