I learned a new piece of terminology today. I was on a bus and the driver pulled up at a stop and started searching through his bag. He was clearly worried and, after saying something to a passing driver, phoned up the depot.
He had apparently lost his "running card". This is the document that tells drivers what time to be at what stop. The other passenger (there were only two of us) wondered why such information wasn't computerized.
Does anyone here know much about running cards? I can't find a great deal of information on the Web.
Usually a garage will have a number of "duties" or shifts that need to be covered so they run everything for the day. These will be split by driver into "duty cards" or "running cards" which cover one driver's shift.
They will have 1 card for each required duty for each day type that the garage runs (for some places Mon-Fri wil be one day type for others it won't if they have schools that finish on different times on different days or run later buses on a Friday...then there will be Saturday, Sunday, Bank Holiday (if that's different to Sunday).
To ensure there's enough drivers for the day they then allocate one card to each driver. So long as there's no cards left they're good for the day.
Some companies have two sets of duty and running cards - in this case one will cover what a driver is doing for a shift and the other what a particular bus is doing for the day.
The amount of detail on a card will vary.
Some will simply have the route and trip numbers and departure time from the first stop - the other information will be available elsewhere (often once they've told a system which trip they're running it will tell them when they should leave each stop). Others have all the timetable detail forr each trip on.