The first job I had was a split shift. I think it’s safe to say most people don’t find this a convenient schedule to work.
And because commuting traffic has two big spikes, split shifts are a big headache in providing transit. Driving a bus, a train, or a ferry isn’t like waiting on table at the college cafeteria- the people who drive our transit vehicles are highly skilled, and, once qualified for their routes, hard to replace.
Highly skilled and hard-to-replace workers in our society expect and usually get health care benefits, sick days, vacations and so forth. This, combined with the morning and evening surges of transit, means that marginal services are expensive. If your traffic load doubles or triples during the rush hour and you need lots of bus drivers working split shifts, you may not be making a profit on the huge demand.
In some countries you can overload the bus by 30%, refuse to pay the driver extra and not provide any benefits, and live with the service shortfalls and accidents. This is why BRT that works in South America might not work here.
This is also why WSF has so much trouble with passenger ferries- they can’t reach an agreement with the Inland Boatmen’s Union about split shifts.
Like the suspension or the driveshaft of the bus, this is an issue that usually hides below the floor of a transit discussion. But it’s never very far below the floor.
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