Transit Windsor apologizes after families left stranded for hours by tunnel bus

A fun, family trip to Detroit ended in a long, cold wait for a handful of Windsor families Saturday after they were left stranded in the United States by Transit Windsor.

Richard Spry said he and his two young children had a great day at the Discover the Dinosaurs exhibit at the CoboCentre. But when it came time to head home, they ended up waiting at a bus stop for more than three hours.

• Transit Windsor ridership up 5%, proposes all-day, 10 minute service for busiest route

"We're sitting there with 11 children, one pregnant woman, a grandmother and 11 adults. It was just crazy. Everyone was very hungry and tired at this point and we have kids that are getting anxious and it's cold outside."

The Spryswere at the stop around 12:30 p.m., about 20 minutes before the next bus was scheduled to arrive. They waited and waited, as buses that were supposed to stop never came.

Riders wondered if they were being'lied to'

Frustrated, Spry said he and other would-be riders started calling the bus terminal to see where their ride was and were told to stay put because a ride was on the way, but around 3:30 p.m. they gave up, picked up their kids and walked to the tunnel.

Once they got to the border, Spry said they manged to get on a bus and were back in Windsor around 4:30 p.m.

"The entire time we were wondering ... if the bus is comingor we're being lied to?" he explained."We would all definitely drive over next time and won't be taking transit."

Wait caused by a 'perfect storm'

Transit Windsor executive director Pat Delmoresaid GPS trackers recently installed on buses showed one crossing to the tunnel around 12:30 p.m. and another around 3 p.m.

He described what happened on Saturday as a "perfect storm," where longer than normal wait times, combined with drivers who didn't show up for their shift, caused the wait to stretch so long.

Delmore added the supervisor working over the weekend made a "bad call" by deciding that bus that did make it across should only do a "short turn," meaning it would come out of the tunnel, pick up passengers and turn back to Canada almost immediately rather than driving to downtown stops like the one the Sprys were waiting at

He admitted the wait those families had was "excessive" and said staff will work on ways to improve communication with each other and passengers when there are delays.

I won't be taking the bus. I mean, I'm not going to put my kids through that again.- Richard Spry

"[It's] certainly an area we could provide some improvement with," he said, explaining part of the problem is that the dispatchers and customer service workers at not at the same location, meaning some messages don't get passed along.

"They get so busy trying to deal with everything that's happening on the street as it's happening in the dispatch area that they do need to reach out to customer service staff to be able to just share that and again, it was just so busy that whether they lost track of it or didn'tthink of doing it was certainly something that failed on our part."

• Service dog should get a seat on the bus, owner tells Transit Windsor

Spry said a Transit Windsor supervisor apologized to his wife and offered her four tickets to use the tunnel bus in the future, but he said he doesn't plan to use them.

"You feel like you're stranded in the [United States]," he said."I won't be taking the bus. I mean, I'm not going to put my kids through that again."