The city council transportation committee has endorsed a plan to spend $600,000 this year to hire more safety officers in a bid to cut the number of traffic collisions involving municipal vehicles.
Between 2013 and 2015, city-owned buses and trucks were involved in 942 collisions, according to a Ministry of Transportation commercial vehicle operator summary. It also showed 50 convictions over the same period related to collisions.
The problems with the city fleet has prompted the province to demand that municipal officials come up with a plan to improve the situation.
Ottawa’s fleet services branch presented an action plan to the province that calls for, among other things:
- improving driver safety performance monitoring;
- identifying, training and evaluating problem drivers;
- creating a recognition program to reward good drivers;
- reinforcing safety requirements;
- giving drivers and supervisors feedback, and;
- conducting regular site visits.
The city’s new policy also allows fleet safety officers to suspend an operator’s authority to drive city vehicles or equipment. A suspension doesn’t affect a city employee’s ability to drive personal vehicles.
Regular site “compliance visits” are considered effective, but are not possible with current staffing numbers.
That’s why the city wants to hire six new fleet safety officers, for a total cost of $600,000 per year. Another two public works employees will be moved over, for a total of eight new full-time equivalents (FTEs).
Fleet services would charge the added cost to city departments whose vehicles they handle, the report says.
The city operates 2,700 licensed vehicles, as well as many types of unlicensed vehicles, such as graders, loaders, mowers on public roads (the ministry report, however, was based on the city’s heavy vehicle fleet of 1,681 buses and trucks).
