Sunday, November 11, 2007

I get it- it's a shell game! by jeff rose

I'm sure most of you heard about the lines that they're actually trying to fix.
I think
one of them is the 77- I heard some good news about that one. I don't remember
the
others, but I thought that one was the 4. but I must be wrong- unless by
"fixing" they
mean TOTALLY WRECKING.. One of them certainly wasn't the 71.

I've had my share of 4's over that last few signups and despite the
gang-bangers and
all the other crap you have to put up with, I really liked it. It's long but
the schedule
was adequate enough that at least you could depend on getting your breaks the
majority of the time. Not any more. So they fix some lines and give us a fancy
presentation, but then they go and ruin a bunch of others. Hmmm... Sounds like
a
shell game to me.

Having now done each of my regular relief days- here is my assessment:

4- Good line (timewise) gone very, very bad. I'm going to compare schedules
from
last signup vs the September changes and I'll let you know what I find out.

9- I only do a couple of outbound trips on the Powell side so I can't tell you
much.
Seems typical.

71- The evening trips that I have are really tight and there is a reroute off of
60th
ave. The people that are on the reroute (that will be in effect for about a
year) HATE
us and REALLY don't want busses on their streets. In order to TOTALLY kiss
their
asses we are not to exceed 10 MPH. There are supervisors with radar guns making
sure that we don't go even 11. I took it at 8. This adds several minutes and
as many
as 5 minutes to your trusty late clock and you can't make it up.

20- I have a 30+ minute layover in Beaverton! I chose this work because my
brother
just bought a coffee shop a couple blocks from the BTC. If I get there on time
I might
manage to get over there to, uh, support my little brother- I'm 50-50 so far.

Sometimes I wish I still worked for UTA. If you took a driver from Salt Lake
and
plopped him down on, say, the line 71- know what he'd (She'd) say? Probably,
"What
the fuck is this shit?!!!" Really! It'd blow them out of the water. They'd be
all like,
Jeez is there a warp button on this thing somewhere? What d'ya have to drive 20
mph
over the speed limit through neighborhoods to keep up with these schedules??!!
Uh
Yeah.

In Salt Lake there was actually bumper stickers on the busses that said,
"Neighborhood Pace Car". Because busses typically went a nice easy pace down
neighborhood streets- kinda the speed a neighborhood would appreciate vehicles
driving down the street at- especially one the size of a bus! Here an
appropriate
sticker would be more like "I thought I WAS in Indianapolis" (or something like
that)
When you have operators driving 50 on streets like Prescott or Willis, there is
a
serious problem.

I'm thinking about getting some Powell operators together to talk about our
issues.
Sort of a Powell Operator's night out. There should be one for the other
garages too.

I have some bones to pick.

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