The bus-driving game

The job of driving bus was foremost a game.
For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service (RTS) in Rochester, NY, a public employer, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and its environs.
My stroke October 26, 1993 ended that.
It was possible to -A) minimize contact with our rancorous, cantankerous clientele, or improve it, and/or -B) minimize our time carrying passengers, while at the same time maximizing our pay.
During my employ we picked runs three times per year, usually —1) at the beginning of the school-term (September), —2) New Years, and —3) the beginning of Summer, when school was out.
The Bus-Company would post run-guides, per schedule, and we picked by seniority; that is, those with the most years service picked first.
I always preferred —A) Park-and-Rides, and —B) school work.
(Regional Transit provides service to schools with regular city buses, usually over established bus-lines.)
The clientele on a Park-and-Ride was better than city runs.
Plus there was always the possibility a Park-and-Ride included deadheading; driving your bus without passengers.
We were paid for the time we drove bus, i.e. we were on duty, not just for when we collected fares.
I remember three deadhead moves:
—1) Out to Eastview Mall over Interstate-490.
—2) To East Avon over I-390.
And my longest was:
—3) All the way to Hamlin, which took over an hour.
That was an hour’s pay for just driving empty out to Hamlin.
I also had a late afternoon pull-in from Hamlin, but that was in the schedule.
I rarely had passengers, but could.
School work I only drove in morning, when the kids were too sleepy to be troublesome.
We were guaranteed eight hours of pay per day, no matter what.
If school were closed due to weather, or winter-break, for example, my school-work was canceled, yet I still got eight hours of pay (guaranteed).
My goal was to schedule all school-work in the morning, so if school was off, I might only drive five hours that afternoon, yet collect eight hours of pay.
The other goal was to minimize your driving hours.
E.g. Seven hours of actual bus-driving, for which I got paid eight.
I suppose the Bus-Company factored all this in deciding our pay-rate.
More precisely, the pay-rate proposal. Our pay-rate was negotiated by our bus-union, Local 282, the Rochester local of the nationwide Amalgamated Transit Union (“What’s ‘Ah-Two?’”).
—Factored in by default. Bus-service and maintenance might cost so much. The pay-rate had to be what could be afforded.
That included all on-duty time, which includes time we weren’t collecting fares.
Driving bus was fun as long as I could play the game.
To do so you had to live near the bus-barns.
For years I lived in Rochester, about five minutes from the Barns.
When we moved to West Bloomfield I was 45 minutes from the Barns; I could no longer play the game.
I had to drive city-runs, which exposed me more to our clientele, who could be difficult.
Among bus-drivers, we used to have three rules. They were —1) Show up, —2) Don’t hit anything, and —3) Keep your hands outta the farebox.
We bus-drivers had a fourth rule management never heard about. It was DON’T GET SHOT!
Park-and-Rides also became impossible, and the greatest joy to a Park-and-Ride was putting the hammer down.
I used to say driving bus wasn’t fun unless you could put the hammer down at least once per day; hammer-down meaning 60-65 mph on the expressway.
That morning trip from Hamlin was an express trip. I’d pick up all the way to the Latta Road ramp onto I-390, and then hammer down in the passing lane all the way into Rochester.
Another great hammer-down trip was in from East Rochester/Fairport on I-490, and shooting the Old Can.
So when playing the game I used to analyze every available run for —1) maximum pay per actual driving hours, and/or —2) minimal exposure to our clientele.

• “Park-and-Rides” were trips from suburban end-points, usually through Park-and-Ride parking-lots, where passengers would park their cars, for a bus-ride to work in Rochester.
• “Eastview Mall” is a large shopping-mall southeast of Rochester. “East Avon” was a tiny crossroads west of the rural town of Avon (“AH-von;” not the makeup supplier). East Avon had a shopping plaza I could turn my bus in. —Both were Park-and-Ride endpoints, as was Avon, although I never drove it.
• “Interstate-490” and “Interstate-390” are both four-lane interstate expressways into Rochester, 490 from the east and the NY state Thruway, and 390 the main interstate from the south.
• “Hamlin” was a small rural town far west of Rochester.
• “What’s ‘ah-two?’” is something my mother asked seeing my ATU (Amalgamated Transit Union) button.
• “The Barns” are at 1372 East Main St. in Rochester. The Barns were large sheds the buses were parked inside. Regional Transit’s operations were conducted in buildings adjacent to the Barns.
• We live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield in Western NY, southeast of Rochester.
• “Latta Road” (“LAH-duh”) is a two-lane road north of Rochester, heading west. It intersected with I-390, which at that point headed south, then east, then south. I took I-390 to where it intersected with I-490 from the west, then I-490 into Rochester.
• RE: “Can.....” —The Can-of-Worms (so-called) was an old expressway interchange southeast of Rochester, built in the ‘60s. It was difficult to get through. The “Can” was reconfigured a while ago (Old Can and New Can), taking out little-used railroad trackage, making it much easier to negotiate. There were various tricks to “shooting the Old Can” with a bus. Most difficult was a lane change smack in the middle of the Old Can.