An interview with Liam Fennell, TfL Bus Rescheduler
DG: Hi Liam, tell us what you do. Liam: Hi, I'm the guy who slows the buses down. DG: I've always wondered who that was. Liam: It's quite a responsibility! DG: So how does that work?
Liam: You know when you're on a bus, pootling nicely towards your destination? And then the bus pulls over and you hear the dreaded message "The driver has been told to wait at this stop to even out the service"? That's me, that is. DG: You're the one who recorded the message? Liam: No, I'm the man who tells the driver to wait. DG: Literally the most evil man in London. Liam: Oh I wouldn't quite go that far. Somebody's got to do it.
DG: Where are you based? Liam: I work in at the main TfL building in Southwark. I could do it from home but in this job it's all about speed of connection so it's best to do it in the office. I have a great view of the Imperial War Museum. DG: How big is the team? Liam: No it's just me. It's quite a responsibility, you know.
DG: I always thought the drivers just decided to stop and wait of their own accord. Liam: Oh no, somebody actually instructs them to do it and that someone is me. DG: Is there a secret radio earpiece or something? Liam: Not since 2007, no. Nowadays it's all done by electronics and transmitted from a central location. That small box to the left of the driver, that's where it all happens. If I want the driver to wait I send a message to the vehicle and a small orange light lights up. DG: I've seen it but I've never seen it, if you know what I mean. Liam: Well you wouldn't normally see the light light up, not if you're a passenger, it's quite low down.
DG: How does the driver know how long to wait? Liam: We used to do it by flashing the light once for one minute, twice for two minutes and so on. But that got quite imprecise - drivers weren't counting the longer waits properly - so now there's a digital display. DG: I can see that would be an improvement. Liam: It's very clever, it counts down from however long the wait is, and when it hits zero the driver can close the doors and carry on again.
DG: What's the longest you've ever told a driver to wait? Liam: Normally it's one or two minutes, otherwise you risk annoying the passengers. I once had to stall a bus in Hounslow by nine minutes, but that was when I was new to the job and now I'd do that by ordering three three-minuters at consecutive stops. DG: To be fair that's also really annoying. Liam: Yes, but also less likely to inspire a passenger mutiny... three minutes is about as far as you can stretch it.
DG: Why do you do it? Liam: Two reasons, but mainly it's the timetable. If a bus gets too far ahead of schedule it throws the timetable out of sync. DG: But this is London and nobody looks at the timetable, they check on an app or just turn up. Liam: We have an entire department dedicated to writing timetables and they spend ages juggling spreadsheets against best fit congestion scenarios. It's my job to make sure their hard work isn't wasted if the traffic's too light or too few passengers flag the buses down.
DG: And the second reason? Liam: Maintenance of headway. Same as it ever was. DG: Please explain. Liam: It's all about the gaps between buses... you never want them to get too long. My job is literally to "even out the service", that's why it says so in the announcement. If it's supposed to be a ten minute frequency then ten minutes it should be. Every time I see it's got to twelve or thirteen I contact the driver in front and get them to slow down. Sometimes I get an itchy trigger finger on eleven, but my boss considers that to be overkeen. DG: What happens if the gaps get too short? Liam: Well then I slow down the bus behind. There's always a way, and it always involves making journeys longer. DG: Wouldn't it be better to improve the passenger experience instead? Liam: I can't speed up the buses, I can only slow them down.
DG: Hang on, are you monitoring all the bus routes in London simultaneously? Liam: It used to be like that. I'd scan round the capital from Harrow to Hornchurch and if I saw a bus getting ahead of itself I'd slow it down. Now we have a computer monitoring all 8000 vehicles and it flashes up the worst behaved buses for me to contact, it's much more efficient. DG: Sounds like a job AI would be perfect for! Liam: Technically yes. But in reality the human element is crucial, otherwise you'd just end up slowing down half the buses in London and everyone would be furious.
DG: How do you justify delaying hundreds of thousands of passengers by hundreds of thousands of minutes every year? Liam: Imagine if buses just progressed according to traffic conditions, it'd be anarchy. In a worst case scenario passengers might reach their destinations before they were supposed to and that would never do. DG: I've never complained about that myself. Liam: Yes but that's because you're already on the bus. What you never see are all the buses I've slowed down before you boarded them and which you wouldn't have caught otherwise. DG: Point taken. Liam: My best work always goes unnoticed.
DG: What's your favourite bus to slow down? Liam: Anything on a dual carriageway. I love to imagine the faces of the passengers who thought they were going to speed to their destination impressively fast, but then I've made them wait at the end of it. DG: How do you sleep at night? Liam: I often don't. Some nightbuses get well ahead of themselves on those empty roads, and someone has to be there to stop them.
DG: I guess you don't realise how incredibly annoying all this is. Liam: Oh I don't use London buses, they're much too slow. I travel everywhere by train. DG: Hang on, do you even exist? Liam: No I'm a figment of your imagination, a personification conjured up so you have someone to curse every time a bus driver pulls over to the kerb and flaps his doors. DG: You're right, this entire interview has been a fictional outpouring inspired by repeated frustration. Liam: The driver has been told to wait at this stop to even out the service, again and again and again, forever.
