Bus driving blogs

I have spent this evening dividing my attention between the Sunday night movie (About a Boy, which I have seen more times than I have toes) and reading transport blogs. I have read about trucks, train commuters, cyclists and bus drivers.

What did we do before we had laptops and wireless networks at home? I think I used to lie on the couch with a book with the TV blabbing in the background. Now, I turn the TV off and fire up iTunes and listen to some music as I blog.

The bus blog was the most interesting, partly because I am currently catching a bus to work, and partly because I used to cart people around as well.

But not in a bus. In a Unimog or an F1. Those are both trucks. The former is still operated by the Australian Army, but the latter was being phased out when I did my driver training back in the mid 1980's. Both could carry a lot less troops than a bus - I have no idea how many. 18 perhaps? 14? 30 (if we were a few trucks short). It's been a long time since I have behind the wheel, so I can't remember how many seated passengers we could carry.

Not that we ever obeyed the rules. Let's say a truck could carry 18 seated troops. It was quite normal to have 18 seated and half a dozen sitting or loafing on the floor.

Trucks are an abysmally uncomfortable way to get carted around, but they beat the hell out of walking, so no one ever complained about the wooden seats and the wooden floors and the lack of a seat back that would allow you to lean backwards and sleep. Actually, they were probably about as comfortable as your average Virgin flight to somewhere, and a lot more enjoyable due to the lack of snotty hosties and the fact that cans of beer only cost $1.

Where am i going with this? Shit, there goes this stupid keyboard again. It has failed to capitalise the "i", and I am not going to bother going back to fix it. To hell with it.

My story is about the inability of so many Sydney bus drivers to provide a comfortable ride. I am thinking of adding a mouthguard to my "things to take to work" since nary a trip goes by without the driver stabbing the brakes hard enough for me to headbutt the seat in front. Drivers seem to fail to understand that everytime they jam their foot onto a pedal (take your pick - the one that makes the bus go, or the one that makes it stop), it has an impact on the comfort of the people up the back. Stab a pedal too hard and people will get thrown to the floor.

Sydney Buses doesn't seem to give a shit. If they did, they'd train their drivers to stop doing it, and they'd get rid of those that failed to improve. Maybe they are desperate for drivers. Maybe the unions make it easier to remove a limpet than a bad driver. Who knows.

All I know is that back when I was driving trucks with troops in the back, the troops had a very effective way of expressing their displeasure. At the end of each journey, the driver (and co-driver if you had one) had the job of walking to the rear of the truck to release the tailgate. That's because the tailgate latch was positioned in such a way that it was a pain to release it from inside the back of the truck.

If you gave the troops a bad ride, they simply kicked the tailgate as soon as you released the catch. Chances are, it would shoot down, hit you on the top of the head and knock you out. And give you a very bad headache.

It never happened to me, since I was a very careful driver, but I saw it happen to a guy we called FOT (which stood for "Fucking Orange Top" or "Fucking Orange Thing" - he had red hair). The Staff Sgt that ran our transport section saw it happen, shrugged his shoulders and told another driver to go and collect the FOT and to take him to the RAP if he was bleeding. Someone else was given his truck to drive home.

It was a very simple customer feedback system. Sydney Buses could do with something similar.

It's also one reason why I loathe buses and have a strong preference for trains. If we had a train out here in Five Wog, the trip in to town would take 15 minutes and not an hour (like the bus). You also don't get thrown around like a limp rag in a train (unless the track is totally crap). There are some public transport advocates who are mad about buses, and think that all trains should be scrapped and replaced by buses. They've obviously never spent a week being hurled around inside a bus like a ball in a Flavour Shaker.