In Front of the Yellow Line
Listening to the Radio

By Shawn Wells

Recently, I was working when a message came over my work radio. "Attention all route 6 busses in service. Due to railroad crossing arms being stuck, route 6's will detour as follows..." We get calls like this all the time. Unforseen circumstances that require our busses to go off course and avoid certain traffic issues like collisions. This particular case was special to me because in about 5 minutes, I was going to become a route 6, so I paid extra close attention to this call. By the time I got to my location to change the number on my bus however, the problem had been solved. Thankfully, no awkward detour for me. But it didn't stop people from approaching me and asking me why other busses were delayed.

As I've mentioned in past posts, a lot of the time a bus driver will not work the same route number all day. Their bus will service a few different routes. I've also mentioned in the past that some regular transit riders are very knowledgeable about this fact. These customers that approached me knew that the bus they were waiting for was going to be a route 6 before changing to the one they wanted. Some of them had already been waiting long enough that 3 of their busses should have already been and gone. I explained the situation that the busses were dealing with, to which I received the response "Well, if you know the reason, why wasn't 311 (our phone number for transit related inquiries) know?" My answer was "Often, 311 only knows there is a problem but don't receive the intel as to why." Although this answer sort of appeased them, it didn't stop them from continuing on discussing amongst themselves the flaws in our transit system.

The real reason is probably far more complicated. Now, this is just an educated guess, but here's my theory. The first bus to come on the scene probably thought nothing of it. Pulled up and stopped at the railroad tracks and started waiting. Most of us have probably had to wait at frustrating train crossings every now and then where you watch a train back up, stop, move forward,  stop, back up again.... Well, for a bus driver who spends 40 hours a week driving, we've definitely seen our share of stupid railroad situations. So my guess is that any bus that was waiting there took a while to realize there was no train and the problem was with the arms themselves. Let's say 10 minutes.

At this point they would call "Control" (the people on the other end of the radio). Control are the problem solvers, a very handy resource for us bus drivers. If I had an emergency on my bus, they would call the appropriate emergency response on my behalf and walk me through the next steps I need to take. They deal with any problems from the small (like a broken bus shelter) to the emergencies (like someone having a heart attack). If I have any issues however, getting a hold of them can be a much more involved process than you think. First of all, I have to push a button on my radio. There are 2 different buttons depending on the urgency of your problem. If I was reporting a broken bus shelter, for example, that isn't as important as someone who had their bus die. If I were to just pick up my radio and start talking,  it would interrupt any conversation happening between control and any other drivers. The only time I do this is in an emergency,  like a collision or a violence threat. Now, as the driver who is stuck at this railroad crossing I've determined that the level of urgency is the lowest. After pushing the button, I now have to wait for control to call ME. The thing is, control is only staffed by 2-4 people at any given time. If they are dealing with any other problems,  you have to wait your turn. There have been days that I've waited half an hour for them to call back. So, for argument's sake let's say they were moderately busy and took 15 minutes to call back. Now we're up to 25 minutes on this one incident.

So, control would've called this driver back and the driver would've explained the situation. At this point, control would've had to start doing research on they're side. Phoning the railroad company to find out whats going on and also figuring out a detour for busses to start taking. Once they have it determined on their end that there is in fact a problem, they would make an announcement to all the busses informing them that they need to detour.  It is then that they would contact 311 to let them know that there is a delay. Let's say this adds another 10 minutes to the overall picture. Now we have 35 minutes that this train has delayed our bus before anything gets done about it. And meanwhile that first bus is probably still stuck because they are trapped somewhere they can't turn around.

From that particular location, the busses that ARE able to get on the detour have to go 5 minutes out of their way to get around the blockage and then another 10 to where all these people waiting and asking where their bus is. So, I can easily believe that some of these passengers have been waiting nearly an hour for their bus to come. But from my point of view, Control had told me to go on a detour and then taken it back within 5 minutes whereas this situation had probably already been a problem for half an hour. You can see how it's just easier to tell people that "the arms on the railroad are stuck" because there is so much more behind it.

As for why 311 wasn't able to tell them what was going on, this is probably because Control tends not to be very forthcoming with explanations. This is a situation where I actually received more information than usual. These people were lucky that day. Normally I'm kind of in the dark about whats going on. Much like everyone else, if something happens on any of our busses I find out about it on the news or on social media. If someone has an emergency, I hear that driver call over the radio with their "Pan-Pan-Pan"* and that is normally the only part of the conversation I hear. The rest is done in private. I'm left to speculate on what kind of emergency they are having based on the tone of panic in their voice. Was it a collision? Did they have someone fall on their bus? Fire? Assault? I never tend to hear anything later on about any of these problems. It isn't made public knowledge. I sometimes hear rumors, but never anything from an official source. Often passengers will come up to me and say "Did you hear about that one driver..." or "do you know what's going on with..." but honestly,  most of the time I haven't or I don't. If it hasn't been all over Facebook that day, it's probably news to me. You just may be the unofficial source that I heard the rumor from. The "official" people tend to not tell me anything. However,  I can speculate with the best of them.

So now you know that the radio on the bus isn't as simple using a phone. When you ask a driver for a "simple" request like calling ahead to have a bus wait for you, there is quite a process. We are happy to do something like that for you, but you have to give us some warning. Plan ahead.

From in front of the yellow line, that's how I see it.

(*A note on "Pan-Pan-Pan" for any people that may be unfamiliar with that term. This a newer universally recognized distress signal. The idea is that it's is a sound that is used in most languages around the world and easier to say for some people than "Mayday". I have only ever seen one movie where they use "Pan-Pan-Pan", which is "World War Z" with Brad Pitt saying it when his plane is going down.)