I live on Pacific Heights and catch the bus to work. Normally, the bus comes at 8:05 a.m. But because of driver training, on Monday, March 31, the bus came at 8:25; on Tuesday, at 8:30; on Wednesday, at 8:35; and today (Thursday, April 3) it did not show up until 8:40 a.m. I had to wait 35 minutes in the rain and was late for work! Why don't they train drivers during nonpeak times? Bus officials owe us an apology. Training bus drivers
can cause long delaysRoger Morton, senior vice president/director of operations for Oahu Transit Services, apologized, saying your experience "was beyond what we all think was reasonable."
Morton was not aware of the extent of the disruptions until your complaint was relayed. Because of what happened, the company will take steps to make sure it doesn't happen again, he said.
Most training is done during off-peak hours, but in the last stages of the 10-week training, a rookie goes on a regular run with a senior driver. If a bus starts falling behind, the senior driver takes over, Morton said.
On your route, "a bunch of things ganged up on us" to create the major delays, he said. One was the unusually large number of trainees. There is a maximum of four training classes a year, averaging 15 each. The last class had more than 20 trainees.
When there are a lot of trainees, some are spread into routes with "longer headways" -- time between buses. Normally, they're on routes with 10- to 12-minute headways or less, so that if they fall behind, it's not so much of a problem. On your route, there's about a 30-minute lag between buses.
Morton says the company will plan smaller classes and ask drivers to be more sensitive to the needs of passengers during training runs. Dispatchers also will monitor training runs more closely so they act quickly to keep buses on time.
The company also will experiment with having an extra driver assigned at times when there is training to help on problem routes.
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