Anyone been on a GoBe bus recently?

malcy

I'm currently on one now and it's so warm. The air conditioning units above are redundant due to the heat onboard. With 20 mins of getting on, 2 sandwiches that came out the fridge of a shop pretty cold moments before getting on the bus were almost inedible and cooked. Finding it hard to breathe.

Anyone else had this issue? I use them a lot due to finding Aircoach hellishly uncomfortable, smelly and cramped but at least i could breathe!

schemingbohemia

Have you spoken to the driver rather than a bunch of random strangers?

bobbyss

malcy wrote:

I'm currently on one now and it's so warm. The air conditioning units above are redundant due to the heat onboard. With 20 mins of getting on, 2 sandwiches that came out the fridge of a shop pretty cold moments before getting on the bus were almost inedible and cooked. Finding it hard to breathe.

malcy wrote:

Anyone else had this issue? I use them a lot due to finding Aircoach hellishly uncomfortable, smelly and cramped but at least i could breathe!

Similar experience on Citylink and gobus. Passengers should not have to ask driver to lower /raise temperature . In offices I am sure there are H & S rules about acceptable temperatures . I wonder are there any similar for buses. Is there any app that can be used to record inside temp and take that then forward to the company with complaint?

bk

Just ask the driver and he should be able to adjust it.

Was on a GoBE on Sunday. One of the emergency exits in the roof was open and wind whistling through. A quick word to the driver, he pressed a button and it automatically closed. No bother.

Beyond that I've had no complaints about temperature. I do notice that GoBE coaches in general are older and starting to look quiet shabby now. Could do with some new coaches, but money is probably tight after the damage done by the BE strikes.

bobbyss

bk wrote:

Just ask the driver and he should be able to adjust it.

On a recent bus where temp was suffocating. Three people went up to driver with no result. That's not the first time I have noticed drivers unable to change temp. I don't know what the problem there is. I also notice that the overhead thingies never work properly. I don't know how many times I have tried to turn them on or off with no result whatsoever.

Nomis21

I was a coach driver for 30 years. The driver has his own independent heating system for his own area and doesn't know the tempature in the rest of the bus unless someone tells him. Easy to adjust .

bobbyss

Nomis21 wrote:

I was a coach driver for 30 years. The driver has his own independent heating system for his own area and doesn't know the tempature in the rest of the bus unless someone tells him. Easy to adjust .

Is there a gauge telling the driver what the temp is inside? Are there any regulations about minimum and maximum temperatures allowed in busses as there are in some places of work?

Nomis21

bobbyss wrote: »

Is there a gauge telling the driver what the temp is inside? Are there any regulations about minimum and maximum temperatures allowed in busses as there are in some places of work?

No and no.

The only person working on the bus is the driver and he sets his own temperature.

bobbyss

Nomis21 wrote:

The only person working on the bus is the driver and he sets his own temperature.

Did you ever have conflicting requests about radio? One wants a certain station someone else wants a different station or none at all. What did you do?

Nomis21

Music choices on the bus depend entirely on the type of passengers I was driving. Most people who enjoyed music while traveling brought their own personal systems with them and I never saw any disagreements about what was on the radio. The only requests I ever got was to turn the volume down sometimes if someone though it was too loud as once again the driver has his own volume for his area and can play a cd for himself and radio for passengers and vice-versa.
In the 90's I had my own bus and used it to take students to Amsterdam at the weekends. They would give me their favorite tapes and cds to play to the whole bus but for one hour I would play Pink Floyd for an hour at full volume to the whole bus just because I could!

bobbyss

Nomis21 wrote: »

I was a coach driver for 30 years. The driver has his own independent heating system for his own area and doesn't know the tempature in the rest of the bus unless someone tells him. Easy to adjust .

What was your daily milage? Where did you travel to? I understand there are now EU laws about maximum milage per day or amount of time spent driving per day? How did you keep your concentration going all day? It must be tiring?

Nomis21

bobbyss wrote: »

What was your daily milage? Where did you travel to? I understand there are now EU laws about maximum milage per day or amount of time spent driving per day? How did you keep your concentration going all day? It must be tiring?

I drove everything starting with school buses to international express and tours and band buses for the road crew of Metallica.

There are no laws for maximum mileage, only for how long you can drive without a break, maximum daily hours and weekly hours and rest days. It's controlled by the EU when driving in Europe and is very complex, but a smart card controlled machine records everything and fines are heavy for infractions and payable on the spot if caught driving over the limits outside of Ireland.

Like any job one gets accustomed to doing it and having a radio to listen to, strong coffee on hand or just chatting with passengers helps relieve tiredness. However I always believed that our bodies should decide when we were tired and not some machine, although I suppose it had to come as unscrupulous employers would sometimes force drivers to do ridiculously unsafe hours before all these laws came in, although that applied more to trucks than buses.

Of course if I felt too tired to drive at anytime I would stop and just announce a restaurant stop and pull in to the nearest service area for 45 minutes.

bobbyss

Nomis21 wrote: »

I drove everything starting with school buses to international express and tours and band buses for the road crew of Metallica.

There are no laws for maximum mileage, only for how long you can drive without a break, maximum daily hours and weekly hours and rest days. It's controlled by the EU when driving in Europe and is very complex, but a smart card controlled machine records everything and fines are heavy for infractions and payable on the spot if caught driving over the limits outside of Ireland.

Like any job one gets accustomed to doing it and having a radio to listen to, strong coffee on hand or just chatting with passengers helps relieve tiredness. However I always believed that our bodies should decide when we were tired and not some machine, although I suppose it had to come as unscrupulous employers would sometimes force drivers to do ridiculously unsafe hours before all these laws came in, although that applied more to trucks than buses.

Of course if I felt too tired to drive at anytime I would stop and just announce a restaurant stop and pull in to the nearest service area for 45 minutes.

Did you ever have an accident? Are you required to have annual heath checks?

Nomis21

bobbyss wrote: »

Did you ever have an accident? Are you required to have annual heath checks?

No serious accidents, the odd scratch often caused by tour managers insisting on me driving a bus in a confined space closer to the entrance of a gig than it was sensible, and me not complaining enough about doing it.

I did have a few close calls though that could have been very serious accidents that I was able to avoid by a combination of quick reactions, experience, and sometimes just luck.

A colleague of mine driving a bus back from a skiing trip in the Alps crashed in snow on a German autobahn and killed the coach hostess who was on the front passenger seat and was propelled through the front windscreen onto the road.

All bus and truck drivers have to take a medical to get their licence and another medical when renewing their licence every 5 years.