The General Manager and CAO of the Ottawa Student Transportation Authority says she understands bus delays can be frustrating.
But cancelling school buses for Ottawa’s tens of thousands of elementary and high school students was not in the cards.
By 6:00 a.m. Monday, buses were cancelled for students in school boards outside Ottawa city limits. Buses for the Renfrew County school boards, the Upper Canada District School Board, the Catholic District School Board of Eastern Ontario, as well as a majority of French-language school boards across the region all had their buses cancelled because of the weather.
OSTA GM Vicky Kyriaco says her authority’s decision is a balancing act.
“We know and we reside in a cold weather environment and we tend to be more prepared to deal with those cold temperatures,” she says. “That doesn’t mean service is expected to run flawlessly. We anticipate temperatures and road conditions might slow things down. But we’ve never put in any kind of temperature threshold in our procedure for evaluating whether buses are going to run or not.”
Kyriaco says the issue comes with deciding how cold is too cold to cancel the buses.
“How cold is too cold? We just anticipate that everyone will take into account the change in temperature and dress accordingly or make alternate arrangement if they’re not happy with the service we provide,” she says.
Kyriaco says she looks at jurisdictions north of Ottawa, where colder temperatures are the norm.
“When we look at northern jurisdictions, who experience this kind of cold weather all the time, they base their temperature thresholds on whether a bus will start,” she says. “A lot of those thresholds are as low as minus 30 degrees with no wind chill. If we have a temperature of minus 24, a vehicle can operate in that, especially if they’ve taken care to ensure the engine block is at least somewhat kept warm.”
Kyriaco says she does not expect many scenarios in Ottawa where the air temperature will be so cold that a bus cannot start.
She says a note went out to OSTA bus drivers Friday, to advise them to have their buses prepared for the incoming deep freeze.
But despite preparations, buses were delayed across the network. There were dozens of routes that were delayed Monday morning, in some cases up to an hour.
“Any time there are weather conditions that are out of the ordinary, there are delays,” Kyriaco says. “That’s why we have a web portal so parents can get on the website, and look up their buses and make plans accordingly. When there are unusual circumstances, it’s reasonable to expect there will be delays and it should be reasonable for parents to expect to make some kind of arrangements.”
Some parents took to social media to complain about the decision to run buses in Ottawa.
@OttSchoolBus why not cancel the busses then when you had the chance?
— Valerie Cobb (@valerie_cobb) January 21, 2019
Bad call for Ottawa! I had an asthma attack while I was shovelling for 5 min. No child should be standing outside in weather like that!
— Animelover1 (@JenniferAubert1) January 21, 2019
Unacceptable for these poor kids waiting in these temperatures. How has every other transportation org cancelled (as far away as Peterborough and Clarington) but somehow Ottawa hasn’t? I would really like to understand this better.
— Steph Gunning♀️ (@stephgunning) January 21, 2019
Kyriaco says she understands.
“We know that it’s frustrating,” she says. “Any kind of change to a daily routine is difficult. At the same time, we know there are lots parents who need to get to work and need their kids to go to school. We know there are lots of kids going to exam periods right now who really need to get to school and we’re trying to balance the needs of all of these different people when we make our decisions.”
Despite the cold, the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board says there were no complaints to the board office about the decision to run buses.