miws
As a long time METRO rider, I don’t recall seeing the “unpublished Route” term used before.
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My best guess is that it’s whatever alternate route dispatchers/supervisors dictate, as opposed to the regular route, or the normal snow route, if that particular bus route has one. Or, perhaps, supervisors are letting the drivers determine the best and safest way, under the circumstances. In my experience, drivers are not allowed to vary from the route, for example, if a road is blocked by an accident, without a re-route being dictated by a supervisor, or approved by the super, if the driver requests it. (I wish in those cases, METRO policy and the supers would allow dirvers to use there own judgement within reason. Though it hasn’t happened often, I’ve been stuck on busses before with the driver requesting a re-route to be approved, when in some occasions it’s just a very small variance from the regular route.)
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A word of caution about Tracker. I love it, use it all the time, even have a link to it on the sidebar of my screen. However, as noted on Tracker, the info, including the location of a given bus is not 100% accurate.
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For example, if route 22 is on it’s snow route, turning from southbound California, to westbound Fauntleroy, instead of crossing Fauntleroy to continue up Gatewood Hill, Tracker may show it as actually continuing up Gatewood Hill.
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The reason for that is, that as I understand it, Tracker is not actually a GPS system, but some kind of system that detects where a particular bus is at a certain point, then shows it continuing on it’s regular route until it passes by the next point that recieves the info.
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For example, and I don’t know exactly how it works, so this is based on guesswork, (note I didn’t say “assumption” because we all know what happens when we “assume”! ;-) ) but, let’s say there’s a receiver that detects when the 22 reaches California & Fauntleroy, it’s going to *assume*, (Heh!) that the bus will be going up Gatewood Hill, until the point of the next reciever at maybe 41st & Thistle. So, even though the bus is actually going down Fauntleroy, Tracker will show it continuing along California , up Gatewood Hill.
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Hope this helps, and that I didn’t bore people too much with the length and detail of the post! ;-)
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Mike
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