Roster Supervisor, Starter and Time-Keeper

(My 1^st,Time-Keeper; Mr. Bala, a considerate and understanding person; whenever I am late for the scheduled arrival time, just a simple explanation will suffice!)

In this blog posting, I wish to share with you 3 VVIP in Bus Operations.

Among them, the Roster Supervisor is the Master Warrant Officer (MWO); Starter and Time-Keeper (TK) are the Warrant Officer and Platoon Commander respectively. The MWO plans the bus duty operations on a weekly basis. A very heavy duty work position.  In WRI depot, he commands some 700 BC with responsibility and authority. Majority of us, will not dare to talk back to him whenever our request is been turn down with a fat “No”. He is really, the mastermind behind the well-being of bus operations.

When I am on AM shift duty, the Starter will issue me the pre-allocated bus to be used for the intended daily service. After handing over the bus logbook and fare printer key to me; I have to see where the bus is been parked. On some bad early morning days, I can spent more than 10mins just to locate where the bus is been parked.

Once, I have found where it is been shown in the parking plan (an A3 Photostatted paper been paste on a column or wall, been refreshed daily); I will proceed to the bus actual psychical location and to perform the required 1^st parade task, FPT. If and when the bus is not road worthy, and there is safety concern, it is my accountability and responsibility to inform the Starter and return the bus logbook and key back to him.

At this juncture, this is where; complication and morning frustration will start. If I could not recover fast from those neuro-peptide (a kind of harmful amino acid), been injected into my blood stream, the rest of the day will be not so pleasant. I will be given another bus, and the whole process of FPT will be repeated then and then.

Safe to say and I can put it to you that, the bus depot is not our ordinary HDB MSCP; some time, using a rechargeable torch light given by my son, some time back, I have to walk for minutes to get to the bus. The distant can be about 300M from where the starter office is located.

The starter will become extremely anxious whenever I am on 1^st Bus duty. The exact time to set off or depart from the depot to the designated interchange, is very critical for the smooth operations for the rest of the day. It is the Company’s mission of trust and promises in honoring our time schedule to all the commuters.

Once I left the bus depot and moving towards the designated interchange; the Time-Keeper (TK), will become my scheduler and trip driver for the next 8 to 10 working hours. Commuter seldom come into contact with them; the TK, actually, they played an extremely important role to dispatch and normalize the arrival and departure of all the buses under his or her charge.

 Technically speaking, they will do real-time scheduling for ~100 buses under their care; to provide sufficient head-way for buses. Head-way time is very crucial in preventing the much complaint “bus bunching” that is ubiquitous on the road.

When there is a jam or road block caused by road accident or road diversion, the TK will use his authority to see how best to do a next bus deployment that, can minimize pax waiting time at the bus stop and space out the timing for the buses, most importantly to avoid the bus been over packed.

Usually there is spare or break time for in between service trip. (E.g. float or dummy time in operation research term). When I am too late on my stated arrival time and the stipulated float time been lapsed; after performing my bio break (nature’s call); the TK, will to his best to plan for “down route service” for me to catch up the time been lost earlier.

For example if my duty is to start to pick up pax from WRI to BLI, I will be directed to drive straight to Ten Mile Junction in Upper Bukit Timah Road, with a “ off service display”, (an empty bus). Then upon reaching the requested bus stop, I will pick up the 1^st pax from here. In parallel, having consulted the Senior TK, my TK, he will deploy another bus to the berth in WRI to cover for my no show service earlier.

When a BC has not clocked for bus service departure; sort of a temporary MIA, the TK will make a couple of loudspeaker paging for him to swipe his card to depart or “jalan”, (Malay for Move it, man); after been paged, and the BC still no show, the TK will have to leave his office chair to go to look for that concerned BC (at times, the TK may have to walk a distant of 80M, just to find person he wanted. I guess, the BC may be too tired and has fallen asleep inside the bus!. Ooops!, Sorry. The life line of the bus daily schedule for departure and arrival is managed in this manner by these heroes behind the scene.

At times, like the recent MRT Breakdown on 7/7/2015; their action behind the scene is indeed a “gems” or “go the extra mile service” for the commuter at large.