BUS COMMAND CENTER…STILL-NOT IS SERVICE!

We have now passed the 24 hours mark where the Bus Radio and Computerized Aided Dispatch (CAD) systems have been down with a systemwide outage. The public should be thankful the the Transit Authority’s plan to remove 26 Dispatchers from the Road and reassign them to the Bus Command Center (BCC) has not taken effect, otherwise we would an even more chaotic situation on the road with millions of Bus riders and operators stuck in traffic jams with no one to help them because the dispatchers would have been all sitting behind frozen computers at one location in East New York rather than on the road interacting with the operators and the public.

We will be in Arbitration tomorrow arguing on behalf of the people of New York, the riding public and the bus operators that rely on the Dispatchers for help along their daily route.

The rule book states ” The rules set forth in this Rule Book that prescribe employee conduct relating to the safe operation of trains and buses are intended to place a higher standard of care on employees than is required by law,”… Apparently the Transit Authority does not prescribe to their own rules.

Lastly, this grievance is not “throwing stuff against the wall in hopes it sticks” as President Crichlow has stated, this is real life, real time proof of what our grievance is all about, and what we have been saying for months now and the BCC system will only get worse if more Dispatchers are transferred to the BCC because that will overwhelm the system even more and systemwide outages will become the norm.