Does anyone Train the Busdrivers?

I'd never really taken public transportation before I took my current job in San Francisco. In Baltimore, public transportation just isn't an option. The few offerings the city of your residence had were inefficient, never went anywhere you might want to go, and (at least in Baltimore) were generally filled with unsavory characters. Horror stories of being robbed, stabbed, shot or puked on by a junkie coming down off their high pretty much kept myself and anyone I knew far from city bus lines. I took pride in owning a car (although not so much in keeping it clean) and commuting to work solo, even though I don't really like driving. Even when I moved out to California, I commuted the 33+ miles each way to work every day, as the fabled public transportation systems out here didn't run from where I lived to where I worked in any useful way.

Fast-forward to January, when I started work in San Francisco. And its a nice place to work (the company and the city actually). I discovered during the interview process that rush hour traffic was going to be unmanageable; paired with $30 a day to park there was simply no way I was going to be driving into the city on a regular basis. With a little help from new colleagues, I quickly nailed down an optimized commuter path that includes a 40 minute Caltrain ride over to the express bus (aka the fancy bus) for a 15ish minute ride to work in the morning. Reverse is a bit slower - MUNI to Caltrain - but is still pretty doable. Believe it or not, I actually enjoy this setup. MUNI kinda smells funny, and missing the fancy bus puts me on the ghetto 30/45 lines, but it is so much cheaper than driving and parking. Especially given the price of gas these days. Plus, I get to spend 2 hours a day catching up on email or just reading for fun...something you definitely can't do in a car.

That said, the system is definitely not flawless. I've been yelled at by a bus driver and chastised by a ticket checker on Caltrain. To date, I've made it to the office after 10am at least four times due to "things on the track" or "signal issues", and home after 8pm on at least six occasions. Still, for the convenience and the cost, it hasn't been too bad. At least until Tuesday. I get on Fancy Bus to head to work after an uneventful train ride. About thirty seconds in, I realize we've missed the turn onto Third Street. CRAP! Did they change the route and not tell me?! No, its a new driver, and its his first day. He pulls a U-turn at the next intersection and heads back towards my destination.

And then he asks the lady next to me where the first stop is. And then he tries to turn off my street before he gets to the first OR second stops on that street. Passengers are navigating his every move, he's stopping nowhere near designated giant bus stops...what is going ON? I mean seriously...does no one train these people? If you just handed me the keys to one of these giant buses, chances are I'd have no clue how to make it go. I imagine it doesn't run just like a car...so I'd sit there and look lost and ask for help. As this man obviously could make the bus go...how on earth did he not ever have to review a route sheet?! Does MUNI not have some sort of shadowing program before their drivers start, I dunno, DRIVING? Are bus drivers expected to have some inborn knowledge of San Francisco and MUNI maps, and no body of authority bothers to check and certify these people before inflicting them on unsuspecting passengers? If so, this guy was definitely born without the "SF bus route map" gene. It boggles the mind.

I know what you're thinking...how is this such a big deal? Well, technically its not. This time. I ended up in the general vicinity of my office and was at my desk at a reasonable hour. But had this driver done what he thought was the right thing, I could still be wandering lost and foodless in San Francisco (well, I could be assuming cell service in the city magically died too). I know about as much of this city as can be seen directly from my third floor office window. Which isn't much as Bank of America takes up the vast majority of that eye-line. I'm still taking the public transportation route - bus included - but my faith in the superiority of SF transit options is certainly shaken. At least a little. I hope that driver gets up to speed soon. If he leaves me on the fabled "Castro" street, I might not make it back alive. Or so I've been told.