Running to Schedule

“If you run late, we will pay you overtime. If you run early, we will sack you”. This is what a Depot Inspector said to my one day during my training.

Running behind schedule is inevitable, at least sometimes. Traffic conditions and the number of passengers are unpredictable.

Running ahead of schedule is strictly forbidden. It makes sense, if the buses run ahead as well as behind schedule, there is no point of having a schedule.

On the schedule the driver works to, there is normally 6 to 8 minutes ‘lay up’ time between the time one route is scheduled to finish and the next is scheduled to start. If the bus is running so late that the next trip is started more than 10 minutes late, the driver is to contact the Radio Room for instructions. It might be the 2nd route is cancelled or shortened.

Navigating (2)

There is an important source of route information I left out of my previous post: the passengers.

Sometimes I ask. Sometimes they tell me, “Driver, you should have turned left back there”. Oops.

Last week I did a “School Special” (a route which picks up only students) which I was assigned on short notice. I didn’t have time to fully plan the route as it was quite complicated. I had the 1st part planned. When the 1st student (about 12 years old) got on I asked him to direct me. That worked well. However, when there were about 20 students on board they started to have fun at my expense. Some would say “turn left”, others would shout, “no, turn right”. “Come on, guys, give me a break”. We got there OK.

Navigating

Knowing where to drive is important (well, duh). There are a number of steps I use:

1) First, I reference the time table map issued to the public, for example ;

2) Then I reference what is known is the “Left-Right” book. This is issued to each driver. It contains a table of street names used by the route and indicates whether to turn left or right. Sometimes this has more detail that is shown in the time table map;

3) I then plot the route in a street directory. Here is an example of the detail shown (I don’t actually drive in the area of the example). The street directory shows traffic lights and roundabouts as well as parks, etc.;

4) I hand draw a map with the details from the street directory, including, if useful, the name of the street before the street I need to turn into. I clip this map to the window next to me and reference while I drive;

There also small signs on polls and trees along the route indicating when to turn. Unfortunately, they cannot be relied on. Sometimes they are missing. They are not put in predictable locations, sometimes they are well before the turn, sometimes they are on the other side of the intersection at which the bus is supposed to turn.

Sometimes the route is slightly different depending which direction it is being driven. I also sometimes draw maps for the route I drive between the bus depot and the start/end of the route and between the end of one route and the start of the next.

How Not To Do It

I worked a late PM shift yesterday (Sunday), from about 3:30pm to 12:30am (Monday morning). Working Sundays is supposed to be on a voluntary basis. I didn’t ask for this shift. In fact, last week I thought the roster said I had Sunday off. I still have a lot to learn about how the roster works.

Anyway, the route 401 I did in the 1st half was one I had not done before (btw, this shift was outside the “Nursery” schedule I discussed in the previous post). I did a shortened version of the route. It ran only from the Olympic Park Train Station (“C” on the map) to Sydney Olympic Park ferry wharf (“A”). I did 3 return trips. Each run is scheduled to take about 15 minutes but I struggled to get it under 20 minutes. At the ferry wharf there is a scheduled wait of about 30 minutes, so it was easy work.

On the 1st run (train station to ferry wharf) I made 3 wrong turns. The 1st because I misread the hand drawn map I had made. The 2nd because there was an error in my map. The 3rd because I started to depend on the route markers and one was missing, so I missed a turn.

Luckily, I had no passengers on board (in fact, during the entire 3 return trips I only picked up about 10 passengers in total). Also, luckily, this being the Olympic 2000 site, most of the roads are very wide so making (3 point) U-turns was relatively easy. An aside: Newington was the athlete’s village during the Olympics but is now private homes.

The Nursery

I have now been driving for more than a week. My confidence grows with each day. I now feel ‘at home’ behind the steering wheel of a bus. It’s a bit surreal, when I’m not driving and I see a bus, I feel amazed I drive those things.

Part of the induction to driving is to be in the ‘Nursery’. I drive the same routes and schedule every day for a week. This goes on for 4 weeks, each week with a different routes and schedules. The purpose of this is to allow the new drivers to become familiar with a few routes and to gain confidence in driving them. This idea was only recently introduced.