Bus Driver Training Is Definitely No Joy Ride

White-knuckled and wide-eyed, the sweaty-faced student bus driver barrels along the busy boulevard at the controls of the 13-ton steel and glass behemoth.

He doesn’t see the light change.

Crouched at his pupil’s right shoulder, instructor Robert Ellison Jr. sees it, all right.

With seconds to spare, he grabs the wheel and brings the bus to a hissing, herky-jerky, air-braked halt. In eight years, Ellison’s students have never run a red light.

“We’ve had some late yellows, though,” he says with a laugh.

Ellison is a drill sergeant at bus drivers boot camp. Every Monday at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s division headquarters in El Monte, he and his staff of instructors launch yet another training class for neophyte drivers--those people curious, brave or just crazy enough to slide behind the wheel of a 40-foot-long bus as it winds its way through the tangle of urban traffic.

At this school, students are sometimes men and women who have been downsized by previous employers, sometimes people dusting themselves off from the welfare ranks. They’re ex-nurses, bricklayers and truck drivers, ready to start at $10 an hour--all of them seduced by the thought of eventually making $50,000 annually.

This year, the MTA will add 400 newcomers to its ranks of 3,700 full- and part-time drivers. Many of the novices haven’t the slightest clue what they’re in for--the passenger abuse, bad weather and nightmarish traffic. But Ellison says the seven-week course seeks to at least get their front tires wet with a little on-the-road experience.

Nails already bitten to the quick, student Renne Worley of Sherman Oaks sits in the control seat in the MTA parking lot and reaches out toward the humongous steering wheel of her training bus.

At age 40, the mother of one has driven a 26-foot passenger van for a living. But she has never encountered anything like this.

Sitting behind the wheel, looking into the bus’ rear-view mirror is like peering into a fun house mirror: The vehicle’s interior seems to go on and on. Not only that, the front wheels are behind you, giving you a strange, floating sensation.

And buses are usually full of people, who will stumble and fall (and file complaints, or even sue) if you jam on your air brakes too suddenly.

Instructor Donald DeLay tells Worley that although air brakes are reliable, she should apply them only as a last resort. “You’ve got the best brakes, but you can’t use them,” he says. “If you overreact, people go flying.”

On just her second day of instruction, Worley takes a 20-minute initial drive through traffic while Delay and another student from her eight-person class look on.

All the while, DeLay is in her ear, cooing out commands.

“You’re being a road hog,” he says during one sweeping turn, a tricky maneuver during which she must drag the bus’ big tail safely through the intersection, “but it’s the only way to operate a big vehicle.”

She approaches a green light that could change at any second. “Don’t trust anybody,” DeLay tells her. “Don’t believe in Santa Claus, the tooth fairy. Or green lights.”

Then he gets hard: “C’mon, 40 miles an hour is the speed of traffic. Let’s go, let’s go.”

And moments later: “This isn’t a physical job, it’s a mental job. Your brain is going to be burned out by the time you go home. You’ve got so many decisions to make, and they’ve all got to be right on the money.”

One thing they don’t tell them at school is that driving a bus has been listed as one of the most stressful professions in the land.

For the first six months of 1998, the MTA’s bus patrol force made 219 arrests--including 35 for assault, nine for robbery and five for theft. Sometimes, the bus operator is the victim.

And the critical eyes of the passengers stay on their operator. Frustrated by riding a bus fleet that is among the nation’s oldest and most crowded--especially on routes that run in low-income neighborhoods--people tend to get testy.

In May alone, there were 1,439 passenger complaints against MTA bus operators--including riders being passed up by drivers, operator discourtesy and unsafe operation.

Drivers also have to keep their eyes open--even while on their breaks. They have to watch out for the opportunist, like the man who this week commandeered an MTA bus while the driver was on break, going for a brief joy ride, even collecting fares from passengers.

At boot camp, instructors explain that it’s a rough, unfair, take-no-prisoners world. A sleepless industry in which buses run around the clock, transporting a million passengers a day. A job steeped in rigid rules and timetables. In the past, they have been told that wearing white socks instead of black ones would get them written up; get to work a minute late and they risk a day off without pay.

“We don’t sugar-coat the job, don’t make it out to be all roses,” says the 40-year-old Ellison, who drove a bus for seven years after leaving a career as a junior high school teacher. “We’re tough. But we drive in the real world; and the things people hear about in the news, they happen on the streets and sometimes on our buses.”

Although he was never robbed while driving his bus, Ellison had some freakish encounters, like the day an elderly woman began striking him with her cane because he did not stop where she wanted. Driving along, he used one hand to wrestle the cane away from her, accidentally breaking it against the fare box.

“Of the 50 million different situations new drivers could confront on the road,” he says, “we try to prepare them for maybe 5 million.”

This isn’t exactly the movie “Speed,” that Hollywoodized version of bus driving. At MTA training school, it’s more often like the Keystone Kops, with instructors pacing to and fro like scowling Ralph Kramdens, Jackie Gleason’s caricature of an overweight, loud-mouthed bus driver on “The Honeymooners” TV show.

Then students get behind the wheel.

“You see some real terror on people’s faces the first time they drive a bus,” says instructor DeLay. “Pure, unadulterated fear.”

Some students quit after the first ride. Or they get bounced for poor behind-the-wheel performance. Like the nice old gentleman whom Ellison recalls just froze up at the controls.

“He just could not get it,” the instructor says. “He came so close to objects. Several times I had to grab the wheel.”

After one class, just to ease his frazzled nerves, Ellison stepped outside for a cigarette with several instructors. “And I don’t even smoke.”

In an MTA classroom, instructor Joe Gonzales covers everything from sensitivity with passengers to driving safety--telling students to keep their hands on the wheel and not to drink a soda while driving, even on a 110-degree day.

“How about water?” one student asks.

No way, Gonzales answers.

“Man, not even if it’s hot?”

Nope.

“Sheesh,” the student sighs. “That’s cold.”