Its like a broken record with some of these bus drivers

[MoonChild2007]

It might sound strange, but it's entirely possible that something is happening to delay this bus and it's neither the woman's nor the bus driver's fault.

Not really. The bus was ON TIME today and the woman wasn't on the bus. The bus was only 2 minutes late and got to the bus terminal (despite it being packed) by 7:50 am. The other bus didn't get to the bus terminal until 8 am. So maybe it is the bus driver, maybe the woman, I don't know but its no coincedence that the bus is late whenever SHE'S on it though.




so I hardly doubt that there is something delaying the bus cause if that was true, the bus would be late today. But I will give it time though, this crap has been happening for nearly a year now (until last month when they changed the bus schedule around)

[quote]1.Sometimes it gets caught by a train. A train would run the same place, same time, but not necessarily every day.

The bus doesn't go by any train stations.

Sometimes it gets stuck behind a school bus. It's illegal to pass a school bus when it's stopped for children.

Its every Saturday and there is no school that is actually opened at 7:00-7:30 in the morning.


3. Sometimes it gets stuck behind a garbage truck or a mail carrier. It's legal to pass these when they stop, but it may not be safe to do so.

Nah, then this bus that came this morning would be late, too.

[Sparky]

1.Sometimes it gets caught by a train. A train would run the same place, same time, but not necessarily every day.

The bus doesn't go by any train stations.

Sometimes it gets stuck behind a school bus. It's illegal to pass a school bus when it's stopped for children.

Its every Saturday and there is no school that is actually opened at 7:00-7:30 in the morning.


3. Sometimes it gets stuck behind a garbage truck or a mail carrier. It's legal to pass these when they stop, but it may not be safe to do so.

Nah, then this bus that came this morning would be late, too.

If the bus doesn't cross any train tracks, then it's obviously not a train. And I didn't know you were talking about Saturday; obviously it's not a school bus. But I still say the bus could be getting stuck behind a garbage truck. They run according to a schedule too. So suppose the bus is supposed to turn down X Street at 7:03. The garbage truck is supposed to turn down X street at 7:04. One day the bus gets there on time and the garbage truck turns down the street right behind him. The next day the bus is on time but the garbage truck is two minutes early. Now the bus is stuck behind the truck. Nobody cares if a garbage truck is early. Or a mail carrier. Same thing. It could even be something as simple as catching a stoplight. Or someone who rides in a wheelchair. Loading and unloading that passenger could slow the bus down. And if it didn't make the bus five minutes late, it might make the bus just late enough to get caught behind the garbage truck, which it otherwise wouldn't.

I used to have a route that looped through the YMCA parking lot. Every so often I would get stuck behind a garbage truck (which is what made me think of this) in the parking lot. This was one of those commercial trucks that unloaded a dumpster. I couldn't get the bus around it, and I'd be sitting there cussing because there was nothing I could do. Actually my route had me swing through the parking lot twice, once on my way out and once on my way back, and this was near the end of the route, so I'd be there and then back about 20 minutes later. One time I got caught by the garbage truck on my way out, and the idiot driver forgot and drove off with the dumpster still on the back of his truck. Then when I got back to the Y 20 minutes later, he was back there putting it back, and I got stuck again! Things like this will drive a sane person crazy. There's no way to make up the time if the route is tight, and passengers further down the line don't have any idea or any way of knowing that the bus is late because of something like this. On that same route, I also had to turn around in a tight little parking lot behind an apartment building. A lot of seniors lived there, and I would frequently be unable to turn around because a Meals on Wheels van was blocking my way. The van could have parked in a way that wouldn't block the turnaround, but the drivers never thought of that. I'd catch the driver and tell him, and he'd start parking out of my way, but then two weeks later, there'd be a new driver and he wouldn't know.

There are ALL KINDS of things that can happen, sometimes but not every time, to make a bus late. And, like I said, it's possible that the woman you're noticing gets to her stop just in time to miss your bus unless it's already running late.

[Seshat]

All of which are valid reasons for the driver to be sometimes running late. But still complain to the company!

The company should investigate the lateness, and then they can do something about it. That something may be rearranging the timetable, or slightly modifying the bus route, depending on the cause of the consistent lateness. If it's something the drivers simply can't help, that's all they can do.

[ds_36]

All of which are valid reasons for the driver to be sometimes running late. But still complain to the company!

The company should investigate the lateness, and then they can do something about it. That something may be rearranging the timetable, or slightly modifying the bus route, depending on the cause of the consistent lateness. If it's something the drivers simply can't help, that's all they can do.

Most likely the company does check if the bus is getting to the begins and ends the route on time and therefore do know that he's running late. At least around here the drivers are supposed to radio in whenever they get delayed for whatever reason.

Despite all of this the customer should complain if the lateness is affecting them. However if the lateness is within an acceptable time, the company won't do anything. Changing the route is fairly unlikely, since in general busses tend to stick to bigger streets, and if the next big street isn't very close it may become even less convenient than waiting a few extra minutes was.

[Andara Bledin]

I have 2 bus routes I can choose from to get to work. One of them is with Long Beach Transit, but would result in a half hour wait for my connection... provided the connection was on time, which is almost never.

The other route is through some subcontractor for Los Angeles Metro. I don't know who this subcontractor is, but they suck. They suck really, really bad. Metro usually does ok, but this subcontractor takes awful care of their buses.

I can't tell you how many free rides I've gotten because their changebox didn't work. You'd think, after making sure the bus ran at all, the changebox would be their top priority. I get on buses all the time with broken/non-functional doors, non-functional pull cords and signal buttons, and various other issues. It's rare that one of their buses doesn't have something wrong with it.

And the other day, one of their drivers was downright crazy. I have no idea what her problem was, but all of the passengers ended up being transferred to another bus that was right behind us (I have no idea why, unless this lady was actually 20 minutes behind schedule, which is not uncommon at all for this particular line, they just suck that much). So, the guy in the wheelchair on her bus doesn't transfer, and the new driver says something about her keeping him. So I get to my stop, three miles later, and the psycho driver is right there, right behind us. WTF?

^-.-^