01-30-2020, 02:08 PM
(01-29-2020, 04:55 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: Keep in mind that there is no reason to believe there is any problem with these buses — they just haven’t been driven for a week. Do we even believe that buses never go a week without being driven in normal operations? There are a number of spares at any time; maybe they rotate them around so each bus is driven every day or two at least; or maybe they don’t. I would be suspicious of a claim that they never go undriven for more than a day.
If this issue really causes a noticeable delay in resuming service then management messed up.
We already know the GRT runs a very, very lean operation.
When a bus breaks down they don't pull one off the lot to fill the hole. Often they don't do anything, but when they do they instead pull a bus from another route.
That's why it took 30-45 minutes or more to get shuttle busses running when there were accidents involving the LRT. They wait until a bus gets to the end of a loop (like a direction switch for the 7, or the switch from 12 into the 8) and then send it to become a shuttle. Instead, they should send two supervisors each with a bus out as soon as they know about the accident who can then drive for half an hour until some on-call drivers can get in.
Their prioritisation is weird, too, because before the LRT entered service they would pull iXpress 200 busses out of their 10 minute headways to fill in a hole on a 30 minute route, and do that during peak. They'd essentially sacrifice a bus carrying 50 passengers to go pick up 5.