On Friday I was going to catch the #14 bus heading downtown at Oxford and Allan streets. I was just about to cross the street when the bus pulled up. I sprinted across the street to catch it, only to have the bus driver pull away from the stop as I was a feet from the door of the bus. He then proceeded to stop at the Quinpool and Oxford stop for as long as it took me to walk to the lights, only to pull away again as I was crossing through the intersection. I didn’t really expect him to stop at that point anyway, but it was the icing on the fail cake.
Yesterday morning, I was walking to the same bus stop at about the same time and called GoTime as I got to Allan and Harvard, just to make sure I was on schedule. I was, so it was too bad the #14 bus wasn’t. He was well over 5 minutes early and yet he decided to blow past a guy at the stop waiting for the bus (which I saw from the crosswalk as I crossed to try and catch him again), but he then sat at the Quinpool/Oxford stop long enough for the following #1 to catch up and leave AT THE SAME TIME.
To that driver specifically: You are an ASSHOLE. Smarten up and drive your bus like you’re supposed to, you jackass. I called to complain about you and give them your bus number, I’m not naive to think calling once is going to help but every single time you pull this shit I am going to be on the phone to complain about you.
You suck, and your driving sucks, and your attitude sucks.
This article appears in Apr 24-30, 2008.
Most of the Metro drivers here are Pricks. Bus driver not seeing the passenger to be, bullshit… I see this crap all the time, probably why I didn’t feel so bad when it happened to me. I just laughed, what the fuck else can you do? I guess I could have out run that piece of shit bus and caught it at the next stop, not as if I hadn’t done that before, and punched the son of a bitch in the mouth. But my luck it would have been a female driver and I would have been standing there out of breath looking like a tool. Fuck !
I never seem to have any problems with them.
Most of those mouth-breather union bus drivers get their kicks from this sort of thing — that, and when the bus is full of standees, slamming on the brakes or stomping the accelrator pedal to see how many human tenpins they can knock down. For that they get paid $20 and hour too since their strike threat. That is the reason any new transit services that may happen in the future should not be run by Metro Transit but instead be contracted out.
Keith, last place I drove transit buses had the same “driver slamming on brakes” complaints coming in. One thing to note on all the newer buses is that there is a ‘drivetrain retarder’ that is activated as soon as the drivers lets off the accelerator. The device can easily mimic a foot slaming on the brake pedal, especially if the transmission was just about to down shift when the retarder was activated. Now if the driver stomps on the brake pedal it just add unneeded wear and tear on the braking system. The retarder system was designed to slow down the vehicle while reducing brake wear. You can bring a bus to a 1.5km/hr crawl by using the retarder provided you plan in advance. After 1.5km/hr the system shuts off and depends on the service brake to be used.And for heavy foot on take off, the new buses have electronic controlled throttles and the computer will only allow x amount fuel to be pushed into the engine whereas the older units have air throttles and you can easily sit the passenger down when pushing it to the floor.
To the OP: I forgot to mention that unless things have changed, GoTime is still in the testing phase and not giving stop by stop info. All you are getting is information for a nearby timing point that corresponds with your bus stop code. Once the system is reactivated you’ll get real-time info.