By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor
Metro hopes its hiring spree will take care of the trip-cancellation problem by the end of this month.
While the bus system has stressed that only a small percentage of trips get canceled – they know it’s a big problem when it’s your trip. And when Metro started tweeting cancellation alerts – while acknowledging that it doesn’t get to send alerts about all the cancellations – it seemed three north West Seattle runs were affected more often than others – routes 55, 56, 57. Three trips from two of those routes were announced as canceled again this morning:
Transit Alert – Rt 56 to Seattle due to leave 61st Av SW & Alki Av SW at 6:29 AM has been canceled.
— King County Metro (@kcmetrobus) October 22, 2015
Transit Alert – NB Route 55 to downtown Seattle due to leave California Av SW & SW Atlantic St at 7:18 & 7:43 AM has been canceled.
— King County Metro (@kcmetrobus) October 22, 2015
Those weren’t the only Metro trip cancellations tweeted/texted today – there were four others that were NOT on West Seattle routes:
Transit Alert – The first Rt 5 Express to Seattle due to leave NW 90th St & 1st Av NW at 6:11 AM has been canceled.
— King County Metro (@kcmetrobus) October 22, 2015
Transit Alert – Route 242 to Ridgecrest due to leave the Overlake P & R at 4:07 PM has been canceled this evening.
— King County Metro (@kcmetrobus) October 22, 2015
Transit Alert – Route 269 to Issaquah due to leave Overlake P & R at 4:20 PM has been canceled this evening.
— King County Metro (@kcmetrobus) October 22, 2015
Transit Alert – Route 242 to Ridgecrest due to leave the Overlake P & R at 4:40 PM has been canceled this evening.
— King County Metro (@kcmetrobus) October 22, 2015
Whichever routes they happen to, the concept of canceling a bus trip seems incomprehensible – you print a timetable, you run buses, you assign drivers, the service goes on, right? So we asked Metro exactly how a trip cancellation happens.
For an expanded, in-person version of the answer, we were shown around the two Metro “bases” at 6th and Royal Brougham one recent weekday afternoon. That’s where the buses are parked and where the drivers are scheduled, assigned, and dispatched. This building houses two of Metro’s seven bases, home to most West Seattle routes, with a few exceptions – for example, Routes 128 and 50 go from the South Base, Route 120 from Atlantic.
It’s where we learned phrases such as “piece of work.” Not what it meant in oldtime slang.
And we heard a lot of numbers.
Example: 1,052 daily trips out of 11,000 system-wide touch West Seattle.
The drivers for those trips are assigned by dispatchers who work in front of screens in what resemble big reception windows (top photo) – inside the 6th/Royal Brougham building, each of the two bases has its own dispatch window. While we watched and observed, we were pointed to a group of drivers waiting in a small lounge-like area down the hall, to see what might come open. Announcements were made from time to time.
In scheduling, some part-time drivers might get a “piece of work” that is very short – the minimum amount of time for which they can be paid, two and a half hours. And that’s where a cancellation might come in. A certain trip on a certain route might be part of that small “piece of work,” and if not everything can be covered, the shortest “piece of work” is what will end up going uncovered.
“What’s usually canceled is the smallest piece of the smallest part time route,” says Sandy Sander (photo above), who is superintendent of Central Base operations.
And even with that, they have policies – “we’re not going to cancel the same route two trips in a row, no first or last trips (of the day, on a route) can be canceled, no school trips.”
Since the addition (or restoration) of service paid for by last year’s Seattle Transportation Benefit District Proposition 1, she says, “we’ve gone through an enormous spike of work” – so they’ve been going through two dozen new driver candidates every two weeks. There’s attrition in that number, and every two dozen will result in about 18 new hires. (You can get a hint at the hiring challenge by looking at Metro’s fall employee newsletter online:
Already this year (through August) we’ve hired 322 transit operators and more than 300 people for other positions, which meant processing over 1,990 transit operator applications and more than 6,325 applications for other Transit positions. We’ve also promoted 58 employees into new positions.
How long does it take a part-timer to get promoted to full time, if that’s what they want?
“Typically two or three years, but currently, 9 months.” And while you might expect it would be the other way around, the part-timer works the same route every day, while drivers with seniority get to choose.
A driver can work up to 16 hours and then has to have at least eight hours off. Extra work might be assigned on the fly as the dispatchers toil to keep everything filled – a driver might be out finishing up their originally scheduled shift, Sander explains, and on the way in, when a dispatcher finds out they have a spot to fill, they’ll contact the driver and ask “can you become the X route?”
Sander told us, “We’ve gone through a period where it’s like a snowstorm every day” – crazy scheduling and juggling. And until they hire enough people, some trips will be canceled. (Interested in working for Metro? Find out more here.)
| 34 COMMENTS