“We ordered 800 buses without fully knowing what the design would be”

Remember, these are the folks who just ordered $700 million worth of subway cars – without benefit of competitive tender. From the Toronto Sun:

The TTC is admitting it botched the seating at the back of its new low-floor buses for people with big butts or long legs and is vowing to fix the problem.

In its bid to squeeze as many seats as it could into the Orion 7 buses that lose some seating because of the low-floor, the TTC shoe-horned seats into the raised back of the bus.

"They're all jammed together so you can never get a comfortable seat unless your legs are two inches long," TTC chairman Howard Moscoe said.

"It's been a disaster," he said. "We ordered 800 buses without fully knowing what the design would be."

The buses cost $500,000 for a diesel model and $750,000 for a hybrid bus.

"We're not too happy with them either," said Gary Webster, chief general manager. "We went too far, the seats are too tight and a lot of members of the public can't use them.

"We can't fix what we've got, but we think we can do better on the next order."

No doubt if their sole-source subway car order also goes bad, they’ll learn a lesson from that too. That’s NDP politicians for you: mismanaging other people’s money is never a screw-up on their part, just another learning experience (viz. Bob Rae and the Ontario budget 1991-1994).