Transit dream

This morning’s (Thursday, January 17, 2008) dream was about bus-driving, as is often the case.
After all, I drove transit-bus for 16&1/2 years, and experienced all the insanities of the transit-biz.
—Like trying to keep junky equipment with bald tires between the lines on slick pavement.
Sometimes it would be so icy a stopped bus would start sliding and end up against the curb; like the slowly sliding trucks you see on TV occasionally.
But this dream was different because it had Bob Matson (Houghton ‘80), so-called “BossMan” at the mighty Mezz, as a road supervisor.
Unlike some of the I-D-10-Ts at Transit, like the infamous Dippity Dawg, BossMan was fabulous, eminently reasonable and sensible.
Unlike some bosses, who seem to be on a superiority-kick, BossMan led by example.
Being reasonable, and above-all respectable, he managed to extract high performance from his subordinates. High performance was worth doing for BossMan. His was a merry ship.
The issue was the confusing signage on our old 400-series Park-and-Ride buses.
As I recall, our earliest Park-and-Ride buses, which weren’t even 400s (our 400s were unturbocharged 8-71; our earliest Park-and-Ride buses were unturbocharged 6-71) had the same two-part roll signs (curtain signs) as the city buses, so it was possible to have the signage say: “30-Webster/via Creek St.” or “22-Penfield/via E. Roch.”
The 400s had a one-part sign, so that it might say “30-Webster” or “22-Penfield;” no indication of the route you took.
This could be especially confusing to late-night passengers, when the Penfield and East Rochester lines combined.
—Or someone wanting to get off on Creek St., when you went the other way.
What if an East Rochester passenger got on a Penfield bus earlier in the day, thinking it went through East Rochester, and it didn’t?
“Not my fault, man! I’m just following my route, which is in the schedule. That’ll be $1.75 please.”
BOP ON THE HEAD!
And of course, management’s first reaction to the confusing signage was to blame the driver. (“Don’t bother us! We’re eating free donuts!”)
Management’s enlightened response to the confusing signage was to copy a trick some drivers were already doing: placards in the front windshield. E.g. “via E. Roch.”
This got out of hand.
So many placards were needed for minor route variations it got ridiculous.
Ya might have three placards in the windshield, and it had to be daylight to read ‘em.
We had buses making tiny separate side-trips to employers out in the boondocks — ya needed a placard for that.
It was so bad the passengers paid more attention to who was driving than signage — “oh, that’s my driver; that’s my bus!”
It got so I’d tell everyone when I’d be away: “9-Jay at 8:21. Someone else will be driving. He may or may not have the ‘Hospital Laundry’ placard, but that’s the bus ya want to get to Hospital Laundry.”
So here I am in the dream driving a pre-400 Park-and-Ride bus with the two-part roller signs, and I’m supposed to make a 22-Penfield trip.
I scroll through the curbside part and no “22-Penfield” — nothing new.
But the other side had “via East Rochester,” so I set up blank (what I thought was blank) on the curbside, and “via East Rochester” on the other side — we had to do that often enough. I then drove up to the Midtown Plaza Park-and-Ride stop.
The signage was so terrible we had to depend on passengers knowing a Penfield bus (via East Rochester) was supposed to run at that time.
So here’s Matson, ever the class-act, not doing the Dippity-Dawg superiority gig, jumping up because my supposedly blank sign says “Al Sigl (SEE-gull) Center” (something ya’d never see except in a dream — that was a placard).
I hadn’t had time to jump outside to see what my sign said, and all we could do is make it blank.
Matson and I had to yell my bus was the Penfield bus. (I had to do that often enough.)
When I was driving East Avenue once I was changed-off and given a tired old city-bus.
My 6:15 passengers at Midtown missed my bus because I wasn’t driving my usual Starship.
The signage confusion ended with the electronical signs, but at first they weren’t bright enough. People would ask where I was going — couldn’t read the electronical signs.
Newer buses had brighter electronical signs, plus ya could change the electronical signs on the fly. All ya were doing was dialing in a code. With the roll-signs ya had to stop. —And they were cutting layover-time down to zero. Often I never got to stop. Out and back on East Main in one hour — utterly impossible. They had timed it with a car, and weren’t stopping for passengers.

“Houghton” is Houghton College, from where I graduated with a BA in 1966. I’ve never regretted it. Houghton is a religious college. Matson is Class of 1980.

The “mighty Mezz” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired two years ago. Best job I ever had.

“I-D-10-T” is computerese for idiot. The ‘pyooter-fixer makes a service-call to put in the plug or something. They describe it as an “I-D-10-T” error.

RE: “Changed-off and given a tired old city-bus......” —What probably happened is that my bus crippled, or had a problem of some sort (like inoperative farebox), so I was given another bus: a “change-off.”

A “Starship” is the GM RTS model, probably the best styling job they ever did. They made a bus look pretty. Being very modern-looking, I called ‘em “Starships.” Ours were our 700, 800 and 900-series, 1979 through 1983.