One of the complaints that surface from time to time is the length of time a driver spends in his cab at a terminus, without letting passengers board. We’ve had a spate of such complaints this unusually cold winter.
It’s one of the problems associated with driver only buses that simply didn’t exist when there were conductors. For obvious revenue and control reasons, the driver has to do his stuff before letting passengers on and he cannot let passengers pass till he’s ready.
We’ve all seen the problem. Driver opens and closes doors, places bag on dash, climbs in cab, adjusts seat, reads running board, deals with ticket machine, float and destination display. Meanwhile, the queue immediately bunches in anticipation, passengers rising from seating and the picking up of luggage and shopping. Passengers begin to think “Driver, can you go any *slower*?”. All this is exacerbated when the driver arrives three minutes after the bus should’ve departed, messes around for another two and takes three minutes to load passengers…
It would be a rare company indeed that insists upon a driver taking as long as possible in performing his sign on duties, deliberately trying to brass off his customers. And most passengers are reasonable about it, but not all.
Occasionally, disgruntled passengers feel moved enough to complain not to the company but the local transport authority. An interesting email exchange that came my way between a passenger and public servant expressed incredulity at the public body’s reply that it had no control over operators and couldn’t somehow force them to ensure drivers let passengers on immediately.
I don’t at all condone drivers who dilly-dally but neither would I even think of reporting Boots the Chemist to the planning committee of economic development department just because they tend to be two or three minutes late each morning in sending up the shutters and unlocking their doors. I might instead try an independent chemist.
Ah, there isn’t one...
Sunday, 28 March 2010
Dilly Dally
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11 comments:
An important thing here must surely be consistency of action. If one driver insists on taking all of his stand time before letting passengers on and another will let people on at the earliest opportunity this can cause problems. If everyone always does the same thing within a company the passengers will know what to expect and behave accordingly.
Precisely - one of the key characteristics of a SERVICE is that customers expect CONSISTENCY.
They expect (and often get it) with PRODUCTS - one tin of Heinz beans is usually indistinguishable from another, for example. The result of rigorous quality control processes at the factory.
A bus service? consistency of service information, timeliness, cleanliness of the bus, type of bus, seating, heating, ventilation and so on. All more difficult to achieve.
And introduce human beings into the equation and consistency immediately becomes a major issue. They like us, have 'off' days, etc.
In the final analysis, it is down to poor training, poor communication, poor staff relations - in other words, poor MANAGEMENT. Step forward chief executives of Transdev, Go Ahead, Arriva, First and Stagecoach!
Compare consistency of "end-to-end customer experience" from staff at M&S, McDonalds, local police station, hospital, airline check-in, supermarket with making a journey on one of your buses.
Better yet, force senior staff to spend a day a month on the front-line, looking and learning. (as for example, Sainsbury do or did).
Bet they'd never do it.
On the question of complaining to the wrong body, that's another communication issue where the bus industry is poor.
Who do you complain to? The operator, the local authority/ PTE? Passenger Focus? or ....
Best advice on timekeeping complaints is to complain to the Traffic Commissioners. A PI or two works wonders in focussing management attention on where things are going wrong.
Trouble is, few passengers know this.
Do local managements take any steps to monitor drivers' performances in starting to time, which must mean the driver being early to the bus and housekeeping complete a few minutes before departure time?
Surely that would find out the last minute folk and improve performance, or is anything for a quiet life better?
After all no one expects their bank or shop to open late regularly.
I agree with most of the above. A lot of this is down to poor training and lack of communication between driving staff and management.
The best respected operators have procedures in place which means a greater chance of consistency and their senior management will get out and about at ground level - someone with an eye for detail. Some others, however, fail to do this - the sort of operator whose bus is still on the parking stand at 10 past the hour when it should have loaded and departed from the pick up point at 10 past.
Oddly enough, one leading industry figure (who even more oddly, writes a blog a few inches from this one) ran an inspired scheme in his more modest days. This killed two birds with one stone. Boosting staff morale and keeping tabs on what was happening at the sharp end.
Each month he would take over one driver's duty for a complete day.
The driver, selected (I think) on the basis of having achieved best feedback scores in the month had a paid day off.
Leon (whoops, I've given the game away), spent the day at the wheel, gaining priceless insights on operational matters.
As I say, inspired.
I *may* be barking up the wrong tree, but I'll add my tuppence worth.
I think we really do have to weight up the difference between providing good passenger service levels and the needs of the driver.
Of course, a group of passengers may be waiting in the cold, wet, snow or whatever. The passenger, of course, just wants to get on the bus, sit down, and for it to leave as soon as possible so they can get to their destination. In my own experience, letting passengers on straight away has led to "'scuse me mate, when we leaving?" or "c'mon mate, I gotta be somewhere."
However, we also have to look at the needs of the driver. Of course, things like the "endless tapping" into the ticket machine passengers observe, changing of destination blind and the need to check the vehicle for any lost property is very important- these all take time, and really do need to be done before any passengers board the vehicle.
Added to this, any driver may wish to use any facilities provided at the terminus (if any), and may have been behind the wheel for a number of hours. It could be said, the "stand time" provided at a terminal is the drivers "tea-break," staff in Tesco, Boots or anywhere else, often walk away from their tills to have a tea break, and use facilities- it's just a shame a bus driver doesn't often have much opportunity to leave thier cab for their "tea break." At the end of the day, if a member of staff at a busy check-out needs to use the toilet- what comes first, the needs of the customer, or the needs of that member of staff?
My local company (I live in East London, so no names mentioned!) still allows drivers to take 5 minutes even if they arrive after their departure time
The problem has got worse in recent years partly due to the huge extra amount of technology.
In the days of a setright on a powerpack, a driver could have the his machine and quickchange ready to place on the bus and - hey presto he's ready for passengers.
Nowadays, there is so much more to do. On boarding a bus the driver may need to programme his ticket machine, fill in a defect form, check the electronic destination setting, plug in his RIBAS key, set up the digital or analogue tacho AND do the straightforward tasks like adjusting his seat, taking off his jacket, checking the mirrors etc.
I admit that not all of these happen on all buses, but there is often more that has to be done than many passengers realise.
When there's a straight changeover of drivers, one solution is for the incoming driver to deal with waiting passengers. Once they're boarded, he/she can hand over to the relieving driver.
Some operators could speed up the process by giving drivers smartcards to "sign on" the machine, rather than have them key in driver number and PIN.
And of course the ubiquitous white van man!
One today was parked on double yellows on the narrowest part of the street and bus coming up from local depot was held up for at least 3 minutes until he came with hardly a care let alone a sorry
Thank you for a wealth of replies on this important subject. I ought to take these up further in a substantive post in the not too distant future, time permitting...
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