Express Bus Operator

It use to be based of year's of experience on the job with clean records. Now I hear Zerega has to certify you and some trainees are assigned with the same line trainer for weeks. The last time I asked my chairman at my depot, he said 10 years and up and Zerega certification.

Skys the limit. The first year as a rookie, don’t expect to be rolling big money since the ideal is to pass 1 year probationary period. That means, you want less time on the bus to avoid accidents or incidents. Your pay (23$ an hour) is based on the route and run. For example you can pick a run and route that pays 50 hours a week, but that determined the depot and your seniority peg. Overall we make money if you know how to. We earn night differential, articulate buses pay (2$ more) if you’re operating a articulated bus route. I’m on my fourth year (31.98$ an hr) and for 2020 I made 100k for the year and thats all from busting ass by putting in hours. Covid has put more opportunity for bus operators to earn more. On your fifth year you will be on a top pay salary. Being a Dispatcher (46.00$ An hr) is more money, but you can only become a dispatcher after your third year and take a promotion exam when its available.

I believe if every operator would put a note onto the OVCR card regarding the automatic announcement making wrong stops information, they'll probably work on it ASAP.

Absolutely! I was shock to see they were nailing for not correcting the automatic announcement. 4 Probies got extended out of my depot and the chairman was fighting hard to give them a chance.

Everyone that got a check ride recently...Was your birthday coming up or recently passed? The reason I'm asking because they're two type of rides. One is 19A ride which the 19A Dispatcher will identify themselves from the beginning if they want to and they're assigned at your depot location and give rides during your birthday months, and There's a Zerega check rides which usually are conducted by a Superintendent and they don't reveal themselves till the end of the ride or not. Probationary rides are conducted by unknown superintendents from zerega and there job is to ensure you are doing what you're suppose to do while on probation. Any hazardous mistake or not making ADA announcements may get your probation extended.

SLOW down and ignore the paddle. This job is about making money and being safe. If you blow your swing (20 minutes), You are entitled for a 30 minutes lost meal and still get paid for it. There’s a lot of tricks and things you need to know I can tell you in Private Message that will benefit you as the operator on the road and not feel overwhelm. If you need to use the rest room, like @lornaevo stated, you’re entitled to take a personal to use the “rest room only” at the end or while in service. You’ll just need to press RTT and relay the message.

IMO I highly doubt the internal promotions work the same as external hiring process. Just job has union involved and is highly based on seniority credit respect, I doubt MTA would take the chance to call candidates off two of the same entities promotional position at the same time. That would caused a major issue involving with law suit since the position is highly respected to "Promote" based off seniority in the order of your exam list number. Just imagine a candidate took the promotion exam during the year 2016, and the list is still currently open, and out of no where the candidates that took the promotional exam 2019 started to fill in the position before the 2016 candidate, that would be an issue especially seniority pegs is very important on this job. I believe for internal competitive promotional positions, they would have to exhaust the current list first before they move forward onto the newly exam candidates list. I'm just saying this is how I see it. I was called from that list when I was 9 months in probation with OA, but I didn't transfer over at the time because I thought I would restart probation all over. 2019 I had added myself back onto the list because I wanted to take the SLD TA Promotion exam 8702, but after a few talks with others, it wasn't worth losing seniority where I would be at the bottom of the TA/OA bus operator peg list if transferred over and I also heard TA often takes a long time to call off the SLD list. So I'll wait for the next OA SLD. I'm hearing the same thing especially a lot of bus operators putting in their papers.

Most likely since they extended to 2021.

😮 I'm starting to have flashbacks when I use to do the B15 PM schedule during probationary period.

Greeting to you all, First I would like to congratulate all the newly hire students that are undergoing training or on probation. If you have any questions or need help with training procedures or probationary process, please feel free to hit me up.

I wonder how did that go..

If we remember, Flatbush was loaded with RTS buses before the local politicians got involved and force the RTS buses to retire before the originally planned dates. Even after retiring the RTS buses, we started to receive some of the NG’s 3000’s from other depots that were revamping their fleets with upgraded new buses. This year 2020, we still ended up losing 3 - 5 of the 7600’s buses to ENY and some 7300’s to Ulmer park and 2 to Grand I believe. The SBS 40 ft theme buses are painted. The lower part of the buses have to be wrap with the Cuomo blue schemes.

lol... see I'm telling you we are always getting the "Hand me Down" buses lol. But all fairness, we have some other depots that also experience the same situations.

Surface Line Dispatchers: at Assignment Level I, under general supervision, assign Bus Operators to their runs; direct the dispatch and movement of buses within their assigned sector; handle unusual occurrences in service; determine ways to minimize delays; see to the observance of rules and procedures pertaining to bus operations; investigate accidents, unusual occurrences and operational equipment failures; ensure revenue security; keep time records; use computers and handheld electronic devices; prepare reports; and perform related work. Salary/Pay: The current minimum salary for Dispatcher (Surface Transportation) is $76,723 per annum. This rate is subject to change. There are two assignment levels within this class of positions. Promotions will be made to Assignment Level I. After promotion, employees may be assigned to the higher assignment level at the discretion of MTA New York City Transit. ** Roughly $40.00 an hour and is based on 80 hours Bi-weekly and that's not adding any overtime. Top pay is roughly $47 an hour but is subjected to change due to contract renewal. Dispatchers positions : 19A Safety and Training Dispatchers, Command Center dispatchers, Road Operations Dispatchers, Depot Operations dispatchers ** In other words, Dispatchers are field supervisors for bus operators and help enforce MTA rules and regulation within the department of buses. ** In order to become a Surface Line Dispatcher, You must have 3 years of service as a bus operator and take a promotional exam. Superintendents are salaried managerial ranks in MTA fields operations where the salary/pay varies on the department and levels. The starting entry pay depending on the position and department can start from $99k to 160K a year. The different positions and rank within department of buses are: 19A Safety and Training / Accident & Incidents Investigator, Road Operations, Depot operations, Operations Planning, Commend Center Operations. Each ranks are broken down into levels. ((Superintendents, Assist General Superintendents, General Superintendents)) ** Promotion to Superintendent role in Department of Buses, You must be a dispatcher for 3 years first. But now 2020, You can skip from being a dispatcher role and jump right into a Superintendent based on past managerial role experience with great resume background. But its easier as a dispatcher to get promoted into Superintendent role. On top of Superintendents ranks are: Borough Gen Managers, Assist Gen Manager of Road operations, Commend Center Gen Managers, Depots Assist Gen Managers. And finally corporate executive management levels which are Vice presidents , Presidents and CEO/Chairman. Hope that helps 🙂

I just don't understand why FB always gets last loads or hand me down buses within the TA division?

ENY has the New Flyer XDE40 Hybrid Electric bus # 9510 for training purpose. A lot of modication has been implemented on the electric hybrid new flyer bus, such as rear exit sliding doors. Could it be possible in the future Flatbush depot may get some batches of these buses once transit gets more in hand to trade the current NG’s that the bush has?.... NF Hybrid 9510 NF hybrid Electric side view NF Electric Hybrid 9510 NF Electric Hybrid Interior mirror

So it looks like the MTA needs $12B to cover their finances lost. Today the CEO For MTA New York City Transit announced at the board meeting, If the agency don’t receive funds from the federal, the agency will face major service cuts, wages freezes and layoffs. The local 100 TWU that represent the workers for NYCT has step forward and ensure the members that they will fight to the max to avoid any such layoffs. This week the MTA cancelled and will issue refund for applicants that applied for Promotional Surface Line Dispatcher exam #0709. It looks like hiring may soon be place on freeze again. The question is when and how will this effect everyone else that is waiting to be processed?......

Hello members, I know majority of the members are trying to figure out what's going with the hiring process and etc. Transit is undergoing finance crisis due to COVID19 epidemic. But since then transit lost 140+ front line employees due to COVID and still has a percent of employees who were infected by virus are still out of duty. The past months a large percentage of operators started to retire and some of the depots especially in Brooklyn were asking other operators if they wanted to transfer to a specific depot to cover the shortages of staff. Things are moving around and they will soon do a blitz of hiring. So far there have been 2 classes of current bus operators getting promoted into the supervisory role ”Dispatchers” and some current dispatchers moving up into the Superintendent role. That shows you that pretty soon the new hire class will resume soon. I can guarantee the dept of buses needs about 600+ of new bus operators to fill in vacancies. But it looks like they are first working with internal staffing arrangements before they can resume the blitz.

Alert! New route coming soon at night between the hours of Midnight to 5am similar to the B99. Introducing the M99! The M99 will go through the borough of Manhattan 42nd Street to Brooklyn New lots. The route is currently under test by managements and union officials at the respective depot that will provide the service. The Bx99 will be another nightly route to be released after the M99 Stay tune for more information.

That's probably the last bus of the night either doing its last trip of the night, or it was an N.I.S. bus just dead heading back to the depot.

Yes, I almost lost it at the depot lol but the depot chairman said it would only be 4 to 6 buses only.

The 7600’s looks and runs so nice on the B41, and that's one of the reason I picked the B41 again for the summer time.

Just confirmed it! Flatbush losing some of the 7600’s to ENY as we get some of 7100’s from UP. If you ask me that's totally BULL!!!!!!!! I knew this would happen sooner or later!

To be honest, transit doesn't really want to open up the train service from 1am to 5am. If you look at the big picture, they're saving money by cutting train service at night temporarily and the deep COVID cleaning is actually working. Since the COVID deep cleaning started on the trains and buses, NYC has seen a drastic changes with number of cases. So I truly believe the transit system was the main course of the virus spreader.

B99 Route: So yesterday I was trained on the route with a group of other operators. It was a nice an hour and so trip from the junction Brooklyn to Manhattan W 58th. In the city portion of the route, they started to put up the B99 bus stops signage. By this weekend more assign bus stops will be added across Brooklyn. I’m please to announce I will be one of the operators operating on the route when it first launch on my day off as over timE