This article appears in Dec 11-17, 2008.
Early bird gets a break
Why do some bus drivers leave early from their fucking stops. Despite having idiot-proof GPS devices in their buses that are telling them whether or not they are early or late, driver’s somehow manage to leave a lot of stops early. Why? I challenge AN
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The general rule in regards to leaving is to never leave a timepoint (scheduled stop, like a terminal) early. That said, the majority of stops aren’t at timepoints and in the course of a day, a driver may end up arriving early due to such things as not having passengers to pick up or hitting all the green lights. Sometimes the schedules are written to allow for more time than even a slow trip takes to get between timepoints (ex. see how long the route 14 has to travel between Mumford Terminal and Quinpool/Oxford in either direction). When timing your trip, go by the time the bus leaves the timepoint BEFORE your stop, not after.There may well be drivers who leave timepoints early for your mentioned reasons, but they are a minority.May this be the only bus bitch for a while. We had a rash of them a few weeks back and we’re burned out.
Yeah, the 52 is notorious for doing this. I’ve been ON the 52 when it’s left lacewood (a major time point — it’s a terminal ffs) early and I’ve been on my way to my stop to catch the 52 and it’s whizzed by 5 minutes before it was supposed to leave lacewood (takes about 3 minutes to hit my stop from lacewood).If you call the HRM call centre when it happens they WILL do something about it. The driver won’t get in trouble, he/she’ll just be reminded to stay the fuck put until they’re supposed to leave (and I’m pretty sure their GPS tracker can tell HQ they left early). At least that’s what another driver of the 21 told me that day the 52 left ridiculously early and I missed my work bus 🙁