Winnipeg Transit fail

Last week, Winnipeg Transit had a full information technology fail. On Wednesday, Sept. 15 I tried to use the Transit website, busTXT system and even the relatively low-tech telephone system (287-RIDE), with no responses at all. Not even a “please be patient while we work on the problem” message. It was incredibly frustrating, especially considering the bus schedules downtown were already being drastically affected by construction.

Michelle Nyhof, from City of Winnipeg communications confirmed that the services were out for a period, saying there was “necessary hardware maintenance” on Tuesday (Sept 14). My experience was on Wednesday the 15th, but thankfully everything was up again the day after.

That temporary fail is compounded by their ongoing website fail. Regular riders of the bus will have noticed that their website has undergone several confusing changes in the past few months. They debuted a new website in August, and it immediately crashed. They quickly resurrected the old site (still reliable), and now users have the option of using the old site or the new beta site. I find the old one to be more user-friendly (not to mention more attractive), and will continue to use it until it tragically gets taken down on November 30, 2010. (This date is according to the website, on a page I can no longer access for some reason.)

Oh, and I learned something about those new electronic schedules being doled out to popular stops in the city. On Sunday, Sept. 12, I was waiting for a 66 Grant bus that was 20 minutes late thanks to the Banjo Bowl traffic around Polo Park. The electronic reader at Grant and Nathanial told me that the bus was “due” or “1 min (away)” the entire time. It didn’t say “late” or “20 mins (away),” it just lied. I thought the signs were connected to the bus’ GPS unit? It knew enough that the bus had not arrived yet, so why was it giving me such optimistic and totally unrealistic messages?

My already shaky faith in Winnipeg Transit was given a good throttling that week. I have to question the benefits of a multifaceted system that can crash simultaneously, especially when it’s my main method of getting to work. I can’t even count how many times I’ve had to take a taxi to work because something made my bus late and I missed my transfer (which, for the record, has a five minute lag at least, meaning you have to be really late to miss it). To lodge a complaint, you have to call 311, and even then, the response might be unsatisfying. I’ve personally called in several complaints in the past two years, and each time I was promised a return call. I’m still waiting to hear back about them.

Sometimes it feels like all I do is wait for my bus to come.