Runners

Something happened today which has led me to writing about ‘runners’. Not runners in the regular sense of the word but in the bus driver sense of any intending passenger who is not at the stop but sees a bus they want and runs at it. When you start bus driving every old hand of a bus driver will tell you ‘never stop for a runner’ …….. and mostly they’re right! I used to stop for runners in Winchester on routes with a 10 minutely service. Almost without exception the runner would board and ask “Are you going to X ?” And, of course, the destination indicated in great big letters on the front of the bus quite the opposite! If they really had delayed the correct bus it was a 50/50 whether a �20 note would be offered for an 80p fare, or they spent the next 5 minutes searching for their purse/pass/whatever.

But now I’m mainly doing a run with a frequency measured in hours I do stop for runners. Today, I had already pulled off my stand at Salisbury Bus Station and was heading for the exit when the runner appeared, arms waving, in the middle of the exit. This runner was an elderly lady, rather than run her over I pointed to an empty stand just before the exit and picked her up. “Thank you for stopping” she said. “No problem” I said trying to sound really sincere :-)

When we got to Winchester she was the last to leave the bus and handed me a �5 note saying “Thank you for stopping”! I said that there really was no need for her to do that and she said “There really was no need for you stop”. I argued a bit with her saying that a pound for a cup of tea would be lovely but she insisted on the fiver :-)

Just before writing this I typed ‘bus driving stop for runners’ into to google out of idle curiosity and up came this blog. I’d not come across this blog before and it looks worth further reading.