Hi,
I've been reading these forums for a while and wanted to shed some light on what it's like driving a Coast Mountain Bus in Vancouver in the snow. These are my opinions of course...
ALL buses are rear wheel drive. Every time you start to accelerate the bus has a tendency for the rear end to swing right towards the curb even if your front end is staying in place. Just before the bus comes to a complete stop the front end usually slides to the right towards the curb. Articulated buses are the absolute worst in the snow. They are also rear wheel drive only. From a stop they usually have the rear end which slides right while the front end stays in place. As a driver you really don't have any control of what the front end does as it is essentially pushed from the rear and if you can't control your rear end you're done.
Snow tires probably wouldn't make much of a difference as usually stops become glazed over in ice or slush. Articulated buses being even more useless because even if you managed to get the rear moving your front and middle axles are still on slippery ice. The fleet being over 1400 buses total would be over 10,000 tires. It would be an absolute logistical and maintenance nightmare to store them and swap them out every season. Plus the cost...
I worked Friday evening in Vancouver until 3am so here is my experience. I waited over two hours standing in the cold past my start time because our relief point has no shelter or crew room. Semi trucks had jackknifed along the route and the road was blocked until they were cleared. At that time all 11 buses on that route had gone around and were all stuck behind the semi trucks with nowhere to go. When I finally got around to driving it was fine until midnight and it started snowing again. Immediately what was wet slush now had layer of snow on it and the bus would slide starting and stopping. Plows were going up down the street dumping salt but there was still nothing they could have done better. I made it through the night and went from over 2 hours late to only 25 minutes late and I still managed to get asked multiple times why I'm late when it was basically a blizzard outside... It is unfortunate bus sometimes it is just out of our control with what happens on the roads.
So if you happen to be driving a bus in the snow you -
1. Don't want to be driving an articulated bus
2. Try not to stop on hills
3. Don't pull fully into the curb or you may never get back out
4. Try not to have your rear end near a pole, trash can, person, etc. because if you slip while accelerating your rear kick out will bend something
5. Try not to have your front end near a pole because when you brake that last little bit and slide right you may bend something
6. Drive slower and avoid all the people that you see behind you, come flying up along side you, cut you off and brake because they want to make a right into 7-11 when they could have easily done that behind you. Because we can totally dump off speed and not have 50 people flying out of their seats.
Sorry #6 was me venting but that happens all too often on a daily basis day, night, rain, shine or snow...
If you have any questions I'd be happy to answer if I can of course
Prev
) we would not be having snow issues. I seem to recall that the grade leaving Columbia and onto the SkyBridge has a slightly steeper grade and we have not had problems there yet.
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