Ottawa transit buses are hitting the road with faulty brakes and other problems due to a lack of preventative maintenance, says the city's transit union, which alleges that lack also led to the six weeks of peak bus service cuts earlier this year.

The Amalgamated Transit Union made the allegations while bringing a 13-page report called "A Transit System in Crisis" to the city's joint transit and transportation committee Wednesday.

"There's buses that went on the road where tires have fallen off," said OC Transpo mechanic Jamie Larkin. "We've had … brake failure on the road. Again, preventative maintenance would have caught that."

The report lists a series of problems with the fleet and the organization and criticizes the leadership of the city-run transit company.

The report was ruled off-topic during the meeting to discuss the city's new transit plan, and the union was asked to address councillors at a later date.

No one from OC Transpo or the city could be reached for comment on Thursday.

Larkin said the union wasn't trying to torpedo the city's transit expansion, but wants to make sure council gets things right.

"Let's look at the transit system today, get it fixed, instead of spending $4 billion on a new light rail system."

Randy Graham, international vice-president of the union, who started as an OC Transpo driver 35 years ago, said the service cuts in February and March marked the first time OC Transpo had to reduce scheduled service because it was unable to get its maintenance work done properly.

OC Transpo blamed the cuts on unforeseen maintenance and a large number of employees on long-term disability.

However, the union report states: "At the heart of these disruptions was the fact that large numbers of OC Transpo buses had not yet completed or passed the annual inspection required by the Ministry of Transportation."

Some of the other allegations made in the report are that:

• Buses purchased just a decade ago are already starting to rust out, only halfway through their anticipated working lives, because they haven't been inspected regularly enough and sealed in areas susceptible to rust.
• The air conditioning units on low floor articulated buses have corroded to the point that their refrigerant, freon gas, is leaking into the environment.
• Buses are being sent as far as 100 kilometres for repairs at garages that specialize in trucks, not buses. "All too frequently the buses returning from these off-site repair shops need to be worked on again by OC Transpo mechanics in order to correct the sloppy or unfinished repair work."
• OC Transpo is ignoring suggestions from employees that could save money — for example, a proposal to use an MP3 player hooked up to an existing bus PA system to call out stops instead of an $8-million computerized system proposed by management.

The report also targets the management system itself, saying that different aspects of OC Transpo's operations report to four different city branches, making it difficult to bring forward changes or improvements.

"The union submits that the present administrative structure simply is not working," the report said.

It suggests making OC Transpo either an arm's-length commission like Toronto's transit operator or a single standalone department like the one in Calgary.