Whenever a debate appears on here around the benefits of one particular mode or another, inevitably someone will complain about the way buses can be driven. Having customers feel comfortable on a bus is incredibly important so it was pleasing to see that steps are being taken to improve that. The Herald reports:
Operator hopes feedback system will improve passengers’ safety and comfort.
Auckland’s largest bus operator is promising passengers smoother rides from “black boxes” to monitor drivers’ performance.
NZ Bus says the equipment being rolled out initially on its North Shore fleet is primarily for drivers to keep an eye on their own performance.
It will allow them to correct their driving if any of five lights on a vertical console to the right of their steering wheels turns from green to amber or – in extreme cases such as emergency braking or lurching too fast around corners – to red.
The five factors measured by the lights are rider comfort in terms of cornering, engine idling, braking, acceleration and speeding.
But the company can also download data for driver training and fuel efficiency purposes from the telematic machines it expects to install on most of its 1000 or so buses in Auckland, Whangarei and Wellington by the end of the year.
This sounds like a wonderful idea as a way to improve the passenger comfort levels as it allows drivers to actively change their behaviour as they drive. As I started reading the article though my first thought was a concern that drivers union might oppose the idea but I was pleasantly surprised to see them getting right in behind this initiative too.
Although black box cockpit voice recorders in aircraft became controversial among pilots in the 1990s after their use in court action, bus union leaders are giving the project qualified approval, after being assured the company will have a “conversation” with any staff needing to mend their ways before it resorts to any disciplinary action.
Auckland Tramways Union president Gary Froggatt believes most drivers will welcome the innovation, which the company says will complement its “Pathways to Safer Driving” programme – in which it is in the midst of providing 18 hours of refresher training across four modules including customer service, and driving and personal safety.
“I don’t think the disciplinary process will be invoked at all – the drivers in most cases will listen to what they are being told,” Mr Froggatt said.
“It will improve the performance of the drivers and hopefully cut down on the amount of speeding tickets they are getting.”
He said monitoring lights coupled with beeps when buses are travelling too fast would help to make up for an absence of a 50km/h mark on speedometers in the company’s predominantly European-made fleet.
I really love the part slightly later in the article where it is mentioned that some drivers are now actively competing with each other to see how long they can keep the various lights green. There’s nothing like a good bit of healthy competition to make things better for passengers. All up it seems like a really positive step so well done NZ Bus and hopefully we will see other bus companies roll out the same, or similar technology to help improve the experience for passengers.
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the drivers who really annoy me are the ones that are constantly prodding the brake pedal, making their passengers act like nodding dogs,
thery’re usually following too close and not looking far enough ahead, not helped by the low driving positions of many buses
Oh my god they’re a pain in the arse!
Steve, in some instances the newer buses straight off the line have VERY responsive brakes, which the drivers can take some time getting used to…
sure and from experience it only takes a few kms to get used to that, but it’s a driving style I’m talking about
don’t they have kms in Europe? And isn’t 50kmh quite a common speed limit in Europe too?
Of course they do, and all the speedos in the cars I’ve driven over there had 50km indicators. It’s a common speed limit, along with 30km for residential roads, so I have no idea why they claim these buses don’t have marks on them.
Could the lack of a 50kph marking be due to the fact that some of the latest buses are UK built – and consequently a 30 miles per hour limit rather than 50 kph?
I don’t get this focus on the 50km/h mark – Most cars in NZ don’t have 50km/h explicitly marked on their speedos either. It’s the line halfway between 40 and 60, and one would hope that people who drive cars, let alone buses, know enough basic maths to work out the points in-between the numbered bits on a speedo…
A good point well made
my VW has a red marking at 50 kph
Thank you NZ Bus for doing this.
Sounds like an all round good idea;
Better ride quality for the passengers, and fuel / wear savings for the operator.
Anyone been regularly using the double deckers? What are they like? Fun?
Only caught it once, did seem a little slower but it was in rush hour(I usually rode off peak) and where I was on the front top seat the elevation can reduce the sensation of speed. The view was AMAZING though, particularly on the bridge and especially of all the zombies in their coffins on the motorway. Loading and unloading wasn’t too much of an issue but I think top deck should be Britomart only city bound and Albany/Constellation only on the way back, or at least allow those who can to descend while in motion.
I really hope we get some more, I have been on 2 NEXs this year on which someone didn’t have to stand and one was 1130 at night.
Re black boxes, good idea – but given NZ Bus’s current woes in Wellington (see http://www.metlink.org.nz/news/temporary-disruptions-to-wellington-bus-services/) it’ll be something else for them not to maintain…
Re double deckers, how (and why) are passengers stopped from descending while in motion? In my experience no-one tries to stop that on d-ds in the UK, Hong Kong or Singapore, nor in Wellington when d-ds operated the City Circular route.
good work NZ Bus; good work Drivers, good work Union.
How about buses running red lights. Am I the only one who thinks this is an issue
What about red light running drivers. Whats the solution.
The same solution as for car drivers who run red lights: cameras. But the central government needs to sort their shit out to make it happen.
http://greaterakl.wpengine.com/2013/03/25/where-are-the-red-light-cameras/
Here are a few thoughts from my seat at the front of the bus about smooth driving and the warning lights. For a kickoff, I like the idea and I think something like it was necessary, there are absolutely drivers who will benefit from having their bad habits pointed out so bluntly. The summary after a whole 1 days experience seems to be that we’re accelerating a lot more gently than we did last week (so we need to wait for much bigger gaps to pull out into), to a cruising speed significantly slower than where we were last week, then slowing down a lot earlier when we need to stop, and this is having an effect on how long the trips take and therefore when the buses are ready to start their next trips. In effect we’re being forced to work to rule which I think is what we got locked out for threatening to do a couple of contracts ago 🙂
Speeding is the biggie of course, there is a 3 km/h tolerance before we get a warning light. Because keeping an exact speed (to within 2km/h) requires spending almost as long looking at the speedometer as the road, early signs are that most of us are going to end up cruising at about 45 so we don’t have to worry about speed creep. Oh and about the speedo – on the ADLs there are thick lines every 10 km, thin lines every 5 km, but the numbers are only every 20. So there are numbers at 40 and 60 but only a line at 50. They have ALL got at least a line at 50.
Now … Brakes, gearboxes, and making passengers nod going down hills … In the good old days you put your foot on the brake pedal and it let some of the vacuum out of the brake line and the brakes came on. If you just used a tiny bit of pedal the brakes only came on a tiny bit. It was predictable, it was good, you could feather them properly when you stopped, you could be *very* smooth, and as SteveC said after 2-3 brake applications you knew what was going to happen when you hit the pedal and everyone was happy for the rest of the day unless you got a driver who followed too closely and kept jabbing the brakes.
Nowdays, the first part of the brake pedal only works the retarders. You have to get the pedal about a third of the way down before the air brakes wake up. Retarders come in a variety of forms but generally they work in the gearbox, they have several stages, and in the ideal world where a slowly increasing number of our buses live they come on smoothly and progressively as you press the pedal until they are fully on after which the airbrakes start to come on. In a non-ideal world words like “smoothly” and “progressively” have different meanings so touching the brake pedal to try and hold the speed going down a hill will result in constant jerking as the retarders switch off and ON!!! as the brake pedal moves 2-3 mm either way. The ADLs have another twist on this because they have “intelligent” gearboxes which are supposed to help you by changing down gears to add braking force when they think you’re slowing down, unfortunately they’re whining attention seekers who can’t tell the difference between “I want to slow down” and “I don’t want to speed up” and if they think you’re trying to slow down without them they’ll hurl themselves down a gear (or two) out of spite. If you find yourself doing the nodding dog thing going down a hill it’s generally not the driver jabbing at the pedal, it’s those *&^%$!!! retarders and that poxy gearbox.
This is all intimately tied up with two of the new warning lights, excessive engine RPM and harsh braking. The RPM light triggers when we go above the green band on the rev counter. When the gearbox changes itself down on a hill it takes the rpm perilously close to that limit, so as soon as the bus changes down a gear because it thought you wanted to slow down you really do have to slow down in order to get the RPM back to a safe level which is a really good trick because you’ll already be on the verge of a heavy braking warning light and of course because you really are slowing down now the gearbox most likely goes down another gear and if you’re really lucky gives you both the braking AND rpm warning lights … There are a few ways to go down hills now but none of them involve speeds anywhere near 50 (speed warning) or using the gearbox to slow down smoothly (rpm warning), basically if you’re not in a bus with 100% good retarders you’re screwed and your passengers had better have good neck muscles.
So … good idea, needs work on the trigger limits, has absolutely made us drive slower (and run later) and use less brakes and throttle, will be interesting to watch what happens when it goes live at the other depots, and hope other bus companies get it too to level the playing field again.
Great summary and typically it’s not straight forward. Sounds like this black box has teething issues and we’re are in for some slow rides. And I see what you mean about ideal world driving standards and maintaining timetables.
Yes by your description Greg, the black boxes are highlighting some issues with gearbox and brake design, not just driving habits! Hopefully this can result in the buses getting better tuned! How tunable are the retarders and related gear?
LOL, when oi were lad and telephones had braided cables, Wellington City Transport’s fleet of AEC Reliances and Leyland Leopards had manually selected epicyclic gearboxes and a good driver could run up and down the gears completely seamlessly
paradoxically the buses without power steering cornered better because you had to enter and exit corners smoothly due to the weight of the steering
how far has technology taken us then if the driver “aids” prevent or impede smooth progress? but there’s no going back because now the labour market dictates an open entry to jobs (which is a good thing)
(old fart shuffles off in cardy and slippers for another pipe) 😉
NZBus – PLEASE implement this in Wellington!!!
Be careful what you wish for, you might get it. Sure you wouldn’t rather wait for it to settle down and see what affect it actually has in real life before you start calling for it ? Especially with all those hills …
Thanks Greg for the insight. The idling – has this got something to do with waiting for the next run and just idling? I see this so much around the CBD, it’s really annoying for a pedestrian to be walking where the buses usually hang around for their next run… what’s the story on this? I heard that in the past the ticketing system took a while to reboot, so the drivers preferred to leave the engine idle… but I also heard that with Snapper system, this is no longer a problem? true?
They really need these black box thingies in South Korea. Hardly a bus trip in my city goes by when I don’t see a little old lady thrown across the (manual, not automatic) bus. A black box might convince Mr. Park to stop dumping the clutch!
The ADL ones are very tunable which I think is all software – when we book up ones that are particularly nasty they disappear into the workshop and come out a lot nicer to drive. Our standards of what is “particularly nasty” have suddenly gotten a lot tougher 🙂 They are also learning gearboxes which I think it means they take notice of how they are driven and adapt themselves to our style which in turn means they are all slightly different and becoming more different – which means you never know what’s going to happen when you try the brakes for the first few times after getting into an ADL.
There is a design problem (in my opinion) with the MAN and ADL retarders, retarders don’t do anything at very low speeds so when the bus gets below 5km/h they should release but they don’t (the Scania ones do, I’ve never had a scania with bad retarders), they release when you let your foot off the brake pedal after stopping and that can cause a couple more ride comfort issues – the MAN retarders release smoothly but a lot of them don’t release until you try to move away which causes the bus to move when the airbrakes release then slam to a halt again until the retarders let go as well (sound familiar ?), while the ADL ones let go as soon as you let the footbrake off but they’re so fierce it’s almost impossible to take your foot off the brake pedal after stopping without jerking the bus (again, sound familiar?)
Yes idling is about idling while waiting for the next trip. I forget the exact number but idling for an hour does about the same engine wear as driving for about 1000km. Plus it annoys people when we idle outside their houses / shops for 10 minutes. The ADLs have a buzzer that comes on after 4 minutes (and the black box gets upset) then after 5 minutes they turn off.
The snapper machines take 3-4 minutes to start up at the depot and they don’t care whether the engine is running or not, they only need battery power. Changing trips on the road mostly only takes 20 seconds or so. Occasionally the snapper machine stops talking to the GPS console so the trips stop appearing on the info signs, then *everything* has to be rebooted which means stopping to completely shut the bus down then start all over again. Mostly we leave the buses running because it keeps the heaters / aircon going, or because we don’t trust them to start again 🙂