An Arbitrator’s decision to allow the Bermuda Industrial Union (BIU) to ratify the bus schedule should be appealed by Government, according to the schedule’s creator.David Reed, a principal of Toronto-based Schedule Masters Inc said yesterday: “In the last 20 years I have worked with at least 200 different public transportation clients, and no where else in the world do the operators get to ratify their schedule.“I really think the turning point was the Arbitrator’s decision giving the BIU the right to ratify the schedule, even when the schedule itself was well within the confines of the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA).“That decision, in my opinion, handcuffed [Public Transportation] Director Dan Simmons. I think the only way to resolve it is for Government to appeal the decision and demonstrate to the appellant Arbitrator that an error in interpreting the CBA occurred.”Repeated efforts have been made to replace the current bus schedule, which has been in place since 1998.The latest schedule was rejected by the Bermuda Industrial Union on Friday during a three-hour meeting at the Ocean View Golf Course.Explaining the decision, BIU leader Chris Furbert said there were concerns surrounding bus changeovers, and that some drivers wanted to have one weekday and one weekend day off rather than weekends off.He also said that the schedule was based off the Toronto Bus System, a claim that Mr Reed said was completely untrue.“The base 1998 schedule was maintained and expanded upon once chronic late-arriving trips were identified and corrected,” Mr Reed explained.“Input was taken and implemented for earlier and later service — especially on the weekends, and buses were no longer to short-turn at Grotto Bay or Barnes' Corner.”Mr Reed said that Schedule Masters Inc, a software and consultancy firm, has worked with public transportation clients in North and South America, the Caribbean and New Zealand.In 2001, he said that the Public Transportation Board (PTB) purchased software from the firm. When the then chief scheduler left his post, and no replacements could be found locally or overseas, Mr Reed said he was kept on in an “as-needed” basis as the de-facto scheduler.Since then, he said the firm has produced no fewer than 25 schedules and rosters for the bus service since 2001 — each one refused by the BIU.“I stopped taking it personally after the first 12 or so,” Mr Reed said. “I just took their comments and worked them in.”He said that in recent years the firm has been paid for around 40 hours of work annually for the schedules, but only on the direction of Mr Simmons.In 2004, after around ten schedules were rejected, he said the matter was submitted to an Arbitration Tribunal, with then Permanent Secretary Marc Telemaque speaking for the Government and Derrick Burgess speaking on behalf of the BIU.Mr Reed explained the Arbitrator had determined that because scheduling would affect the start and finish times of drivers, the schedule must be ratified by the union.“This was, in my opinion, a horrible mistake by the Arbitrator,” Mr Reed said. “It virtually guaranteed Union refusal of any future schedule changes in favour of the status quo.“Mr Simmons has tried valiantly over the years to accommodate the BIU but to no avail.”He said the key issues have been the hours of work, turnaround times for routes and the number of “night runs” on their roster.Regarding the hours of work, he said the CBA allowed hours of work between 6am and 1am. The Arbitrator determined that keeping with past practice, drivers would only have one “night run” on their rosters, and there should be a minimum turnaround time of five minutes at the Central Terminal.On all three points, Mr Reed said the schedule met the standards set.Responding to the comments that some drivers wanted to have a weekday and weekend day off, he said that the Department of Public transportation does allow drivers to swap days with each other.Mr Reed said that the proposed schedule would have saved the Public Transportation Department around $1 million in operating costs annually, while improving service and the hiring of 15 additional drivers for school and charter work in the winter.“It is maintaining that status quo that has made public transport such an expensive endeavour in Bermuda,” Mr Reed said. “Schedules are living and breathing things. They need to reflect ever-changing demand and traffic conditions and simply cannot be considered viable when they follow 1998 assumptions.“From the outset, the new schedules reflected changes on the streets of Bermuda. Although somewhat dated now, they're a considerable improvement in both realistic running times and increased service.”He said that under the current schedule, it takes no fewer than 77 vehicles to operate the service when school is in and 54 vehicles when school is out.“By realigning how buses travel through the system and having drivers swap duties with one another at Central Terminal, those numbers were reduced to 76 and 46 respectively,” he said. “Imagine an extra eight buses being made available to the tourists in the summer.“In the old schedule, most drivers would finish their first piece of work and drive ‘Not in Service’ back to Fort Langton for lunch. Under the new schedule, most drivers would finish their first piece at Central Terminal and hand the bus over to someone else.”He said the turnarounds at Grotto Bay and Barnes’ Corner were put in place in the 1998 schedule to “even out” the drivers work schedule, but under the new schedule the buses would continue to St George’s and Dockyard respectively.“In the new roster, the average weekday run involves six hours and 15 minutes of driving time and seven-and-a-half hours of pay time,” he said. “No driver has to drive a run more than once a week that finishes after 10pm. Every driver is scheduled a minimum of 12 hours off time between runs.“The summer schedule is the same as the winter schedule, save for the school runs. Those drivers are scheduled to drive and average of three hours and 20 minutes a day and then be on standby should they be required to cover a charter or another run if the scheduled driver is unavailable.“They get seven-and-a-half hours pay time a day too, with Saturdays and Sundays guaranteed off.”