Running Dead isn't some macabre ritual that bus drivers go through in some secret rite of passage only known to bus drivers. It means driving out of service, we don't stop and pick up passengers as all we are doing is returning the bus back to the depot at the end of a shift. It mostly happens around 6 pm when about half the buses come of the road for the reduced service we provide in the evening. So a few evenings ago I ended up in Brixham and the Running Board said Dead to Depot. Off I went. Usually I go over the Ring Road but there are road works on the ring road so I went through Paignton.
There is a slight problem going this way. Between Brixham and Paignton there are only two places where a car can overtake the bus. The first is on a 300 yard stretch of two lane, duel carriageway road between the bottom of Cherry Brook Rd and Waterside Holiday Park. This section used to be a 40 mph speed limit road but the council made the left lane into a bus lane and reduced the speed limit to 30. This is about two miles from the centre of Brixham and a pick up truck had been following me all the way from Brixham, and to use an American expression, tailgating me. When I got to the duel carriageway I continued in the outside lane and the pick up could not overtake me. Then the road became one lane again for an other mile before getting to the lights at Penwill Way, which were on red. There are two lanes there and I used the left lane.
The pick up truck stopped next to me in the right hand lane and got out of his truck and started shouting at me for holding him up. I pointed out that I had been driving at the speed limit all the way from Brixham so how could I have been holding him up? He screamed that I should have used the bus lane. I tried to explain but the lights had now changed so I drove on. By the time he got back in to his truck his window of opportunity for overtaking had gone and he was stuck behind me once again. The next place he could get past me was now an other 4 miles down the road. He should have stayed in his truck.
What he did not know was that dead bus are not allowed to use bus lanes. They are for local buses in service only. Sorry about that, pick up truck driver.
5 comments:
We call it deadheading. Deadhead mileage is dead miles. The good news is that we are able to use bus lanes while deadheading. In addition to deadheading back to division in the evening, we do lots of moving buses around in the afternoon. Almost our entire fleet goes South in the morning and North in the evening. For various complicated reasons, We end up with lots of buses at the Southernmost division, and lots of drivers at the next division north. So we end up driving lots of deadhead driver shuttles. In attempting to avoid traffic, we end up doing grand big tours of San Francisco Bay. They are fairly annoying to drive, but a real treat to ride. Tourists pay big money to go on site seeing excursions that aren't nearly as good.
So did the pickup truck driver leave the post you deleted?
Sorry Jon, nothing so exciting as that. I have turned off word verification and the comment was spam. I don't like spam,not nearly as nice as corned beef.
Spam Spam Spam Spam (Bloody Vikings)...
Right-pond we have dead (or "light") trips and "live" or "service" trips (for trips read journeys if you like).
Over here "Deadheading" is an activity connected with cutting the dead flower-heads off roses, although lately with the more widespread adoption of US scheduling software we've become more aware of the left-pond terminology...
Although, as a colleague of mine observes, "if they've got all these deadheads, then where are the liveheads?"...
That's stupid, you should be able to use bus lanes while dead. One way to get round this is to change the destination for a bit! ;)
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