From time to time words and phrases may be not readily understood by you, my dear reader, and so please see below. If your confusion isn’t relieved, please send me an email, or mention the word or phrase in a comment ❤️
bus driver – one who drives a bus
morning tripper – part of a shift, usually only 2-3 hours in length. May or may not be part of a split shift (see below)
yard at the depot, where all of the buses are parked in rows and columns
OTC Oakridge Transit Centre, now demolished, * the Vancouver bus depot of then BC Transit
NIS Not In Service, when a bus is moving between the depot and the terminus or visa versa, the signage of the bus is NOT IN SERVICE, meaning there is no passenger pickup nor drop off
Cook and 3 Road intersections are referred to by the cross street. The first street is the street the bus is on, the second is the nearest cross street. Sometimes there is also the abbreviation ns (near side) or fs (far side) “Cook and 3 Rd ns means the bus stop closest to 3 Road, but not yet past
407 Gilbert a bus route is often referred to as the number, and the name. This route is north/south generally, and so the two directions are SB (south bound) as Gilbert, and NB as Bridgeport or Brighouse
coaches a bus
pretrip before a bus is brought into service on a given day, it must be subjected to a specific set of tests in order to determine its road worthiness in terms of safety
rush hour this seemingly counter intuitive term means actually that the most people are out going to/from their work place, but because of the huge quantities of travellers it’s the slowest way to get from A to B
paddle each bus is assigned a route, and each route has several buses running on it, all with a separate time table. Each bus on a route is given a block number (aka Run number) to differentiate it from the other buses on the same route. Each of these blocks has a specific set of times that tells the driver when to leave the timing points
split shift a full shift divided into two, not necessarily equal times
2nd half the second part of a split shift, not necessarily exactly half
Cambie/Oak there are some routes which are lumped together and have 2 or more route numbers associated with them * the Cambie/Oak was the “15 Cambie” and the “17 Oak” the 17 started at Marine and Oak, and headed north into down town Vancouver, and would emerge from DT as a 15 Cambie, the only difference being specific streets etc once in downtown area
Block a particular schedule out of all the schedules on a particular route is a block, as in block of times * these are numbered
Run same as “block”
Timing points each block has intersections listed across the top, and beneath these are the times when the bus must leave, no sooner. These times loosely correspond to the times on a bus schedule. They constitute the earliest times a bus may pass by that particular stop
Running Down Vimy 