Small things, continued yet again

Time for a little rant. I’ve noticed over the past few weeks that the electronic signs on DRT bus 8017 are, well, not quite right.

Some of you may recall my complaint last year that many Audley South buses were still displaying “Shoal Point”, the old name of the route. It’s still true that many older single-height electronic signs in Ajax and Pickering have still not been updated to show the current route names or route numbers, as the larger signs have.  It’s bad enough that route changes made almost two years ago have still not been reflected on all buses in the fleet.

This particular bus, though, is far worse. Instead of “Shoal Point”, it appears to be displaying “Skoal Point”, which can only be a reference to the chewing tobacco. And, while I can’t confirm it which bus it was on, I have seen at least one bus display “Beach Vice” instead of “Beach”.

While I’ve been very critical of DRT’s corporate communications in the past, this level of unprofessionalism in signage is simply not acceptable. Surely someone in DRT must have noticed that this bus’s sign exposures have been tampered with, and yet it appears that no one has bothered to do anything about it.

This is yet another example of why DRT can be such a frustrating system at times. I can sort of accept that they are having trouble doing significant service expansion due to funding issues. I don’t like it, and I don’t necessarily agree with the reasoning behind it, but I can accept it. What I find impossible to accept are “small things” like this that can be easily rectified, if only the organization valued them. And yet, 16 months into DRT’s existance, these issues continue to exist. Other examples would include the web site’s continued dependence on PDF files files for schedule information, the lack of printed schedules at GO stations and other high frequency stops, and the continued lack of service rationalization in Ajax and Pickering.