13/07/2013, 07:27
Manchester depots (ex-GM) still have what's known as common Rotas in place, this is where drivers will be trained on all routes and will drive all buses at that depot. All ST drivers will have been type trained in the Hybrids.
There may be a few drivers who are on particular service Rotas or fixed line Rotas and as such tend to stick to a couple of routes but these are unusual.
You have Core Rotas and New Starter Rotas. Core drivers are basically PRE-1992 starters before the low cost units came in and have slightly shorter duties and different conditions. Not many of these left now though after 21 years of NewStarters!
Again Manchester duties would work more than one route in a duty, for example a Hyde Road driver might be on the 50 first half then the 76 second half, Bolton driver would do a 68 first half then a 582 second part. In other parts of the country you'd have route rotas, where you would just drive 1 or maybe 2 routes, only doing others as overtime, this happens for example in Birmingham and London.
Hope this has answered a few points?
John
There may be a few drivers who are on particular service Rotas or fixed line Rotas and as such tend to stick to a couple of routes but these are unusual.
You have Core Rotas and New Starter Rotas. Core drivers are basically PRE-1992 starters before the low cost units came in and have slightly shorter duties and different conditions. Not many of these left now though after 21 years of NewStarters!
Again Manchester duties would work more than one route in a duty, for example a Hyde Road driver might be on the 50 first half then the 76 second half, Bolton driver would do a 68 first half then a 582 second part. In other parts of the country you'd have route rotas, where you would just drive 1 or maybe 2 routes, only doing others as overtime, this happens for example in Birmingham and London.
Hope this has answered a few points?
John
(23/06/2013 21:46)ace Wrote: [ -> ]I think with most drivers it's a case of, they learn all routes as part of their training so that if they get called upon to do a route, they can just get on and do it, but a lot of them do tend to do a certain few routes, for example, I get the 192 to work most mornings, and I've seen quite a few drivers on the same route several times, the same for other routes such as 11/11A, 369, etc.
I think part of it might be to do with the type of bus driven as well. Probably not all drivers are trained to drive hybrids, so the ones that are will do the 192's, others will do routes that use buses within each individual capability or requirement.
but I could sense one or two of them were a little less than familiar with the routes they were on.