Transit officials are calling for a review of how information was spread after Tuesday's bus crash caused traffic mayhem in west Ottawa.
When two buses crashed near Tunney's Pasture station in the late afternoon, it shut down that stretch of the Transitway and forced buses onto Scott Street during rush hour.
Thousands of people were left without any information from OC Transpo as the crash was first unfolding, leaving others to fill the void.
"I heard about the incident about 20 minutes or half an hour before they posted on their website," said Wesley Chu, who runs the popular @OCTranspoAlerts Twitter account.
"It doesn't seem like they post all their relevant updates, all their major updates on there. So I pretty much had to take matters in my own hands."
OC Transpo manager Alain Mercier said they have an emergency plan to deal with these situations, but it was made before the age of social media.
"Obviously our priority is handling our customers so information is very important," he said. "This is all part of the learning experience, I think all of our communication procedures really predate turning on our Twitter feed."
There were no tweets about the crash, delays or detours on the official @OC_Transpo Twitter account as the situation developed, but rather tweets about Winterlude and the U-Pass.
OC Transpo does have the technology to let people know where their buses are in real-time, but it isn't being released until March.
"What if we had had a certain communication in place, ie an app, open data," said Ottawa councillor Rainer Bloess. "Would we have dealt with this better? Would we have gotten the information out far better?"
OC Transpo has put together a technology sub-committee to look at improving in this area.
Until then, Mercier said they'll learn from Tuesday's developments.
"Our goal is the quicker we can get information out to our customers and residents of Ottawa, that's what we want," he said.
With a report from CTV Ottawa's John Hua
