That’s just mechanics. I’d love to see driver trainees get a larger customer service perspective from people with disabilities who regularly use public transport – how to address people, what’s bad service, what’s good service, etc. The rest is just pushing buttons.

The role of the bus driver is that of a peacekeeper, not an enforcer. Enforcement of the code of conduct is handled through a network of professionals that can be called upon by the bus driver, if and when needed.

Here is also a map to the temporary park-and-rides being set up for the Games. I couldn’t post it in the other post because it would cause the message to go to the spam queue. So here it is.

Temporary Park and Rides in the Vancouver area

I wish I could take transit all the way, darn it! But as long as these P&Rs don’t fill up I think I will be OK. I am afraid they will fill up, though.

Admittedly my brain was a little fried after driving to Vancouver BC and back to get Olympic tickets and scope out the area for my Olympics trip.

Speaking of the Olys, since there is still no train or bus returning from Vancouver to Seattle after 7:45 pm that I can find, I will have to drive, darn it.

This map is sort of useful.

There is also a Google Map of temporary park-and-rides set up for the games. I won’t link to it here because it will trigger the spam filter. I’ll add it to the next post.

But between those two maps, it looks like my strategy is to head for Surrey or New Westminster on 99A and park in one of the temporary park-and-rides, then take the SkyTrain downtown. (Can also get off the train early and transfer to the Games Express to go straight to the Coliseum, but that seems less fun than going all the way downtown where the action is and transferring there.)

Incidentally, a post here on STB on getting from Seattle to the Olympics via transit might be handy. I would volunteer to write it but not sure I’ll be able to this week as things are a little crazy at the moment. (I have a deadline coming up, the Olys next week, and a family member in the hospital.) If I can pull anything together I’ll submit it, though.

Metro has no specific guidelines for accomodating requests for a particular side of the bus, and in my view provided woefully little accessibility training – even to new drivers – outside how to use the securements.

If I were King of Metro, I would have a person with a disability come to class to speak with new drivers in training, as well as the class for those drivers who go from part to full time – to talk about accessibility issues from the perspective of someone who relies on them to access the community.

That does happen – that the person with the disability may request to sit on the left or right side. Sometimes there are good reasons for this – a wheelchair user is sometimes less flexible than the rest of us, and it can be harder to see where the bus is. This is especially true of the accessible seat right behind the driver’s cab as vision on the left is more blocked than seats further back. If you’re a person in a wheelchair who needs to get off at a particular stop not normally called out, or need to be aware of landmarks, etc, this can be very important.

I normally try to accomodate these requests, or at most will ask the person using the wheelchair if they’d mind using the one that’s ready. But again – because of limitations of vision or other issues I may be unaware of, I’m inclined to do what I can to accomodate them, including asking folks to shuffle around to make it happen.

There’s an open seat for that passenger; me personally, I would take whichever side is opened up for me (I have a preference to the right side if I’m on a bus I’m not familiar with so I can look out the front window for my stop, but I could care less if the left side is made available)

That’s just me personally, not sure what Metro’s rule book says on the subject though