008 - Training days

Learning to negotiate the streets of Wellington, with paying customers

A small note before I get cracking.

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So, what’s happened since we last chatted?

On my fourth day at work, I got to drive a bus. I went out on a smallish diesel bus—only two axles instead of three but still bloody long—and drove with my training supervisor around the suburban streets of Miramar. Then, when I was familiar with road placement, I drove through the Mount Victoria tunnel (buttocks clenched), around the Basin Reserve, then onto the motorway, and out to Eastbourne. The weather was horrendous. High winds and torrential rain. Great conditions for a first drive.

At the Eastbourne terminus, I backed the bus into a designated park. Not the designated park that I was told to go into, but due to my understeering, the one next to it. No problem. I didn’t hit anything and my parking was perfectly parallel.

On Friday, the last day of my first week, I got to do a familiarisation drive on an EV bus. These are Chinese-built. Three axles. Enough power to last all day around the hills of Wellington. Smooth-as bro. NZ Bus is apparently one of the biggest consumers of electricity in Wellington. All buses are charged in the evening.

Normally you’d require a Class 4 licence to drive an EV bus mainly because the weight of the batteries tips the bus over the 18-tonne limit for a Class 2. NZ Bus has negotiated a dispensation so we’re clear to drive them under our Class 2 licence. Double-deckers still require a Class 4, for obvious reasons.

The EV bus experience was a thrill. It was my first time through the Mt Victoria bus tunnel. For those of you who don’t know, this is a single-lane tunnel not much wider than the width of a bus. It’s super important to line the bus up dead straight to the entrance otherwise you’ll scrape the sides.

I was then instructed to drive Route 14 down Carlton Gore Road—one of the narrowest and most winding roads in Wellington. It may as well be a single lane, except it’s not. It’s so narrow.

Buses have the right-of-way, due to the fact that we can’t easily reverse—and we’re bigger. I came across two cars approaching me and had to stop the bus while they worked out what to do. The front car was forced to mount the pavement, while the second car saw there was no point in proceeding forward and so reversed a good distance so I had enough space to maneuver around them. This was a great introduction to driving in Wellington and in only my fourth hour behind the wheel. Stay calm Alan, stay calm.

Route 14 from the Metlink app

“How did I do?” I asked my training supervisor.

“In two-and-a-half years of training, you’re my second-best student” she replied.

I didn’t want to know what I needed to do to improve, cos I figured it’d be splitting hairs. Second-best was OK with me.

It was decided I was ready to transition to working with a tutor driver. This means working from a depot and driving a bus under normal operating conditions but with the tutor supervising my driving and offering tips and advice.

My uniform was issued, and I was given a cash box with money, and a telemetric key (which monitors our driving—speed, roll, braking, etc). Then on Monday 8 May, I reported for duty to the Karori depot at 7.01 am.

I was paired up with a wonderfully experienced and supportive tutor driver. I didn’t do any driving with passengers that first day, only getting behind the wheel when we were ‘Not In Service’. My main objective was to get an understanding of the ticketing system, for those that pay with cash, and for Gold Card passes. And also trying to remember where the stops were, as we’d be driving this shift for the rest of the week.

Come Tuesday, it was my turn.

Here’s a bit of a rundown on all the things you need to do, be aware of, and observe. I’m bound to have left things out, but I can’t stress how much observational skills and forward-thinking you need to possess to do this job.

First things first. Find a bus. Buses aren’t assigned. You just go out into the yard and find one and ‘claim it’.

Once the bus is secured, start it up. It takes about five minutes for the air pressure to build enough to operate the doors, but more importantly, the brakes. You can’t move the bus until the annoying buzzer turns off indicating the bus is operational.

While that’s happening, you insert your telemetric key into the bus dashboard and leave it there for the duration of your drive.

Turn on the Snapper system, log in with Driver ID, passcode, and then the Shift Number. This loads all the trips for that shift into the system so you know where you’re going and what time you need to be there. We also have hard copies of our shift duties which remind us when and where our breaks are, and other duties such as refuelling.

Make sure the overhead sign is set to NIS (Not in Service) for the drive to the first stop.

Before you leave the depot, do a safety check inside and outside the bus. Test all the ‘Open Door’ buttons. Check the bus has a valid operating certificate and enough kilometres on the Road User Certificate. Check the hubometer on the left rear wheel is reading less than the Road User Certificate. Check the tread on the tyres and that there’s no apparent damage to the side walls. Check the wipers. Check all indicators. Check the number plate light is working. Check the headlights are on. Check the bike rack is secure.

Once that’s done, reverse the bus carefully out of the depot and travel to your first stop.

A couple of minutes before you leave on your first trip, set the overhead sign so that the trip destination is correct. Push the ‘Trip On’ button on the console. This records that the bus is now able to take passengers for that trip only. When a customer taps their Snapper the correct trip is recorded.

Open the front door and welcome your first passengers.

The fun begins.

You pull out from the first stop taking care to clear parked cars and lamp posts. While you’re looking in both mirrors to check for clearance, you’re also looking ahead for the next stop, and for new passengers. While you’re doing that, you’re waiting to hear the ‘ding’ and looking for the dashboard light that tells you a passenger wants to get off. Sometimes both of these things happen at the same time.

You indicate left, and as gracefully as possible, you sidle into the bus stop, again ensuring you have enough space between you and parked cars, and that you can get the bus as close to the sidewalk as possible, especially if the new passenger is elderly.

You open both doors and immediately apply the hand brake. You watch in the mirror to ensure the safety of passengers getting off at the back door, at the same time as welcoming passengers onto the bus from the front. Sometimes you can be saying hello, and goodbye at the same time.

The new passengers will normally tag on with a Snapper, or between certain hours of the day, they’ll show a Super Gold Pass. The passes need to be registered on the ticket machine.

Often passengers will hop on with a friend and want to snap on for two, or three, or four, but using one card. And it could be using the one card to snap on for an adult and two kids, or a child using an adult card to snap on as a child. It all takes time, and if you’re flustered you’re bound to stuff it up. If they are paying cash, then you need to know how many zones will get them to where they’re going and enter the correct info to produce a ticket.

You shut the back door. You shut the front door. You wait until the passengers are seated, or secure. You release the handbrake and indicate to exit the stop taking care, again, not to hit any parked cars, or not to have a head-on crash with cars approaching you as you’ve needed to take most of the other side of the road to negotiate your way out of the bus stop.

Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat.

If this sounds like a mind-numbingly boring activity, I can assure you it’s not. Every stop is exactly the same, but also, every stop is completely different, no matter how many times you drive the same route.

The roads are also challenging. You get to know where you need to swing wide to get around corners. You get to know where to keep the bus going straight, even when the road is curving. You get to know how far forward to drive before turning so that your bus is straight onto the entrance to a street, otherwise, you guessed it, cars or poles or posts or buses, or all four, get hit.

Added to this is the timetable.

Trips have a beginning and an end—that’s obvious. But there are some interim times that you need to meet. For instance, in the morning I might have 15 minutes to get from Karori Mall down to the Karori Tunnel, via Birdwood Street (Route 21). If I reach Karori Tunnel four minutes early I need to sit at that stop until the allocated departure time. This is a pain for everyone, causing congestion at the stop for other buses, but also annoying the passengers who probably don’t realise why you need to do this. Leaving early is a no-no.

So, while you’re concentrating on everything that’s going on behind you, in front of you, around you, and inside the bus, you’re also constantly adjusting speed to meet these interim time stamps.

When you get to the last stop of the trip, we wait until all passengers have tagged off, and then we ‘Trip Off’ to indicate the trip is complete. We set the overhead signs to ‘NIS’ and head to the start of the next trip where the process begins again.

I’m gonna leave it there for now. It’s been an incredibly rewarding three weeks, and I’m already looking forward to Monday. It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to say that about any job I’ve had.

Me, behind the wheel, on a break, looking pensive. Ties are optional.

I’ll leave you with this: Did I pass my exit assessment which would allow me to drive alone? That’s next, on Thanks, Driver!