“Maybe the drivers don't have enough time?”
On Some routes you don’t and others you’ve too much time, how they work it out I’ll never know. But you’re not penalised for running a bit late so there’s no reason to throw people about. Just some drivers are good and some are bad, no difference from car, van or truck drivers.
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“Maybe the drivers don't have enough time?” On Some routes you don’t and others you’ve too much time, how they work it out I’ll never know. But you’re not penalised for running a bit late so there’s no reason to throw people about. Just some drivers are good and some are bad, no difference from car, van or truck drivers.
Back when i was a bus driver, we had to start doing a new run through a town. I was very suspicious about the lack of time given to do a particular section through a residential area so i went over the route one night in the car to check the distance and work out how fast the driver would need to go. Turned out, you would need to average 33mph in order to do it in the allocated time, despite the highest legal speed at any point being 30mph and about a quarter of it being 20mph zones, complete with speed humps. And obviously that does not take into account stopping to let passengers on or off!.
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“Back when i was a bus driver, we had to start doing a new run through a town. I was very suspicious about the lack of time given to do a particular section through a residential area so i went over the route one night in the car to check the distance and work out how fast the driver would need to go. Turned out, you would need to average 33mph in order to do it in the allocated time, despite the highest legal speed at any point being 30mph and about a quarter of it being 20mph zones, complete with speed humps. And obviously that does not take into account stopping to let passengers on or off!.”
We’ve some routes with sections that’ve loads of time meaning you need to sit burning time then they’ve sections where you can’t possibly make it on time. Makes it fun.
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“Back when i was a bus driver, we had to start doing a new run through a town. I was very suspicious about the lack of time given to do a particular section through a residential area so i went over the route one night in the car to check the distance and work out how fast the driver would need to go. Turned out, you would need to average 33mph in order to do it in the allocated time, despite the highest legal speed at any point being 30mph and about a quarter of it being 20mph zones, complete with speed humps. And obviously that does not take into account stopping to let passengers on or off!.” We’ve some routes with sections that’ve loads of time meaning you need to sit burning time then they’ve sections where you can’t possibly make it on time. Makes it fun.
One of the dullest shifts when i was with stagecoach was the late town service. In order to make it a bit more interesting i would specifically ask for a particular bus, it was a dennis dart and was ridiculously slow to accelerate (much, much slower than it should have been). But because it was so slow, it was more of a challenge keeping to time, which in turn made the shift less of a chore!.
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“One of the dullest shifts when i was with stagecoach was the late town service. In order to make it a bit more interesting i would specifically ask for a particular bus, it was a dennis dart and was ridiculously slow to accelerate (much, much slower than it should have been). But because it was so slow, it was more of a challenge keeping to time, which in turn made the shift less of a chore!.”
Amazes me the difference between supposedly identically specced buses. No two E200/300’s are the same. We’ve several that’re glacial and others that are surprisingly rapid. One in particular is a flying machine.
Have to say though I’m enjoying the job. Yes it’s not a big payer but I have the luxury after 15yrs of self employment of not having to worry about that and every day is different. You’re sent all over the place, drive different buses and meet plenty of new people daily and the workplace banter is pretty entertaining.
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Try anything ex-London for poor acceleration and an exciting array of various ailments and issues! Dennis motors have been known for ropey gearchanges for years, Darts always did it when they were getting knackered; up, down, up, down.... However the modern gen lightweight stuff seems to be getting worse. Wright Streetlites are horrid things to sit near the engine on, the racket is abysmal. They make a sound every few minutes like a bag of ballbearings being emptied into the engine somewhere! The heavy stuff, as you say SLO Volvo and Scania flavours (preferably Volvo when there's a choice!) is far nicer to drive, alas they're rather costly both to buy and to run, as so aren't very popular any more. Shame.
Edited by 520i on 15/02/2018 at 16:57
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I walk to town along a potholed bus route, every bus that passes makes the most appalling metallic clatter from the front suspension, sounds as if all the bushes have fallen out of the linkages. Anyone know if this is just acharacteristic or do they all need better maintenance?
Most double deckers are a few years old but even 1 or 2 year old singles seem the same.
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I walk to town along a potholed bus route, every bus that passes makes the most appalling metallic clatter from the front suspension, sounds as if all the bushes have fallen out of the linkages. Anyone know if this is just acharacteristic or do they all need better maintenance?
Most double deckers are a few years old but even 1 or 2 year old singles seem the same.
Combination of high mileages and a design that gives plenty of stuff to rattle. Just like an old car with big miles up you’ll have to live with a few knocks and rattles. Anything serious that effects safety is attended to quickly as the driver should stop and report it immediately and engineering will usually pull it off the road. These things cover six figure mileages every year and it wouldn’t be economically viable to write them off every 3-4yrs. Keep replacing stuff and they’ll run and run.
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The other thing here is 'unsprung weight'. Something like a coach or double decker is going to have wheels of the same size as a truck, but buses are nowhere near as heavy. So that large and heavy wheel/tyre/axle/hub (etc) combination really bangs into potholes.
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Having just one hand on the steering wheel for a short amount of time, and under certain traffic conditons is not dangerous.
Also, the rule about having both hands on the steering wheel for parallel parking is stupid.
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“Having just one hand on the steering wheel for a short amount of time, and under certain traffic conditons is not dangerous.”
It’s a very different driving position from a car so the two can’t be compared. I’m sure I look like I’m just resting my left hand on the spokes of the wheel but my right hand (passengers can’t see) has a firm grip. You also need to palm it going round corners as feeding the wheel is too slow and clumsy for all the fast wheel twirling bus drivers do on slow town/city corners. My left hand is always ready to grab the wheel if required while doing this. People really need to drive one before criticising as it really isn’t the same as your typical car driving experience. Be a good thing for teaching car drivers about how to keep back from buses when negotiating junctions, roundabouts and corners. You should never try to squeeze round at the same time as one.
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My old boss in the fire service had an ongoing beef about this with one of his newly-qualified emergency response drivers.
This chap would insist on driving under normal conditions with one hand resting on the wheel, and the other doing nothing in particular. The boss's argument was not that the vehicle couldn't be steered safely using just one hand, but that if the machine had a blowout the driver wouldn't be in a position to take control of the wheel immediately and move safely to the kerb.
Some of this disagreement was down to a clash of personalities, because no authoritative opinion was ever sought in order to settle the argument. However, it make sense to me that for proper control to be maintained under any and all circumstances, two hands should always be in firm contact with the wheel.
At the other end of the scale, there was the chap who would occasionally use his knees to steady the wheel of the turntable ladder so he could keep his hands free and roll a fag.
Edited by argybargy on 15/02/2018 at 23:48
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Hmm. Presumably the chap was okay with drivers taking a hand off the wheel to operate a siren, horn, indicators etc whilst driving at speed in high risk urban traffic situations? Is that less dangerous than resting one hand whilst driving normally?
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Hmm. Presumably the chap was okay with drivers taking a hand off the wheel to operate a siren, horn, indicators etc whilst driving at speed in high risk urban traffic situations? Is that less dangerous than resting one hand whilst driving normally?
Yes. Having one hand off the wheel momentarily is less dangerous than having one hand off habitually.
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Fortunately there was a foot-operated siren button on the floor on both the driver and the officer in charge's side of the cab, so there was never any real need to take one hand off the wheel whilst driving to an emergency except when operating indicators. There were additional siren switches on the dash, but these would usually only be operated when negotiating queues of urban traffic at relatively slow speeds in order to provide additional warning noise when approaching red traffic lights, for example.
Edited by argybargy on 16/02/2018 at 09:26
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Does anyone really think that vocational drivers, behind the wheel for hours every day, for almost every week of the year, are going to be gripping the wheel at 10 to 2 almost continually?
The answer is a most emphatic no, long term drivers have a far more relaxed attitude, they have to or they would burn out on months.
There was time on lorries and buses with no power steering when you needed two hands to manage the things, and you never but never pushed and pulled the wheel on corners, you'd be hauling it round hand over hand like you were pulling in an anchor, on really tight bends you might be bracing a spare foot against the dash to assist pulling that wheel round.
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I reckon our officer in charge targeted this chap as he was a rather arrogant fellow who already knew everything about driving a fire engine before he passed his test, and not because his one handed technique posed any real danger to himself or the crew. It was a way of taking him down a peg or two.
In any case, professional drivers in the fire service tend to spend far less time behind the wheel than, say, lorry drivers or bus drivers, so it was a far less important criticism to make, as long as he didn't carry that technique into his emergency response driving, which as far as I'm aware, he didn't.
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Slightly late on this one. I do not use buses that much but will do so where I know that there may be parking issues at my destination. Around ten - fifteen years ago we had issues in this area when they seemed to employ anybody that had the requisite licence - some drove badly (even dangerously), others had limited knowledge of the route or customer service etc. Added to this some of the buses were quite ill maintained.
The condition of the buses is now far better but the drivers seem to vary with the company. Most are much of a muchness and I have no problems with them. Of the two largest companies one set are very professional, drive smoothly, are polite to customers and say "thank you" if, for instance a motorist lets them out. The other has a number of drivers that are the opposite and act as if driving a bus gives them automatic right of way disregardless of what the Highway Code says. One wonders why?
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Of the two largest companies one set are very professional, drive smoothly, are polite to customers and say "thank you" if, for instance a motorist lets them out. The other has a number of drivers that are the opposite and act as if driving a bus gives them automatic right of way disregardless of what the Highway Code says. One wonders why?
They are simply a cross section of society as whole as are all of us, as manners courtesy and personal responsibilty and discipline are trained out of the general population, which has been happening for years as the state knows best.
Its in all walks of life, there are decent people with a code of behaviour they themselves adhere to because that's who they are, the society they are raised in and their formative and educational years have a huge effect (wealth is not an issue here, though social conditions are, monkey see monkey do), and there is the other sort who never had such a code instilled from an early age and often envy or actually despise the former (who probably have a more fulfilling life), our problem as a society is that the balance between the two is shifting the wrong way.
No amount of company training and power point presentation is going to turn the latter into the former.
Edited by gordonbennet on 20/02/2018 at 09:04
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I like competing in this www.bdoy.co.uk, perhaps you can give it a try SLO
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Whilst I accept this point I find it strange that one company has more of its fair share of the bottom end. Maybe it is a case of bad management like the British car indusry of the seventies!
Edited by RaineMan on 21/02/2018 at 20:08
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Whilst I accept this point I find it strange that one company has more of its fair share of the bottom end. Maybe it is a case of bad management like the British car indusry of the seventies!
if the staff are treated with disrespect and poorly paid then there is little reason (other than personal pride) to make the effort, you may well be right RaineMan, in that a fish rots from the head down.
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Sadly the bus industry has been in decline for decades, the rot having set in back in the 1960s when rising car ownership turned bus travel into the transport of the lower rungs of society. The inevitable financial hard times followed, and the culture within bus operators turned sour. Once upon a time bus companies were proud organisations, with gleaming vehicles and a strong sense of local pride, their drivers seen as knights of the road. During the 60s and 70s the National Bus Company ran the show in typically uninspiring state style, then followed deregulation in the 80s and 90s where any old outfit was actively encouraged to start bus services, running whatever collection of tatty old sheds they could find with whoever was willing to drive the things, concepts such as uniforms, liveries or vehicle standards entirely optional and usually not bothered with. Recent developments have improved standards dramatically, a combination of better legislation and massive increases in operating costs have driven most of the cowboys to the wall, though some cling on. Vehicles are far better now generally, but regretfully the low pay, lack of respect or career prospects and shockingly high turnover of staff have remained like a bad smell, the operators seemingly quite content to encourage things to stay that way. The very same big companies employ staff in the rail sector on three or four times the wage for broadly similar skillsets, with excellent pensions and decent prospects of progression, meanwhile the bus side of the businesses continue to need driving schools at every depot to stem the continual flow of staff who've had enough and jack it in.
There are some very good drivers out there, but also some poor ones who in many cases simply don't really care. It's a shame, but the industry is long overdue a hard look at itself, it could do so much better.
Edited by 520i on 22/02/2018 at 13:42
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From my early days experience of this trade it’s in a constant state of being heavily understaffed which is a direct result of the relatively poor wages. Going rate for service work is around £11 an hour for driving the most valuable cargo on the road (human life) yet HGV drivers get substantially more and train drivers at least double for doing less. Even clippies on the trains earn more than bus drivers! Which is ridiculous.
Some of the smaller firms locally have constant recruitment ads running but no wonder when they’re ludicrously paying minimum wage. Who would pay £1200 or so to get their PSV licence to then work for the same as a shelf stacking teenager? Only those who wouldn’t be hired by anyone else. Yet we’re to trust our kids with these people?
The firm I work for is one of the better payers and offers plenty of overtime but to me they’ll never solve the near constant staffing crisis until the job pays a wage that makes it genuinely attractive to the right sort of people. Minimum for driving a bus (often with 50 plus souls onboard) should be £15 an hour.
Though to turn things back to cars I’m sat here in the car park at the end of a shift and it’s eye opening the amount of expensive metal that’s parked here. Golf R/GTi, Focus RS, BMW 135i etc etc. Cars that were once only open to the upper echelons of society are being taken on daft PCP/Lease deals by ordinary working Joes who really must be mad pouring a substantial portion of their monthly wage into a car they’ll never own. Quick drive round any council estate and you’ll see all sorts of exotic tin sat on the road. Madness in my opinion. All the younger guys in here moan that they’ll never own their own house... no wonder with the money they’re wasting on cars.
Edited by SLO76 on 22/02/2018 at 16:50
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It would be interesting for the bus drivers here, to give us an insight on passengers, how many passengers have the courtesy to say good morning / hello / thankyou to the driver i wonder?
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I don't catch many buses but I always thank the driver when I get off. It costs nowt and might make up a little bit for all the abuse and carp they have to put up with. It might even make some of them think about being a bit lighter on the pedals if they think somebody gives a damn:)
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Indeed MT, i too seldom catch a bus but when i do i always say thankyou to the driver when alighting.
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I say thank you, and, to be fair, so do a lot of passengers on buses I use. Not so good with the greetings, though. I do say, "Hello", or "Hi", something and most of the time get a friendly response.
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It's nearly 9 years since i was a bus driver, and my memory isn't so great these days!.
But my recollection's of passengers politeness tended to vary depending on where the bus was going and the time of day. Early, or 'commuter' runs into Aberdeen tended to be accompanied by minimal passenger interaction which is fair enough, the driver is going to be pushed for time and most of the passengers are still half asleep. Move a bit later in the morning though, and you got into the 'oldies' heading into Aberdeen for a look round the shops and lunch, they would tend to be much chattier. They would also tend to be coming home again by mid afternoon leaving the late afternoon buses for the same commuters as earlier.
Town service passengers tended to be chattier, but that was because it was mostly familier faces, both the drivers for the passengers and vice versa.
I'm sure it won't surprise anyone to learn that passengers least likely to speak would be the youth!. Of course there were exceptions, but by and large they were sullen, moody and invariably staring intently at their phones!.
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I find the best punters (and drivers) tend to live on the rural runs. They’re more reliant on the buses and always polite and friendly, even the boy racer brigade make way for buses trying to squeeze round village estates. I get loads sweets as tips, no wonder most bus drivers are fat! Different story through the town where traffic flow often causes delays which gives the moaners something to whine about. Buses don’t have wings you know...
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I don't catch many buses but I always thank the driver when I get off. It costs nowt and might make up a little bit for all the abuse and carp they have to put up with. It might even make some of them think about being a bit lighter on the pedals if they think somebody gives a damn:)
You always remember the pleasant punters. Nice goes around and comes right back at you. As for going lighter on the pedals, well it’s more the buses fault. The brakes on these things aren’t the best... nothing, nothing then hammers on! Not progressive at all with exception granted to the Scanias which do drive just like a big car. It’s a challenge to keep to a tight timetable (can’t be early, can’t be too late) while trying to brake and steer smoothly on a vehicle which was designed to do neither very well. How those Optare buses ever passed muster at the testing phase I’ll never know, the brakes are terrible, far too strong and are simply on or off. Have to say however I rather enjoy the job but there’s many a moaning face behind the wheel would argue that I’m a bit mad.
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It would be interesting for the bus drivers here, to give us an insight on passengers, how many passengers have the courtesy to say good morning / hello / thankyou to the driver i wonder?
Surprisingly the majority are very polite, certainly up here in sunny Ayrshire. Often for the elderly in rural locations it’s a lifeline and the driver may be one of the few people they speak to on a regular basis. I’m quite fond of doing the subsidised minibus routes we run into the back and beyond. There’s more time on them and it’s more personal, you really get to know your customers and the countryside can be beautiful and just a bit scary in winter. In town you’ll find more complaints, mostly due to buses running late. But breakdowns happen and traffic jams up. The big firms do a good job in general but unrealistic expectation is a hard thing to fight against. Just smile and blame it on someone else.
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99% of customers are very polite, say please, thank you and are generally no bother. Unfortunately the other 1% can test the patience of Mother Teresa but I guess it's no different to the challenges that are presented to any other employee in the front line of customer service.
Some questions directed towards a bus driver can be amusing, e.g
"What time is the 5 past 12 bus due?"
" Does this bus go past my Grandma's house?"
"How much are your £4 day passes?"
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I mentioned that one bus company stood out as being far the worse in our area. Last night I had a phone call from a pensioner friend. He, and his wife, had used to the bus to visit a very elsderly relative in hospital as the parking is particularly fraught, and expensive - they have bus passes. Anyway for the return trip the driver pulled into the wrong stop and then started arguing with those getting on/off who pointed this out insisting he was right. I suugested he compalin and he said there was no point as they reply months later not addressing the complaint and, after all, life is too short to bother!
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I had similar problems with both my sons a few years ago, but the other way round!.
The eldest had been doing a weeks work experience, i got a phone call from him at about 5pm one afternoon saying he had missed the bus and the driver hadn't stopped for him. So i went to pick him up and have words with a member of staff in the bus station, but (knowing he could be a bit scatterbrained) asked my son to show me where he was and exactly what happened beforehand. Turned out he was standing at completely the wrong stance, despite there being clear signs saying which bus stopped where!.
Then not long after, my youngest son had taken the bus to visit a friend for the day. Same thing, i got a phone call from him saying he'd missed the bus. This turned out to be due to him standing on the wrong side of the road!
Hey ho!
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Yup, I hear complaints like this all the time. Usually accusing the driver in front of me of leaving early but it’s all monitored via GPS so it’s easy to check up and 95% of the time the driver is not at fault. Folks just like having someone else to blame for their own mistakes.
Amazes me also the number of people who don’t read the destination screen on the front of the bus. Every trip I’ll be stopped several times by someone wanting a different bus. The fuel and time that must be wasted nationally by this won’t be insignificant. Drivers are prone to being a bit grouchy about this one, especially if they’re running late.
Another is punters who want to catch another service which leaves at exactly the same time as the one they’re on arrives. They rant as they see the other bus leave as you draw in but you’re not allowed to run early and the other driver has to leave on his time. If you want that bus get the earlier one to get in on time! Same faces including one of my ex’s up at the stance window complaining almost daily to be told the same thing. Never learn.
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