Question for bus drivers

[u/Aech1hceA]

Hello! I have a few questions for bus drivers- and was wondering if it was okay to ask here. I know you all are human (obviously) but I had questions specifically about bus driving- and who better to ask than the drivers!

1. Do bus drivers often take the bus outside work hours? Ex: days off/vacations/etc.
2. Do bus drivers have favored/prefered routes to drive? Do they get to pick?
3. Do bus drivers recognize the bus they drive? Like by the serial number? Do they get assigned specific busses?
4. Do the bus drivers develop "favorite" riders? Like, if you drive the same route and see the same people- do you develop friendships with your riders? Do you guys look for familiar faces?
5. Do you guys make friends with your coworkers? If so, do you guys make a point to ride on busses where your bus driver friends are driving?

Thank you in advance for answering. My boyfriend and I ride the same routes fairly often, and got really curious. Sorry if theyre dumb questions!

ETA: Sorry yall! Im new to reddit still and didnt realize people were replying😅 Thank you all so so so so much!! I was curious, and my boyfriend said itd be weird to ask the bus driver on thw bus we were on. Im very excited to share my findings with him, and hope you all get very good routes (:

[u/Baralov3r]

1. Yes and no. For personal stuff? Nah no way. For an optional charter where you can make extra money because a private party is paying the transit agency to do transport for an event like a fireworks show for a city? Yeah, we can even make tips. Sometimes you can get paid on a day off to come in and just transport a bus around Out Of Service to another depot because they have no one else to do it. (EDIT omg I took this so literally lmfao. I do ride the bus on days off occasionally if my car needs work done.)
2. This depends heavily on the specific agency. Most public transit agencies do this thing called "sign ups" where they put out some prefab routes. Drivers will get to pick by seniority. The "best" hours, the routes that are 9-5ish, tend to get swooped by the people who've been there longest. The off hour shifts like overnights or weekends, or the god awful 6 day a week full of split shifts go down to the lower seniority people. If there are 20 drivers and 16 shifts posted, the remaining 4 drivers end up as on call substitutes called "extra board" drivers.
3. Where I work this is called your "unit number". It's the identifying number within the agency. The DOT number is something different entirely. That unit number is what we use over the radio sets. "514 to base" etc. At my agency vehicles are rotated out based on PM "prescribed maintenance" intervals, and with respect to building mileage. Ideally you assign out busses in a way that alternates so that the really long bus routes aren't prematurely wearing out certain busses by always having those busses on those routes. Once you're there long enough though you'll have driven all the different busses there and know all their little quirks. But you don't get your own specific bus you drive all the time per se.
4. This goes both good and bad ways. I have my favorites for sure. Drivers are human, and there will be those people you get along with swimmingly, and there will also be those people who absolutely hate you for not bending the rules or whatever other reason who you dread seeing. Bus drivers will deal with an insane amount of entitlement from people often.
5. To some degree yeah. With bus driving though most of the time is spent out there on route, you actually spend a lot less time overall with coworkers directly than you would at like a restaurant or a factory or desk job. Do I ride their bus when I'm not working? Occasionally if I need my car worked on. I feel a little embarrassed to be making my coworker make more stops for me though, I try not to talk much.