Improving the Safety, Health, and Productivity of Transit Operators Through Adequate Restroom Access (2020) / Chapter Skim
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Pages 6-26
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6 Introduction Employers in all industries provide restroom access. They often, but not invariably, attempt to comply with the sanitation standard requirements of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)
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Transit Operator Restroom Access: Issues and Good Practice 7 and Gonzales 2014)
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8 Improving the Safety, Health, and Productivity of Transit Operators Through Adequate Restroom Access Terminology and Other Conventions Restrooms can be referred to in a variety of ways. In the United States "bathroom" is common, despite the lack of a bath.
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Transit Operator Restroom Access: Issues and Good Practice 9 29 LU respondents from 100 different TAs in 31 U.S. states and six Canadian provinces.
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10 Improving the Safety, Health, and Productivity of Transit Operators Through Adequate Restroom Access four tools. Three are Microsoft Excel files that are available on the TRB website (trb.org)
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Transit Operator Restroom Access: Issues and Good Practice 11 As none of the industry experts was able to identify a location where they thought the issue was being handled as well as it should be, they recommended approaches that were derived from their professional experience and insight rather than from observed practice. In particular, they all stated strongly that TAs had to start with a commitment to the dignity and the health of the operators; however, they felt that this was not common.
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12 Improving the Safety, Health, and Productivity of Transit Operators Through Adequate Restroom Access TAs and LUs cared about restroom access. The survey results in Figure 1-2 show that restroom access was a serious issue or one of the most important at 75% of the respondents' locations.
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Transit Operator Restroom Access: Issues and Good Practice 13 Bus division planners and managers reported providing between 10% and 20% recovery time, although some acknowledged that this time had not yet been provided in all routes. Most respondents agreed that time pressure is a consideration for operators and for service delivery.
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14 Improving the Safety, Health, and Productivity of Transit Operators Through Adequate Restroom Access did not know how often these might happen. Restroom limitations interacted with health conditions such as diabetes, pregnancy, or age-related changes.
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Transit Operator Restroom Access: Issues and Good Practice 15 On the whole, project participants felt that recruitment and retention were so dependent on wages and unemployment overall that this would be a minor issue. [Do you think there's any chance that restroom access could affect retention or recruitment?
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16 Improving the Safety, Health, and Productivity of Transit Operators Through Adequate Restroom Access when an unscheduled break was needed. Forty percent of respondents had a written policy on unscheduled stops, and another 46% addressed it informally.
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Transit Operator Restroom Access: Issues and Good Practice 17 Notably, vehicle operators contributed to the planning and scheduling decisions in almost onehalf of TAs. Practices diverged from policies at a given TA in two main areas: operators might fail to call in as required, and transit supervisors did not always prioritize operator comfort over service delivery.
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18 Improving the Safety, Health, and Productivity of Transit Operators Through Adequate Restroom Access limit cannot be established. While this is clearly an important question for TAs and for vehicle operators, the individual's needs are the determining factor.
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Transit Operator Restroom Access: Issues and Good Practice 19 to the physical hazards of the job, which include traffic congestion, safety hazards, noise, and ergonomic problems. Limited restroom access can lead to feelings of distress and sometimes to risky behaviors, such as speeding.
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20 Improving the Safety, Health, and Productivity of Transit Operators Through Adequate Restroom Access Bladder cancer could be related to transit work. Transit work may be a risk factor for bladder cancer, even after smoking, gender, and age are taken into consideration.
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Transit Operator Restroom Access: Issues and Good Practice 21 Public Health Impact How often transit operators relieve themselves in public areas, use containers, or even soil the seat as they work is not known. These events do receive extensive attention in news and informal report sources.
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22 Improving the Safety, Health, and Productivity of Transit Operators Through Adequate Restroom Access • Pregnancy, not a health problem in itself, frequently increases the urge to urinate and makes adequate hydration with frequent voiding even more important, as discussed earlier in this review. • Menstruating women may also require unscheduled restroom access.
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Transit Operator Restroom Access: Issues and Good Practice 23 These sources and many others in the intervening years provide suggestions for reducing the financial impact of unscheduled breaks while, at the same time, acknowledging contradictions that may be involved in providing timely and efficient service that is also safe and responsive to health needs. More importantly, the TAs and other sources participating in this project described concrete practical approaches to those contradictions.
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24 Improving the Safety, Health, and Productivity of Transit Operators Through Adequate Restroom Access Understanding the overall impact on operations and making smart decisions that support service reliability and operator health and comfort require an assessment of the available resources. Where are the restrooms?
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Transit Operator Restroom Access: Issues and Good Practice 25 • Using measured times rather than average times, as average times may overestimate the time required for some runs, which results in inefficiency, or underestimate it, which cuts down on scheduled recovery periods that operators need. Summary of the Literature on Service Delivery There were no simple solutions in the literature to the problem of the unscheduled breaks that have the biggest impact on service delivery.
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26 Improving the Safety, Health, and Productivity of Transit Operators Through Adequate Restroom Access Box 1-1. Suggestions for Good Practice Organizational policies and practices: • Acknowledge and involve stakeholders.
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