Ask a Bus Driver

By Sam Smith

Hello Metro riders! My name is Sam Smith, and I’ve been a Metro driver since early 2013. I hear all sorts of questions from passengers, friends, and fellow TRU members on a range of topics related to my job. This column is dedicated to answering some of those questions. Anything you want to know – Why do the poles come off the wires so often? Where do you pick up the bus? – just ask! Send questions to sam@transitriders.org.

Dear Bus Driver Sam,

I’ve heard rumors that Metro drivers go to the bathroom in cups and bottles. Is that true? – Randy, Central District

Thanks for submitting the very first question to this column, Randy! I’m so glad you asked, because I love talking about bathroom breaks for bus drivers. It’s perhaps the most challenging logistical aspect of the job. I could go on a lengthy rant about the difficult labor conditions that recently resulted in Metro being fined by Labor & Industries, but before I jump into the bad and the ugly, allow me to brag about some of the things I love about bus driver bathrooms.

The Good

When I was first hired, I was outfitted with the usual items you may suspect: a collection of uniforms, employee handbook, county ID badge, etc. What stood out most to me was a fairly standard-looking metal house key. At this point, having been through a month of training, I already knew that this key served no purpose in starting a bus engine or entering the Metro base, so what was it for?

“It’s your T-key. T as in Toilet.”

Aha! Metro had just handed me access to secret bathrooms all over the county. These bathrooms, or “Comfort Stations” as they’re known, are generally located at Transit Centers or in small, stand-alone structures at the ends of routes. In our route books, which display maps and driving directions for each route in the system, there is a list of comfort stations accessible along the route. Ideally, there would be one of these at the end of every route. Where there’s not a Metro facility, Metro instead may have arranged with a local business or church to allow us to access their employee or customer bathroom. For example, at the end of Route 2 in Madrona Park, there is a Metro comfort station built right alongside the lake, but at the end of the 14 in Mt. Baker where there is no Metro structure, my T-key unlocks the front door of a church about one block away.

When the system works, it works great. I love my secret bathroom key. I have definitely taken advantage of it on my off time as well. During a long bike trip last summer through rural east King County, nature called as I was near the Woodinville Park & Ride, so I strolled on over to the comfort stations, and, after first determining an on-duty operator wasn’t in need, I took care of business and was on my way!

The Bad

So in a fantasy world, there’s always a comfort station at the end of every line, accessible 24/7. But as you may have guessed, we’re far from this fairly reasonable scenario. Oftentimes our schedules are so tight and unrealistic that we don’t have time to pee. For instance, the scheduled time between ending one trip and turning around to start the next, referred to as “recovery time”, in my experience has been as little as five minutes. (To be fair, I once had a schedule with recovery time of 40 minutes, but in my experience, less than ten minutes is the norm.) So if I am running more than five minutes behind schedule, that means I’m already late before I even start my next trip! And guess what, our schedules are so Pollyanna that they don’t really take into account things like traffic, loading and unloading passengers, stop signs, speed limits, etc. So if I’m already running late and I have to pee, what should I do? Run out and use the comfort station, further stranding all my future passengers (and further compounding my lateness), or do I hold it and try to catch up on my schedule? Neither one is a good option.

This is can be worse depending on the length of our next trip. As you’re probably well aware, Metro loves its through-routing, that is, inbound routes that travel through Downtown Seattle and come out the other end as another outbound route. Routes C & D are linked in this way, as are the 5 & 21, the 24 & 124 and several others. There are many ways in which this makes sense: Metro doesn’t need to find as many layover parking spots Downtown and it allows easier transfers for some passengers. However, buses traveling a farther distance are more likely to run behind schedule, so one passenger’s easier transfer is several other riders’ very late transfer. For drivers, this means driving essentially twice as far without an opportunity for a pee break. This past summer, when I drove the 24 & 124, that meant driving on local roads from Tukwila International Blvd Station through Georgetown, Airport Way, slogging through Downtown during rush hour and peak tourist season, Seattle Center, the Magnolia Bridge, and wiggling up and down Magnolia until finally reaching Discovery Park about two hours later. And again, this was in the summer, in a non-air conditioned coach, so I was drinking lots of water to stay hydrated and healthy.

Beyond unrealistic schedules and recovery times, for routes whose comfort stations are inside of local businesses, say the Route 26 which terminates near a Starbucks in Green Lake, those bathrooms aren’t of much use when that business is closed. And given that many routes operate later than midnight, this puts many drivers in a bind.

I should mention at this point that Metro recognizes this as a problem, and at least in the interest of covering their own legal butts, have language permitting us to use a bathroom whenever and wherever we need it, be it at the end of the line with plenty of recovery time, or mid-route with a packed-to-capacity passenger load. So while it is somewhat comforting to know that I won’t get fired for temporarily abandoning a bus filled with dozens of riders, it is just about the last thing any of us wants to do. That being said, I’ve done it before, and in the very serious interest of staving off bladder infections, I’ve learned that sometimes I have to put myself before getting my riders to their destinations more punctually, even though I hate the thought of it!

The Ugly

I’ll conclude with a couple of personal anecdotes, which while ugly at the time, are pretty funny in retrospect. Randy, if you’ve made it this far, I’ll finally answer your question. My first week on the job, I had a layover Downtown and needed to pee. I found another Metro operator laying over down the block and asked him where the official comfort station was. After looking suspiciously over his shoulders to make sure no one else was listening, he confided to me, in a whisper, that I should just pee in a bottle in the backseat, assuring me that as long as I’m not visible to the street, I won’t get in trouble. “And what if I don’t want to pee in a bottle?” He pointed to a coffee shop a couple of blocks away. Yikes, I thought to myself. Remind me not to turn into that dude.

Well… One early morning, after finishing service outside a school near Shoreline, and after a 16oz coffee had run its course through my system, I considered stopping at the school’s bathroom, but there wasn’t a particularly convenience place for me to park the coach without significantly inconveniencing other buses and cars. So I decided I could hold it for the 20 minute drive on the freeway back to the Metro base in SoDo, where I could drop off the bus, use the base restroom, and go home. On this particular day, traffic was completely stopped, and I was stranded for over an hour on the freeway. I grew increasingly desperate, and after rejecting several worse ideas that popped in my head, I ultimately grabbed the now-empty 16oz cup from my trash bin, set the emergency break, ran to the articulated (accordion) middle section, kneeled down very low so as to be out of sight of my neighbors, stuck in adjacent lanes, and had one of the most relieving urinations of my life. This is when I learned that drinking 16 ounces of coffee can somehow generate more than 16 ounces of urine. I had to halt midstream, awkwardly run to the front of the bus with a full cup, open the door, empty, and repeat.

Fortunately, the bus was empty. Several months later, another day of terrible rush hour freeway traffic, but this time with a bus full of commuters! As traffic worsened, it slowly dawned on me that I wasn’t going to make it to the end of the line. Then, even worse, I realized I wouldn’t be able to make it to my first stop off the freeway. We’ve all experienced the discomfort of having to go really badly. It hadn’t been since my childhood that my situation had worsened to the level beyond that. My mental faculties were slowly fading away, I was sweating profusely, my palms clamming up, and twisting my legs as much as possible in a futile attempt to distract from the pain — in other words, qualities you don’t want in someone operating a 15-ton machine responsible for the safety of dozens of people. Again, I went through a series of bad options, including wetting my pants. I would have if I thought my clothes and the driver’s seat would have absorbed everything, but out of fear that a noticeable puddle would have emerged on the floor, I opted out. Again, this is all occurring while we’re essentially not moving on the freeway. Finally, I set the emergency break and opened the front door. I told the riders that I needed to check something under the front of the bus — nothing alarming but since we’re stopped I might as well check. I got into pushup position beneath a couple bikes on the front rack and let loose. I got back on the bus, no one batted an eye, and I went about my business as if I hadn’t just peed underneath a bus on the freeway.

So Randy, in answer to your question, yes, we sometimes pee in cups and bottles. I carry an empty plastic bottle in my work bag, just in case. But I would happily never use it again.