Dennis Coffey as a  London Transport inspector.

1.  Life Begins 2. Getting Down to it 3. Logistics 4. Keeping Things Going 5. The RT Bus 6. The RF Bus 7. Country Driving 8.  Back to London 9.  Moving up the Ranks

10. Inspector on the Loose 11. The Radio Car 12. Garage Inspector 13. It Had To Come 14. Events 15. Humorous Side 16. A day with Route 38 17. London Transport and the Unions 18. How About This for London? 19. Letters From the Public 20. Contacting me

London Buses UK

1. LIFE BEGINS

As a passenger service vehicle driver you have to pass a very intensive driving course, which takes about three weeks, including driving various types of buses, ending up having a test with the Ministry of transport, and if you pass you apply for a license.
  One of the learner buses I started on, it was quite a sensation when you climb up into the bus for the first time. The instructer sits inside the bus and tells you what to do, if you make any mistakes.
One thing I must tell about is the skid patch, this is to gain experience on icy roads, it was great. I enjoyed that much I went round it five times, just for kicks. When you take a bus out on the road for the first time, your heart is pumping like mad when you see passengers boarding and you hear the bell to move off.

I forgot to say about route learning - this you do before taking your first bus out in service. Route learning can be hard as you have to keep in mind many landmarks as you travel along the route, one of the routes I did was rte 38a, which ran from Loughton Garage Essex to Victoria station in the center of London. As well as looking at landmarks you have to keep in mind the direction you are going and bus stops.

The rte 38a was about 19 miles long one way, approx running time was an hour and 20mins not counting for traffic delays - the later you ran the more passengers you picked up. If the bus in front of you using the same route was running late, the rule book states you should pass it as it maybe running on your time as per schedule.

This did not always happen as some drivers had it in mind that you should do the the work your bus is scheduled for. This can cause many problems for the inspector controlling the route as I am sure you have seen many buses coming along the same route.

Most of the time things were ok, as the inspector knew the drivers that didn't work the route as they should. Nine times out of ten a bus that was running late was curtailed at a turning point allowing for the bus to return on time - this I will explain later.

2. GETTING DOWN TO IT

The one person we cannot forget is the conductor, who is a very important part of the team - he collects the fares and rings the bus off at the bus stops. At busy times he can run up and down the stairs like a jack in the box, also dealing with angry passengers or passengers who dispute the fare, and sometimes this can lead to blows on the passengers side. A conductor has to be very diplomatic in his job.

3. THE LOGISTICS

Below is a small diagram of how a bus is timed from A to B.
 

Loughton Garage 14.00

Bakers Arms 14.30

Hackney Station 14.40

Angel Station 14.50

Bloomsbury Avenue 14.55

Piccadilly Circus 15.15

Victoria Station 15.30

One point I would like to make is that a bus is only curtailed depending on passenger traffic and traffic conditions and weather and staff cuts which can make a lot of difference to a service. I am sure the buses in the US have the same problems as we do in London, mostly in the big towns where traffic is a big problem.

4. KEEPING THINGS GOING

I would like to say that today London's buses are not run on the same system owing to privately owned companies.

5. THE RT BUS

Driving the RT bus at first is a bit awesome as it has a preselect gear box. To select a gear you have to put the gear lever into first gear then engage the gear pedal, (which would have been the clutch), then you move off. When you have gained speed you then move the gear lever to the next gear. Then, as before, you carry on changing your gears up.

It was not a easy bus to drive smooth. If the gearbox was a bit jerky you had to change the gear at the right road speed to get a smooth change. You always had to think of passengers moving along the bus as you are moving. If you got a good bus it made life easy.

That's all on the RT bus - hope you find it interesting.

6. THE RF BUS

It was a very nice bus to drive. I first drove this bus on route 254 which runs from Loughton Stn to Buckhurst Hill and South Woodford - which is in the East of London.

As a driver operator you had to sell tickets as well as drive. It was not an easy thing to do as you had to keep your wits about you. Tickets were sold at the drivers cab, and passengers were likely to over ride on their fare. You were responsible for seeing that passengers paid the correct fare for the journey travelled. If an inspector got on to check the tickets and found an underpaid ticket, he would ask the passenger for the excess fare, and would advise or report you for incorrect ticket issue.

7. COUNTRY DRIVING

One thing I would like to tell you about is my experience with the Green Line rte 715, which ran from Hertford Bus Station to Windsor town. It was a long trip, mostly we changed drivers at Oxford Circus center of London, then took a bus back to Hertford bus Stn. Sometimes it could take you quite a time to do a return journey owing to traffic in London.Bus stops were not so close together so driving was a lot easier, plus you did have a conductor.

This was the type of bus I drove - an RT on route 310 from Hertford bus station to Enfield Town, the only change was the fact it was a green bus.

The timing of a country bus was different to London buses, as time cards were only showing times of departure and arrival at main bus stations. So you had to travel at 'service speed' (20mph) along the road to arrive at your terminal on time. I can't remember being curtailed or a journey cut short owing to late running. Mind you there was plenty of time to get back on time, when you got out of the towns and into the country where roads where clear.

8. BACK TO LONDON

While at Leyton I drove on many routes such as rte 69, rte 235, rte 236, rte48. Some of the routes were one man buses - at that time the buses were the RF bus on routes 235 and 236.

9. MOVING UP THE RANKS

Plain Clothes Officials Badge	Road Inspectors Cap Badge (real silver)

They teach you all aspects of route controlling - dealing with staff and public, and many other aspects of a road inspector duties. I passed the course and came out to a different world.
 

10. INSPECTOR ON THE LOOSE

After that week I was posted to E2 area which was in the east of London - the same area as I used to be a driver. My first job was to check tickets and supervise buses in the area on many routes, and to relieve other inspectors on their points who where controlling certain routes.

This is not a easy task. If you did not know the route or its destination, if a bus was running late or it came off for relief on return or end of the crews duty, (subject to service requirements) you would curtail the bus to bring it back on time.

After many different duties I was given a point at White Hart Lane close to Spurs football ground. That was a very busy point. Many buses passed the point, there were no relief's at this point. I had to keep in contact with the inspector (at the relief point) so he would tell me what buses he could not contact, and give them instructions as to what he wanted me to do with the bus!

11. THE RADIO CAR

To gain as much experience as I could, I took on Radio car work. This was driving around the area dealing with all sorts of problems, such as road accidents, bus curtailment, buses running early, public complaints, bus divisions, placing temporary bus stops and so on. I enjoyed my time on the Radio car - it was very interesting.

Part of the time I was working on the Radio car we had bomb scares all over London, it became a real problem as many routes were changed at very short notice, so buses had to be contacted and informed of the new route.

Sometimes as fast as we put in a division, the police cleared the route and we had to take the division off, as you can imagine this can put buses all over the place. Most times the bomb scares were mostly at night so passengers were not to inconvenienced.

12. GARAGE INSPECTOR

In 1974 I applied for a job as a Garage inspector. This job was again very different from other work I had undertaken. Again I had to take a course at Chiswick training center which was for six weeks, with an exam to pass at the end of it. The experience that I gained from other work helped me a lot. The course was about staff allocation to unmanned duties on curtain routes.

The following is an idea of I had to do.

Next was the duty of taking cash from the drivers and conductors, paying in their days takings. This was a simple job in many ways until you had to balance up at the end of your duty.

You spent your whole duty taking cash, also you did a week on allocation and your duties were worked on a rota. I worked on a five week rota which involved nights for one week only taking cash. At the end of the day you had to balance the day's cash book and all cash that was taken by all Garage inspectors on that day.

Another duty was making up the staff wages. This was a two day duty, mostly on Thurs/Fri. These days staff have wages paid into the bank. Things have changed a lot from when I was working on the job. The early turn Garage inspector supervised early runout of crews signing on, and this could be a bit of a problem if you did not have the staff available to cover all duties. It involved marrying up certain crews, sometimes on overtime, meaning splitting up some duties. Drivers must have at least eight hours off before their next duty.

We had to phone some staff to get them to come in and work overtime. Even though you might be on staff or taking cash you still had to deal with other problems day to day as they came about. In my Garage (which was Potters Bar) we had a Garage manager and five Garage inspectors, each working the five week rota - early, late turn, middle turn, and nights.

In all the time I worked for London Transport I must say I enjoyed it. There were problems but you get them in any job.

13. IT HAD TO COME

14. EVENTS

 The many occasions that happened whilst  with London Transport.

15. ON THE HUMOUROUS SIDE OF WORKING WITH LT.

When you drove on routes in London in the 70s, buses were every two or three mins even on the same route. I was driving from Bakers Arms East London to Victoria,when a 38 Rte from Leyton Garage pulled up behind me. I was on route 38a. My Cdr asked the driver of the bus behind what time he was due at Victoria. It turned out he was due there 2mins before me so my Cdr said to the driver "Pull round us and we will wait here for a min or so". He was not having any of that so he followed us all the way to Cambridge Circus which was approx 15 mins from Victoria. At Cambridge Circus there is a roundabout so I kept going round it till this driver was in front, we lost a few mins but satisfaction was ours!

Funny or what? Driving on Rte 20 from Walthamstow Central to Loughton Stn was a one man bus operation. On arriving at Woodford Wells bus stop, a passenger came up to me and said "there is a baby on the back seat on its own". On investigating, sure enough there was a child about three years old looking out of the back window not bothered about anything. I had no more passengers on apart from the baby so I waited for the bus coming up behind. About 15 mins later a woman came up to me and said "have you seen a baby?"."Yes I said" She said"oh thank god he`s not mine!".

Whilst driving on RTE 254 from Loughton Crown to Loughton garage, a young lady boarded my bus with a lace see through top. I said "how far  would you like to go miss". And she said "You look where your going". And I said " What stop do you want" She said " you know those block of flats at Debden stn I live in one of those", " I said so you want Debden Stn", and she said "yes please". The whole bus was in uproars of laughter.

17. LONDON TRANSPORT AND THE UNIONS.

When I joined LT you had to become a member of a union TGWU. Well this was ok but it lead to many (in my view) restricted practices.

(1) Give an example of how it would normally work if everything was on time (with a diagram)

(2) Describe what would happen if the bus was 15 mins late - what would the crew prefer to do, and why would they prefer to do it this way?

(3) Say what effect "restricted practices" has on this preferred method, and why it is "bad".

As a example, if a bus you were due to take over at say 14.00hrs came up 15mins late and had 30min return from its destination, you had to wait till the bus returns and then take it over, meaning the bus at first was going in the wrong direction, nine times out of ten the bus would come back even later over traffic problems or even passenger traffic being heavy. The crew ending their duty would finish late for meal break or ending their duty. This was mostly due to how the schedule was excepted by the union reps.

As a union rep when you see a bus schedule showing timeings at many points, (please refer to rte 38 above)you dont know how it will work untill you drive over the route in service and by that time its to late to do anything about it. LT did give reps a copy of the schedule before bus times were changed, but it was more of a courtesy than what do you think of it. The point I am trying to make is that you could only take over a bus as per scheduleif the flexibility had been there the crew could have taken the bus over when the bus came up in the first placeallowing the crew to come of as per schedule and maybe if they were taking a bus over later they would have been on time.

I would like to say most of the reps I came incontact with were first class and new what was needed of them,it was not a easy job. There was not any training and it was the case of having experience on the job of many years.

Having been a rep for the inspectors it was more involved.

18. How About This for London?

First of all I would like to say, a public bus service is the only way that people can get around London,with cars increasing every year by the time we reach year 2010, cars will be a luxury only to used on weekends.
We dont need different bus companies running the services, as its impossible to coordinate services run by many companys.

Lets say we draw a circle around London of about 15 miles circumference then have a bus station at the borders of London, as an example,

   All these places
   would be bus stations,

There would be a main bus station in the center of London, where all buses would arrive at certain intervals. The problem at the moment is when visitors and most people wont to go any particular place, the bus only shows a destination which may not be the center of London. If all buses had Victoria showing as their destination, then their destination on their inward journey, say Potters Bar to Victoria then Victoria to Potters Bar, it would make it easy for every one, then on the side of the bus it would show all the passing districts.

I can imagine what you may be thinking!, how a driver going to drive that distance, well as at the moment there are garages along many of the routes where drivers come off for their relief's or ending their duty, this would all come into part of the bus schedule.

The best way to make sure buses run to time is to have bus lanes and inspectors at many points, or what is being used at the moment a electronic observer on each bus so a bus controller would know exactly where each bus is.

All services should be run by one company, like it use to be in my day, and as it is a public service not to worry if the bus runs half empty part of the day, if the public know the bus will be there, then they will use it. There should be a flat fare from district to district and one fare for the whole journey, a return fare for whole or part journey, and a early morning workman's fare say from 07.00 to 10.00 am monday to friday and from 16.00 to 20.00hrs.Weekend travel should be half the weekday fare. So that there can be no mistakes tickets should show the destination the passenger paid for, say Potters Bar to Barnet 75pence single journey, or for a return fare £1.30 a reduction of 20 pence.

All I have suggested here is only a brief outline of what could be done to inprove bus services, and to encourage people to use the bus instead of their cars.

THANKYOU

   THOSE WERE THE DAYS!

Now you have read about my time with London Transport,please read about my music life before LT its very interesting. all about the people I met and the musicians I played with. It was very difficult to change my life style from a musician and raver to a sober driver with LT.
At the time I ended my musicdays lots of clubs in the West End of London started employing young pop guys who just about managed to play their instruments,and the fact that club owners paid them very low wages which meant that guys like myself who were full time musicians could not live on that of kind money.
So the only job I could think of that would be interesting and meeting people in all walks of life would be       London Transport,so away I go!!!!.
 

20. CONTACTING ME

This site is part of the British Bus Web Ring [ Previous | Next ] [ Random Site | List Sites ]