Dan Christensen August 13, 2011 at 7:56AM
I drive a trimet bus and I also work the extra board and that means every day I have a new route to drive. IT can be any time, any place so I'm use to driving all sorts of crazy places. I know how it is to be that driver, I know how it is to be depending on others to help you and still get lost.
The big villain here is not the operator of that bus or dispatch. It is the fact that Trimet does nothing to help drivers prevent this situation. You have a map of your route, (only helpful if you know the area, On the back of the map you have direction but no distances. Turn left on fifth and turn right on main could be one block or it could be one mile apart. Having the map and directions on different pages means you can guess where you are or where your going but never both at once. Then we have on another sheet our schedule of when we have to be places oh yes we are not done yet. Then we have a Reroute sheet with special reroutes and that is suppose to tell us of problems. Reroutes are really helpful if you know the route and are very much less helpful if you don't know the route, are a new driver and don't know that part of Portland if all three apply then you are SOL.
Worse yet you often have sheets of route changes added to your driver pouch not listed on the reroute, you have changes made during the day that are listed on no reroute.
And we have A GPS system that cannot tell you where to go, it just beeps if you are off route.
For a new driver the above is daunting, embarrassing, frustrating
But hey rather then fix it lets build more max tracks because ultimately if it can be blamed on drivers Trimet is not going to fix it.
http://blog.oregonlive.com/commuting/2011/08/something_to_read_on_tonights.html#comments
