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.