Newspapers on bus service

Tom writes:

Here's an article, "MTA's drivers breaking rules," written by a Los Angeles Daily News reporter who follows several buses over the course of a few days and uncovers rather widespread flaunting of MTA rules by the drivers. My busriding experience in DC suggests that the same phenomena happen here for the same reasons, which is why I wrote on your blog that it's easy to imagine that bus driver culture contributed to the pedestrian deaths. It seems like a City Paper or Examiner reporter could do a similar investigation here.

From the article:

During a three-day odyssey of riding and following buses, I saw some drivers start late for no apparent reason. Others deliberately displayed the wrong route numbers on the headers so they didn't have to stop and pick anyone up.

And some ignored MTA policy that drivers arrive at stops no more than 30 seconds early or five minutes later than scheduled, even though the transit system takes the area's hectic bottleneck traffic into account and aims for buses to be on time 80 percent of the time.

After being tipped off that the cell-phone-talking driver was indeed behind the wheel of the bus I came looking for - even though the header listed the wrong route number - I knocked on the door to talk. "What time is your first stop?" I asked. "Five minutes ago," he said, changing the route number in the header only after I asked him about it. When he finally drove off, he was 10 minutes behind schedule.

I wondered what was really going on with these bus routes and the people depending on them. The staff photographer and I jumped in our car to find out and followed the cell-phone-talking bus driver's route. Cruising past him, I found Jazmin Ibarra, waiting on a bus bench with her 1-year-old daughter and 5-month-old son. Ibarra rides the bus to get milk from WIC, a federal nutrition program for low-income families. The trio had been waiting for nearly two hours. "It's supposed to come every hour," she said. "Sometimes it doesn't, and I go home."

No wonder the route is losing money if service is so unpredictable, I told myself, wondering whether the routes are really under-used or whether the public is just underserved.

The next day, I got up early and followed more buses on routes considered for cutbacks.-----

A counterpoint by Jeffrey Jay, "What It's Like Behind the Wheel of a Metrobus," from a letter to the editor in yesterday's Post:

Regarding recent news stories and letters about Metrobus pedestrian fatalities:

There are considerations about Metrobus drivers that have not been mentioned. I am a clinical psychologist in private practice, and for more than a decade I have worked with bus operators who sought treatment following workplace incidents, including pedestrian accidents and fatalities. In addition to feeling profound remorse, drivers often are devastated and traumatized by the accidents but are discouraged from expressing their feelings in public.

From my work, I also have learned to appreciate that Metrobus drivers regularly endure threats, attacks and abuse. Sometimes drivers are punched or hit with objects such as bottles or bricks. They can face passengers who have knives or guns.

Drivers can be easy targets, with no protection, and they can bear the brunt of people's frustration toward government and life in the city. Either way, the dangers and stress of operating a Metrobus are seldom appreciated.----