Inquest interrogates OC Transpo booking system that leaves ‘crumbs’ for ‘junior’ drivers [Video]

• Stream the inquest live here. 

Four times a year, OC Transpo bus drivers go to a hall and plot out their lives for the coming season in discrete blocks of time. 

Across several boards — one for weekdays, one for Saturday, one for Sunday, one for days off, one for vacation time and still another for statutory holidays — they select shifts, broken down into smaller “runs,” spanning two-week intervals that repeat over the course of the quarter. 

“You guys literally post it on paper in a room, don’t you?” a lawyer for the union representing local bus drivers asked a City of Ottawa bookings manager at an ongoing coroner’s inquest on Friday. 

“That’s correct,” he replied. 

The inquest is examining the OC Transpo double-decker crash that claimed the lives of three people in 2019, along with any systemic issues that might be fixed to prevent future calamities. 

While a deep dive into the minutiae of driver booking might …