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Ask a Muni Driver
In the first past of our Very Special Ask a Muni Driver, our driver discussed what driving the lines are like. Today, we discuss two issues that always makes us wonder-- what do drivers do if they need to go the bathroom and just how boring is it to constantly drive the same route everyday for eight hours?
Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start....
...as for the bathroom, this is a HUGE problem. A lot of drivers carry around empty plastic bottles…
There’s something called a ‘702’, which is a code that drivers can radio in to Central that allows them to take up to twenty minutes to go to the bathroom. The problem with this is that you’ve got twenty minutes when the bus is not picking up passengers and is obviously not going to be on time. This means the bus must go out of service and ‘deadhead’ (go forward without passengers) to the next possible point where it can catch up with the schedule. This is why you see some buses hauling butt without anybody onboard. Obviously you can really piss off not only the public, but your fellow drivers, inspectors, barn supervisors, etc. if you routinely take a lot of 702s so really there’s a motivation to avoid it if at all possible. I run into the bathroom issue often. I’ve almost peed my pants on many occasions (I know why they’re made of indestructible polyester!) I take my fair share of 702s, but try not to abuse it. But if there’s no bathroom at the end of the line, you really have no choice. Kidney and bladder infection rates are very high among MUNI drivers. We bitch and bitch and bitch and beg and cry trying to get more bathrooms, but somehow don’t materialize. Once in awhile the big bosses will cave to driver pressure and install a Port-O-Potty at the end of a line, but these are almost always broken into right away and rendered unusable.
Since sign-ups occur approximately every three to four months, and runs typically include different buses on different days of the week (and as I explained above, are often combos of more than one bus on the same day), boredom with the bus or the route isn’t really a problem. If you’re bored with a route you don’t have to wait long to have the chance to switch to another one. When you see the same driver on a particular bus for years and years, it’s because they like the route or there’s a strong financial motive to keep it (runs do NOT pay the same – again it’s all about the total hours worked on each day). If you can’t see yourself remaining content for three or four months at a time, you can sign up for the Extra Board, which is where drivers get assigned to cover drivers who are on vacation, call in sick, or any unfilled runs. This usually pays pretty well and a lot of drivers like doing it; the issue is that you may have no idea for sure how your day will go and it’s tough to plan.
The X factor for all bus drivers is passengers. If you’re ever tempted to feel bored, sure enough someone will spit on you, or better yet produce a “hot lunch” and leave it on the bus for the yard guys to clean up, assuming you can manage to drive the bus back to the barn without puking too. Passengers can be charming, friendly, anonymous and businesslike, and just purely awful – all in the same five-minute window. The same can be said for drivers, so I guess you could say that the driver’s day is probably going very much like YOURS is.