TriumphAnt

Overheard at a recent meeting of the OCTranspo Rider Vehicular Use Facilitation Group Committee meeting: “Maybe if we placed a large, proximity-activated wooden mallet above the door right beside the signs describing how to make it open…”

(OK, there’s no such group. Ergo, no such meeting and no such comment was “overheard”. In fact, my entire life is made up. With that disclaimer, back to the topic at hand.)

Where was I? Oh yes... if such a mallet were in place, it would have been of immense help to rider after rider after rider that I watched during a recent homeward-bound commute.

I have long been a user of public transportation. My earliest associated memories stem from 1959 or thereabouts when our family was posted overseas because Dad was then in the Royal Canadian Air Force. The school I attended was on the base. But the base was about ten miles from the residential area – the PMQs as they were known (for “Permanent Married Quarters”. And no, it was never explained to us if it was the quarters or the marriage that was supposed to be “permanent”.) At that time, the bus we rode – which was old enough that it probably ran French troops to the Maginot Line about two decades earlier – had a massive camel-hump cover inside the bus right beside the driver’s seat. Lifting it offered access to the motor. I also remember that the entire population of elementary-school riders always had to rush to the back of the bus whenever we came to this one hill, in order to position our collective weight above the back wheels and thus give our driver the traction he needed to complete the wheezy climb to the hilltop. (It was like that scene in “Das Boot” when the submarine’s crew had to rush forward to hasten the speed of the crash dive in an effort to escape the pursuing Allied destroyer’s depth charges. But I digress.)

Anyway, that was just to establish the legitimacy of my credentials as a public transportation critic.

OCTranspo is my present public transportation service of choice… Actually, to be completely truthful, their “choice” – since transit is, of course, a function of the city in which one lives. (“OC” refers to “Ottawa Carleton”.)

Their newest buses now have a different system of enabling passengers to open the rear door. More efficient? Nope. More confusing? Yep. More complicated? You bet. So why do it? Who the hell knows?

In the good old days (up to about a month ago), there were two ways to exit the bus by the rear door:

1. You the rider stood by the door. As the bus approached your stop, you stepped down onto the trigger step. When the bus stopped, a small green light above the door snapped on and the door opened. You stepped out. The door closed behind you (or behind whoever was the last exiting passenger);

2. You the rider stood by the door. As the bus approached your stop, you stepped down onto the trigger step and placed your hand on the vertical steel handle attached to the door. When the bus stopped, a small green light above the door snapped on and you pushed on the handle. The pressure caused the door to open. You stepped out and let go of the handle -- unless of course someone was behind you. In which case, you exhibited typical Canadian courtesy and held the door -- just until they were sufficiently through the gap that you could let go and have it whap shut on their shoulder, instead of right into their face. Then the door closed behind you (or behind whoever was the last exiting passenger).

Both these systems have worked incredibly well. For years in fact. So OCTranspo has decided this obviously won’t do. We are, they have concluded, a modern, technologically advanced society and therefore we require a modern, technologically advanced means by which passengers interact with their exit doors. Therefore, clearly the simple ones -- the ones whose operation has been understood for years by absolutely everyone over the age of two who rides a bus -- need to be replaced. (The doors, that is, not the passengers. Although if the fuming I saw recently indicates a coming storm of user complaint, I won’t be surprised to hear that OCTranspo also wants to replace the passengers.)

The new exit now requires that the passengers do the following: When the bus stops, you wait for the green light above the door to snap on (if they ever eliminate that green light, we are doomed to become a race of commuters who never get off the bus!) You then step forward towards the door and (are you ready for this?) you wave your hand about in the vicinity of the crack separating the door’s two halves. The theory is that by so doing, you apparently trigger some sort of sensor mechanism that sends a command to a mysterious onboard force that will obediently open the door for you. But wait! There’s more! As an alternative to waving your hand about in search of the mysterious photo-electric beam, there is a large circular sticker on the door, just above waist height, that says “Touch here to open the door.” You touch it and the door will open.

Now there is an interesting word, that: “Touch”. It’s just non-specific enough that it can mean anything, from: Gently brush as though manually executing a butterfly’s kiss all the way up to: Hurl yourself against it with enough force to breach a mediaeval portcullis. What it does NOT (and desperately needs to) add is, “and then let go”, or “stop touching”, or some well-chosen phrase that means, in plain English, disengage from your tactile contact. “Touch and let go,” would do it.

I can’t tell you how many would-be disembarkees I watched push on the door after the light went on, who then kept pushing, and for whom nothing happened. Time after time, they would yell at the driver, “Back door, please” only to have someone else on the bus yell, “Stop touching the door.” (“But the sign on the door says, ‘Touch’”. “Well yes, but you’re supposed to stop touching after you’ve touched it.” “But the sign on the door doesn’t say, ‘Touch and then stop touching…’” And so on.)

And you really do need to STOP touching the damned door after you’ve touched it, to make it open! If you don’t, it won’t. (Although remember that, alternatively, as another friendly sign advises even less helpfully, you can “Wave hand near door”.)

How do you wean – uneducate – a population of long-term commuters from the idea that if the door doesn’t open automatically, you apply pressure steadily on it (that'd be: you push) and it will? Because under the new system, the poor stupid door really just wants the very briefest of tactile or motion signs that you’re there. Don’t insist, the system demands of you. Just gently and quickly show me you’re in the exit neighbourhood. Nothing more.

For my part, I really see this as a perfect example of something that should have stayed in the “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” school. We had a system that worked, and everyone understood it. Now we have a system that works – but only to a very narrow set of specifically observed instructions, and rather muddily worded ones at that.

“Wave your hand in the vicinity of the door” ??? Well wave this, OC Transpo!