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Old 08-09-2007, 03:25 PM   #45
MatsNaslund
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Join Date: Apr 2006
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My wife has been using Access Calgary for the past year or so and she's had so many horror stories about cabs and busses being late and their rediculous schedualing. You can't complain to anybody though, because they'll blacklist you and mark on your file that you're some kind of troublemaker so they'll make your life hell by always giving you crappy drivers or never getting you stand-by rides.

She once called in to book her trips to work for the week and was on hold for over an hour, finally they answer her call at 1:05pm and then tell her that she can't book trips for the next day because it's after 1pm. Or the time that her ride was 45 minutes late because he stopped for lunch. Then there's the idiot cabbies who show up in the big minivans and don't have stepping stools, yet wont do anything to help her try and climb up into the van, then stand and grumble and complain that she's making them late. My favorite was the day she got picked up from physio by the wrong driver because he was asking for "Stella" but she couldn't understand his accent and thought he was saying her name, "Starla." He gets about 5 minutes from our house, finds out he's got the wrong passenger, so he turns around and drives 15 minutes back to the physio place rather than just drop her off at home and have my wifes driver take the passenger he was supposed to have.

Handi-busses and Access Calgary are way worse than Calgary transit.
You're talking about a few different things here.

Handi Bus and Access Calgary are both run by the City and Taxis are licenced and regulated by the City. Access Calgary is sort of tied into Taxis. Handi Bus kind of runs themselves now.

As someone who has driven bus for the city I can tell you that buses being on schedule or not is mostly due to the scheduling department. They do count cards of every route every few months. They get complaints from the public all the time and the City has firsthand knowledge of all construction related detours. If they want to fix the problem with buses they can do it.

Beleive it or not they do purposely schedule some buses to be running late because they are only AM or PM extras and are not considered all day buses. The buses that they use for this are mostly the older GMC buses (1970s models).
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