Every bus has telematics that log where it is, how fast, and every time the doors open, because the council pays by the mile and the stops. Bus fourteen is in its bay from eleven at night to five in the morning. Between one and three it logs the forty two, end to end, both ways, every stop, doors open and closed at each one, at timetable speed, and the odometer in the morning is where it was, and the fuel is not.
I am the night engineer at a bus depot and I have forty buses to keep on the road and one that keeps itself.
The telematics.
A box on every bus that logs position, speed, door openings, ticket machine activity, and sends it back to the office, because the council pays us by the mile and by the stop and they want the proof. It also logs the odometer and the fuel.
Fourteen logs the forty two every night. From its bay.
The run.
One in the morning. The log shows fourteen leaving the yard, which it does not, and going out to the terminus at the hospital, which it does not, and starting the route. Every stop. The doors open at each one for the length of time they open when somebody gets on. The ticket machine logs a fare at about a third of them. Concession fares, mostly. Old people's passes. The route goes into town, out to the estate, back, at the speed the timetable says, with the waits at the timing points, and at three it is back at the hospital and the log shows it returning to the yard.
The bus has not moved. I have sat in it. The odometer is where it was. The fuel gauge, in the morning, is a quarter down, which is what the forty two takes.
What has been checked.
The box, replaced. The route is logged.
The bus, by me, in the driver's seat, at one, in the yard, engine off. The dash lit up. The ticket machine came on. The destination blind, which is an old roller one on fourteen because it is the oldest bus we have, turned, on its own, to 42 HOSPITAL. And the doors opened. On the yard. Nothing was there. And the doors closed, and the ticket machine printed a ticket, a concession, for a stop that is three miles from the yard, and the ticket came out of the slot and I have it.
Then the engine started. I had the key in my pocket. It started, and idled, and the log showed us at the first stop, and the doors opened, and closed, and I got out, and it ran the route from the yard for two hours with the doors opening and closing and the blind turning at the terminus and me standing beside it in the cold.
Who gets on.
Concession fares. I got the pass numbers off the ticket machine log and gave them to the office and the office ran them, and they are real passes, issued by the council, to people, and every one of the people is dead. Not recently. Over years. The passes were cancelled when they died, and the machine accepts them, and the people who held them all lived on the forty two.
They are going to the hospital, or coming back. That is what the forty two is for. It is the hospital bus, and it is the route the old people in the estate take on a Tuesday, and it has been for thirty years, and they are still taking it.
What is done about it.
The night run goes to the council in the mileage return, because the box sends what it logs, and the council pays for it, and the council's auditor has asked why a bus did a route at one in the morning with no driver rostered, and the office has said it is a telematics fault, and the auditor has said that the fault is costing the council four hundred pounds a week, and the office has offered a credit, and the auditor has not yet said whether he wants it.
What I do.
I keep the buses running.
Fourteen is due for scrapping. It is the oldest bus in the yard and it has done the miles and the office wants it gone by the spring. I have said that it needs to stay. I have said it is a spare. I have said things that are not true to keep a bus in the yard that runs a route to a hospital every night for people who died on it, or after it, or because they could not get to it, and I do not know which, and I have decided that a bus that people are still getting on is not a bus you scrap.
I have started doing the run with it. Not driving. Sitting in the cab, with the engine idling in the yard, from one to three, while the blind says 42 HOSPITAL and the doors open and shut on the dark. At each stop, when the doors open, I say what a driver says, which is nothing, mostly, but sometimes, to an old one with a pass, take your time. And I have said it, to the empty step, on a cold night, and the ticket machine has printed the fare, and the doors have waited a little longer before they closed, and the bus has gone on to the next stop without moving.