The blind lawyer who spent ten years in a legal fight to force the Toronto Transit Commission to announce subway stops says he is now embroiled in another human rights struggle with the TTC -- to get them to announce bus and streetcar stops.
"It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that if you have to announce a subway stop, you also have to announce bus stops," said David Lepofsky, a senior lawyer with Ontario's Ministry of the Attorney-General.
Mr. Lepofsky took the TTC to the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal several months ago. In July, the tribunal ruled in his favour, ordering the TTC to clearly announce all stops and to hire an independent monitor to ensure that the order was being enforced.
While fighting for subway stop announcements a year ago, Mr. Lepofsky also began to request that drivers announce every bus stop.
Currently, the TTC's policy is to announce only major intersections and stops, a practice that Mr. Lepofsky said is inconsistent and inadequate.
Bob Boutilier, the TTC's deputy general manager, said that the TTC is going to install an automated bus stop announcement system on one route in September, in addition to the already existing stop announcements.
"There are 10,000 surface route stops and the vast majority are not easy to describe," he said, adding that many stop in front of nondescript residential addresses.
The TTC is trying to figure out a way to announce these stops under the new system, he said.
Between 11 and 15 new buses will be equipped with the system.
But Mr. Lepofsky said the TTC has been promising such an automated system for a decade. In the meantime, he said, it is more cost-effective to simply announce every stop, a system which can be instituted immediately.
Bus stop announcements, he said, are even more vital than subway stop announcements. While a blind person can count the number of stops on a subway, buses rarely make every single stop. The blind shouldn't have to sit at the front of a bus or request that a driver make an announcement, he said.
His reason for the request is a personal one: He expects to move to a new house on a bus route in a few weeks.
"Do I have to go to the human rights tribunal all over again?" he asked.
After almost a dozen letters back and forth between Mr. Lepofsky and Richard Ducharme, the chief general manager at the TTC, the last letter, dated Aug. 3, stated that the TTC will respond in detail within two months.
Mr. Lepofsky said that is ridiculous, as he has been pressing the TTC to announce bus stops for more than a year:
"Something has got to be really wrong in the TTC senior management if they still don't get it."