Tag Archives: drivers

June Golden Transfer

This month’s Golden Transfer goes to Geme “Pat” Calman, Metro’s Operator of the Year for 2006. Unfortunately, I missed the party this year, but here’s what I know about Pat:

He’s from San Francisco, and back in the day, he worked as a grip man on the cable cars. He’s been driving for Metro since 1980. Since 2000, he’s worked as a “report operator”:

Report operators are on constant stand-by waiting to fill any unexpected hole in the bus driving schedule caused by another driver’s illness or unexpected absence. That means Calman reports for work every day at Metro’s Bellevue Base not knowing what his assignment will be, or what route he will be driving.

“A report operator like Pat has to be an expert on every route at the base,” said Metro General Manager Kevin Desmond. “They tend to be our most experienced drivers, and they serve as a great resource for the newer drivers. Pat has repeatedly demonstrated his value as a mentor, and his willingness to help out whenever called upon is a tribute to his professionalism.”

I’ve heard that report operator positions are fairly coveted and only available to drivers with a lot of seniority. Is that because, if no one is sick or on vacation, Pat gets to chill at the base all day? I’m kidding. (I guess.)

Pat has a degree in psychology, which might explain why he’s managed so well as a bus driver.

“Pat is always customer oriented,” said Transit Operations Manager Jim O’Rourke. “His contributions to our organization extend far beyond driving a bus. He’s worked on a variety of committees and projects, including taking a leadership role in workplace health and safety issues.”

Calman also has commendations from bus riders, including one family of four who said he went out of his way to help them when they were stranded at the wrong transit center.

Pat Calman, 2007 Operator of the Year (photo courtesy of KC Metro)

I don’t think I’ve ever ridden with Pat, but I’d like to soon–first, because I always love riding with great drivers, and second, because I can’t come up with a nickname for him until we’ve met. No disrespect to his distinguished career, but there’s only one Busfather.

Hands on the wheel, eyes on the road (please!), part II

Congratulations, Shannon! Last night, we left work early to attend Bus Nerd’s Godson Shannon’s graduation from Ingraham (545 + 41+ 346). Thanks to Friday evening traffic, we were running late, so late that we were afraid we were going to miss Shannon’s walk. Fortunately, two young men who rode the 346 with us were also late to the graduation. They used their Sidekick to keep in touch with their graduate, and I used my eavesdropping skills to figure out just how much we had missed. (“She says it’s hella crowded–oh, the principal just gave his speech.”) Thank goodness for modern technology (and teenage texting trife).

Unfortunately, the young men with the Sidekick weren’t the only folks making use of handheld devices. Our 346 driver spiced up the ride by driving one-handed while chatting on his cellie.

Come on, man. If you’re going to go there, at least get a headset.

Northbound 48, 8:55 AM (or, At last!)

As I board, I greet one of my regular drivers.

Driver (grinning): “Hey, you’ve got priority, right?”

Me (grinning harder): “You noticed.”

No one’s offered me a seat yet, but these days (second trimester and feelin’ fine), I don’t really need one.

I look forward to the day when I’m big enough for a driver to make the bus kneel for me.

This week in transit: bus-related news

• Metro’s oldest driver is 80. He drives the 2.

Linda Thielke, spokeswoman for Metro, said Minard “has a pretty good driving record, with only minor accidents, really minor, like losing a side mirror.”

That’s more than I can say for the guy who drove my inbound 17 on Thursday night. That driver, who was nowhere near 80, was happy to share the details of his tickets and a recent accident (the reason he “doesn’t have to worry about working overtime”) with the passenger sitting in the seat adjacent to his. As if his erratic driving wasn’t reason enough to worry. (Source: Seattle Times)

• Starting late this spring, Community Transit will begin operating a double-decker bus, to “ease the crowds on commuter routes from Snohomish County to the Eastside and downtown Seattle.” I’d certainly like to ride on a double-decker bus (if only for the coolness factor), but I’ve always thought they seemed a bit unstable. How do they compare to the articulated buses that are so popular here? Are the double deckers more efficient, safer, or roomier? (Source: king5.com)

• Metro’s giving free rides on Earth Day.

Any time on Earth Day [Sunday, April 22nd], anywhere in King County, bus rides are free for everyone. There is no need to worry about transferring from Metro to Sound Transit, Community Transit or Pierce Transit bus service, either. All of those agencies are also marking Earth Day by offering free rides.

Like I said last year: Earth Day is a great day to be a bus chick. (Source: Transportation Today)

Maybe Busfather meditates

On my way home tonight, I rode on the bus of a driver who had clearly had enough. One too many times, someone had flashed him an expired transfer, or put the wrong amount of change in the fare box, or just walked on by without paying at all. Tonight, he wasn’t having it. Twice between Union and Cherry, the (not small) driver stood, got in a non-paying passenger’s face, and screamed these exact words:

“DUDE! [pause] “DUDE! GET ON THE NEXT BUS!”

(Note that I was on the 48, a route that doesn’t come for 30+ minutes and then shows up in packs of three, so there was actually a bus directly behind him.)

I have to give him credit for one thing: The folks he screamed at paid their fares. (With good reason. The man was moments from going postal.) And certainly, as a former high school teacher who understands the importance of enforcing rules fairly and does not enjoy being disrespected, I am quite familiar with his frustration.

However…

When your frustration is at such a high level that you routinely engage in outbursts that humiliate transgressors, frighten all of your passengers, and put you at risk of an instant heart attack, and when your method of enforcing rules involves passing the problem on to the unsuspecting driver behind you, it’s probably time to seek another profession.

Boo.

A (bus) class reunion

Tonight, I ran into one of my favorite classmates (and I use that term loosely, since I only attended one day out of ten) from the February bus driver class. Alan Brooks, the Seattle OG who told me about the transfer-eating passenger on the 255, drove my evening 545.

Alan is cool people, friendly and funny and helpful, which will make him one of those drivers people remember and like. Alan is also quite insightful. Case in point: On our ride, he mentioned that he’d driven the 550 earlier in the day. He called the oft-running the route “the 7 of the Eastside.” It was a very apt comparison, one I would never have thought of on my own.

For those who don’t ride either route: Both run frequently, and both have, as Bus Nerd would say, a lot of “trife”: inappropriate, insane, dramatic, or otherwise trifling behavior. (Note that “trife” can also be used as an adjective, as in, “Those girls in the back are rolling joints. That is so trife.” Looks like I’ve got another word to add to the glossary…)

One day soon, I’m going to take a ride with Alan when I’m not on my way somewhere, so we have more time to talk…maybe the next time he drives the 550.

February Golden Transfer

This month’s Golden Transfer goes to Charlie Tiebout, a retired full-time and current part-time Metro driver (notice a theme this week?). In his years at Metro, Charlie has driven almost every route in the system, but in the last 15, he’s stuck mostly to North Base routes: 31, 41, 65, 66, 67, 68, 71, 72, 73, 76, 77, 79, 312, and 306.

Back in his full-time days (1973, to be exact), Charlie was Metro’s first Santa.

I asked Metro if it was okay. [They said yes,] and they even paid for the Santa suit rental. $50 for the first day and $25 each day after. Big bucks in 1973!

One of Charlie’s “Bus Santa” stories:

Mom and five year old son hop on the route 21 bus headed downtown. The kid’s mouth drops [when he sees me in my Santa suit] and he gets excited. It turns out this kid is a regular on this bus and even knows how to call out all the stops. So I arrive at 1st and Spokane and turn around and announce to the bus passengers (while looking at the little boy) “Santa has no idea where to go next. Does anyone know where the bus goes?” The kid was by my side all the way to the Pike Place Market announcing the stop and even transfer points. So dang cute, the little old ladies on the bus were in tears. Thank goodness for my big beard because I was in tears too.

Awww…

These days, Charlie volunteers as a concierge at Seattle International Hostel (which, unfortunately, will be closing next month), using his expert knowledge to tell visitors how to get around our fair city on the bus. He even gives away free bus tickets, courtesy of his wife, Marti. Marti has adopted a bus stop and so receives 60 free tickets from Metro every three months. If Charlie doesn’t give her tickets away at the hostel, she donates them to Noel House. (We stop adopters from Good Shepherd have been wondering what to do with those…)

Thanks, Charlie, for spending 30+ years helping folks get around Seattle–oh yeah–and for marrying such a cool, generous, bus-lovin’ woman’.

Charlie and Marti at Marti’s adopted stop, the 68 stop at NE 75th & 20th NE

Speaking of bus drivers…

Yesterday I attended the first day of a two-week class for bus drivers who are converting from part time to full time. (The part-time class, during which they actually learn to drive a bus, is six-weeks.) It was cool to learn a little bit about how Metro operates from the inside, and it was really cool to spend the day with 24 bus drivers.

What I learned (the condensed version):

• You have to be a part-time driver before you can be a full-time driver. Part-time drivers have set hours and tend to be assigned to the straightforward (and relatively drama free) commuter routes. Full-time drivers get benefits.
• The coordinators (those people the drivers talk to over their radios about reroutes, breakdowns. emergencies, etc.) receive 450,000 calls per year.
• During morning and afternoon rush hours, there are over 1100 buses in operation.
• Bus drivers (and the people who love them) pack a mean lunch: po’ boys and sliced grapefruit and cut veggies and fancy chips…all arranged neatly in a mini Igloo cooler. Those of us spoiled by easy access to restaurants and cafeterias (and who barely managed to throw a pb ‘n j and an apple in a bag) did our best not to be jealous.
• Drivers don’t like the 174, either.

More on all the statistics and stuff later.

Bus driving, 201

At lunch, I talked to a woman who, after over ten years as a beautician, has decided to make bus driving a career. Her father is a bus driver as well and has been driving buses in Seattle for 32 years. Right now he drives the 8. She showed me his picture, so I’m on the lookout.

I talked to another Seattle OG, Alan Brooks, who told me that one of his passengers on the 255 actually ate a transfer. Something about Alan makes me think he’ll have many equally insane stories for me in the future. Another thing about Alan: His goal as a driver is to educate passengers not to stop a bus that with a sign that says “University District” and ask if it’s going to Federal Way. Good luck on that, my friend.

Irony of the day: The class instructor, Jeffrey (aka, “the man who brought me Busfather“), included an article about the high cost of car ownership in the class materials. One of the students, Rene, who has been car-free for 15 years, said that his job as a bus driver makes this choice extremely difficult. After all, someone has to get to (or from) the base when the buses aren’t running.

Rene went on to say that, according to his calculations, if he took a $10 cab ride to work every day and rented a car for two months out of the year, the total cost would be less than half the cost of a year of owning the two-year old vehicle he was considering purchasing. “I’m going to try that,” he said. “I’d really like to avoid buying a car if I can.”

Now that’s my kind of driver.

“The Tiger Woods of the system”

According to my new, second-favorite* driver, that’s the 48, because it’s a “long drive with a short putt to the beach.” The thing is, a long drive with him at the wheel wouldn’t be half bad. The man kept us entertained over the loudspeaker for the entire (not-so-long) ride on Friday afternoon, announcing landmarks and businesses of note at every stop. At Union, the transfer to the 2 (“you know how those lake routes are”); at Cherry, Catfish Corner (“wouldn’t mind a piece of peach cobbler right about now”); at Jefferson, Medgar Evers pool (“it’s Black History Month–make sure you learn who that is“). Between stops, he also shared his other nicknames for the route he drives–“Dr. 48” and “the heavyweight of the system”– and reminded us that, courtesy of Metro, we were “rollin’ on big wheels.”

And yet again, I find an occasion to quote the bus chick pick-up artist:

A bus is like a massive, pimping SUV with 4000 horse power and lots of 45 inch wheels. Can your ride compete with that, b*tch? I didn’t think so.

*Smooth Jazz continues to hold the top spot.

There’s something about a man in uniform (who doesn’t carry a weapon)

Lately, I’ve noticed a marked increase in a certain kind of driver-passenger interaction. It started on a Saturday in December, on the 48 ride home from an open house (in Ballard, of course) for my friend Rachel’s jewelry business. An attractive, middle-aged woman (well, maybe not middle aged, but far too old to be as drunk as she was at 3:00 in the afternoon) got on a couple of stops after me–near the beginning of the route. The driver, who had been distinctly sullen to the rest of us, perked up when she chose the seat closest to him, and immediately started chatting her up. From what I could tell, he didn’t get the digits, but before we’d reached her stop (somewhere around 85th & Greenwood), she’d told him most of her life story, and they’d set a date to meet up at the Drift on Inn for dancing and conversation the following Thursday night. (Not bad. The bus chick pick-up artist could take a lesson.)

Since then, I’ve witnessed three blatant driver-on-passenger bus macks: one on the 55, one of the 4, and one on another 48. In two of the cases, the passengers seemed receptive, but no actual dates were set. In all three cases, the drivers were men and the passengers were women.

I got hit on by a 48 driver (What’s the deal with the 48?) a few years ago–the man actually left his seat to come talk to me–but I didn’t think it was common until now. Anyone else witnessed or participated in a driver-passenger (or passenger-driver) mack situation?