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Ask a Muni Driver
Hey, it's the return of our Muni Driver. Welcome back, driver! Today he discusses how Muni handles all those big events, like this upcoming Halloween.
Question: Who gets to do the big nights and who doesn't and why does everyone complain that there's not enough busses? I've had to either wait for hours or even walk from downtown to the Haight just because there was no buses to take.
Fools, I say, fools! Only mad, bad, dangerous to know types want to drive buses at night. Drivers who choose to work HOLIDAY nights are fools thrice damned. Just kidding. Not.
In terms of twilight or Owl shifts, it all comes down to what shifts you sign up for during the 4-x-per-annum open signups at the various barns. Unless you have bottom-of-the-barrel seniority and there’s nothing left but nights, you’re doing this by your own free (and insane) choice.
Seriously now, many drivers prefer working nights; some of the Owl lines are the quickest shifts to get snapped up by an eager, clutching majority of drivers with dollar signs in their eyes. Owl runs – and anything after 6pm – get night differential pay. Owl runs usually last 10 or more hours per shift, so on top of the differential you’re pulling overtime, too. Plus there are fewer riders at night, less cars on the roads at night, just a generally less stressful environment to deal with. Except, of course, 90% of the people on the bus, the roads, and the sidewalks at, say, 4am are completely crazy and/or chemically impaired on a grand scale and/or exceedingly dangerous. Or at least, not a bunch of people in any condition or properly interpret interrogative sentences beginning with the words: “Please put the fare in the box”. So it comes down, yet again, to the driver’s personal preference: more money, crazier people can sound like a viable option to some folks.
Now, on to the so-called Big Nights. These are, in no particular order, Halloween, New Year’s Eve, and the Fourth of July. On these dates, “crazy” and “dangerous” and “city bus” all take on layers of meaning and import unknown on every other night of the year. Your major complaint is that there aren’t extra buses running on these nights. In fact, MUNI does try to put extra buses into circulation on all three holidays, but they can only do this on a volunteer basis; i.e., drivers who want RDO (MUNI-speak for working overtime on your Regular Day Off – it’s a special pay classification). So if they don’t get a lot of drivers willing to work these nights, they don’t put a large number of extra buses out there. Simple as that. And think about it, how many drivers really want to work this time? Most drivers have lives outside of their jobs and would certainly rather spend these dates doing what everybody else is doing – getting ripped, overeating, reflecting on their wretched family dynamics, etc. Besides, even if we assume that loads of drivers are just salivating to drive a bus on New Year’s Eve, for example, what does experience tell us about MUNI management’s ability to get those buses out onto the roads in a timely fashion and into the neighborhoods where they’d do the most good? Hmmm???