My name's Dave Radu. I work for Regina Transit System which is the public transportation system in the City of Regina. I've been with the city coming on twenty-four years now and in my present capacity as a Transportation Assistant, I've been doing that for the better part of seven or eight years.

[Job Description:]

Basically when I got into this field of work I thought it was a very mechanical kind of job where you come to work; you drive the bus. What I found very early in the process is that this is a people business. The mechanical part of the job either comes naturally or you wouldn't be interested in it anyway. So basically, a lot of the things I had to learn were in regard to people skills. I think the best way to put that in perspective is that most people have the wrong view of what this job actually is. I think if you do it on a percentage split - what the job actually involves - probably twenty per cent of the job is actually driving, eighty per cent of the job is dealing with the passengers, the people and the traffic. Those are the kinds of things.

[Teamwork Skills:]

If this job is going to drive you around the bend, it will be the people side of it as opposed to the driving part of it. I think I am a very easygoing person - very out-going. I think that people feel comfortable being around me. Part of the job requires teamwork in regards to getting the job done - getting the information. That management does its job in regards to trying to ascertain what the public requires. That's passed on to supervisors, which is passed on to the drivers, so there has to be that cohesion between the workers.

I think one of the things that makes that difficult in this industry is that you are pretty much on your own. You'll come in you know first thing in the morning, pick up what you need to do your job and basically you're here for ten minutes and then you're gone. A lot of the people you'll never see. There's some operators here (now that I'm in this capacity) that I haven't seen for six or eight months.

[Leadership Skills:]

I think you have to lead a lot by example - even though you don't have that close knit group where you're in the same office space all day long. To gain any kind of credibility in this business I think you have to develop a good working relationship with the people you work with. They have to have an image of what you are like. I think that will reflect in how they deal with you and how they do their job.

[Change & Adaptability:]

This industry has changed very dramatically over the twenty-some years that I've been here. If people come into a business like this (or any kind of business really) and think that it's going to stay like that forever, it's not the case. If you're going to get any kind of advancement or any kind of work cohesion with your fellow workers, you have to change. That's just the way it is. I think how readily you adapt and how quickly you can adapt will basically determine where you go.

[Typical Work Day:]

A typical work day for me, come rolling in in the morning, basically get logged in - all that kind of good stuff. I usually show up here around quarter to eight, ten to eight, in that time frame. By doing that the system has already been on the road for three hours. So that's where the regular part of the system basically takes care of itself. It's very structured. It's all scheduled. So those kinds of things it can do on its own.

So I'll come in the morning and what I do is take care of accidents, incidents, customer complaints - those kinds of things. So the very first thing I'll do is I'll go into (there's an area in the dispatch office where all those things are turned into) that area, see what kinds of things there are to deal with from yesterday or if there were any accidents yesterday or last night.

Then I go through the Road Supervisory Reports. Basically that will give me an indication of things that might have happened yesterday on the road or later last night in regards to accidents, or detours, or some incidents or those kinds of things.

[Hours Of Work:]

My normal day starts at 8:00 o'clock in the morning - basically you're done by 4:45 pm. But that's a guideline, that's not structured hours. All depends what happens and where it happens. Sometimes we do things that go right through lunch. Sometimes things come up and you're here until it's done.

[Most Challenging Aspect:]

Probably the most challenging part of it is having to deal with things after the fact So you have to have a good knowledge of how the system operates, what you can and can't do. We've done things where we've moved significantly large groups of people and it seems like there's a virtual endless string of buses where in the reality of it, you are using a very small number of buses. How you schedule it and how they move around seems to make it look like there's just an endless array. I think a good example of that is when we did the Grey Cup in '95. Numerous people commented after that they just couldn't believe how quick we moved people around with the numbers of vehicles that we used. It's just a matter of knowing your capacity, knowing what your system can handle and scheduling it accordingly. It sure is nice when your plan comes together. If you can pull off something like that and make it very transparent with people that are using the system (or using the service you are providing) and it works very well for them, that's very gratifying.

So if you’re out there looking for a job that you know gives you a lot of flexibility, you're basically your own boss, you don't have somebody looking over your shoulder and people are kind of your thing, then this would be a great job for you.