While other Canadian cities are solving major transport related problems like the threat of a strike in Toronto and the use of Tasers in Vancouver, Parliament Hill is setting a first in Canadian transport by introducing its first batch of female train and bus operators.
Ontario now has two women drivers, Margaret Bicknell and Margaret Lafrance. OC Transport wants to add more by launching a recruitment campaign to attract more females and minorities to the company. But the transport firm has more luck getting visible minority applicants than women drivers, admitted Alain Mercier, director of transit services of the City of Ottawa.
Aside from the two Margarets and a few female employees doing other tasks, women make up only 9 percent of the city's transport workers. While some female applicants have shown up at the city's job fair, most of them wanted jobs in customer service and administration, not on the operations side.
Innes Councilor Rainer Bloess, however, said the gender divide which the campaign wants to close, is misguided. "I don't think people will get involved in transit based on if it's a male or a female driving the train," Bloess told the Ottawa Sun.
Transportation issues has been hogging the front pages of Canadian newspapers the past few days. It will likely command more media space in the coming days as the Metrolinx releases its draft of the Regional Transportation Plan for the Greater Toronto Hamilton Area by June.
With soaring cost of transport fuel and environmental concerns over the greenhouse gas emitted by private transportation, there is a clamor for more modern mass transit systems in many Canadian urban centers.
According to a study by the Canadian Automobile Association, the annual cost to maintain a six-cylinder car in the GTHA is $12,834, while buying a TTC Metropass good for 12 months costs only $1,200. If a resident drives to work for 40 years, he would have spent $513,360, while if he commuted using the TTC for the same period, he would only have spent $48,000 for transportation.
