Its Back

Ok so I said that I would do this again so here it is

Ask The Driver has returned.

I am going to leave the questions open for two weeks this time so that ,hopefully, you will have time to read this and think of a question for me.

You can contact me via email, twitter and leaving a comment here. If you do use twitter please use the hashtag #askthedriver so I can find them.

I will look through them all and pick a few to answer on Jan 14th 2012.

Have fun.

Ask The Driver (11)

Yikes, have I done 11 of these already. Ah well here we go and please remember to keep the questions comming

 

regengirl
How often do buses get cleaned? The no. 11 is smelling nasty today

Now with me being on nights earlier in the week I met up with one of our wonderful cleaners and asked her this question. I found out that although all the buses in the depot are swept off every night. That is they get cleared of all rubbish every night as they come into the depot. Now there is another sort of cleaning that they call a “Deep Clean” this means that they scrub the floors, remove any graffiti and try and make the bus look better that it was. This process can take upto 4 hours and at our garage there is 4 hours between the last bus arriving and the first bus going out. This limits the number of buses that receive the deep clean to about 8 a night so it can take quite a while.

 

star_one How are route numbers decided ? Honestly I have no idea. There seems to be no logical sense to the order or the numbering the only ones that I know is that the 900 series of routes should be a limited stop route and the 800 are school and works services but other than that I don’t know and no one I asked knew either.

How come you get odd gaps in runs of numbers with other routes in the middle? This is mainly to do with routes being withdrawn and leaving space for additional routes that spur off the original. But actually I think that it is done just because they forget sometimes.

Ask The Driver (10)

 

Mark How do you deal with boredom, as surely 8 hours of driving a day must take it’s toll on you.’ And ‘What made you want to be a bus driver?’ Now that’s the easiest question yet. It is very tiring driving for 8 hours a day but fortunately I do have ways to keep my mind occupied. I usually try and think of what to write on my blog next. The posts are all events that have happened to me and I try and think of the best way to write them while I am on the road. I became a bus driver simply because I needed a job as I had financial commitments to meet.

Charlie My question is – why do drivers rarely turn the engine off when standing between journeys? I asked an inspector (? – bloke in hi-vis jacket with clipboard) and he said you were allowed 5 minutes. Is that true? I always turn the engine off if I know that I am going to be parked at the terminal point for more than 5 mins. It is a polite thing to do as a lot of the terminals are in residential areas and they don’t want the sound of a bus engine running for 20 mins while the driver takes his break. The 5 mins thing I am not sure about I have not heard it before. It could be to do with the amount of fuel used at idle vs the amount used to start the bus up. The drivers that don’t turn the engine off is odd as most of the ones I know do.

Getgood Both me & @charlottecarey have blogged re: mob music on buses v annoying. If you could have your way how would you stop it? I have thought of many ways ranging from getting hold of the mobile and throwing it into traffic to be smashed to hitting it with a hammer. I personally would not allow anyone that is playing music through the speaker on their phone onto the bus and if they started playing it on the bus they would be thrown off at the next stop. Sadly all I am allowed to do is to ask them (forcefully) to turn it off.

DerekBelm1 Question – what’s your favourite number bus, do you have any superstitions regarding numbers and is there a bogey bus number? Sadly sir I cannot answer the question without giving away my location. Some drivers do have superstitions about bus numbers and I have yet to see any xx13 numbered buses so perhaps there is a little one there. If anyone spots one please let me know. I think that there was a bus that was considered to be very unlucky a while ago. I cannot remember the number but I do remember it being involved in 3 accidents in a week and no I wasn’t driving for any of them.

watfordgap is corp st in brum always nose to tail buses. How you do it? Very slowly usually.