January 2004

Briefly speaking: Bus service powered by students

	Sophomore Heather Palmer is a driver with the Unitrans bus service. (Debbie Aldridge/UC Davis)

Heather Palmer has a job that would cause some to shudder with fear.

The UC Davis sophomore drives a 35-foot Unitrans bus on a route that fills her vehicle with scores of junior-high and high-school students.

But Palmer, a biochemistry and molecular biology major, says she looks forward to greeting her passengers. "I really enjoy the kids. I tell them all good morning," she says. "I've gotten to know them, and they say they appreciate my attitude."

Palmer is one of almost 200 employees at student-operated Unitrans, which provides transportation service primarily to the campus and its students, but also to the Davis community. There are student drivers, conductors, marketing people, maintenance workers and supervisors.

"I'm really impressed with how well it's run for being a student organization," Palmer says.

Intensive training

A lot of training goes into preparing drivers for the responsibility of transporting hundreds of passengers each day.

Palmer, who first started driving for Unitrans in fall 2002, recalls taking about 15 hours of classroom orientation and spending about 50 hours driving with a student trainer before taking the wheel alone. She now holds a Class B commercial driver license.

Anthony Palmere, interim general manager of Unitrans and one of only about a dozen non-students employed by the operation, says that intense driver training makes Unitrans drivers better drivers overall.

And then there's the experience that comes from working for a service that 20,000 passengers a day count on for transportation. "They get into good work habits with punctuality and customer service and also having that responsibility of driving people," he says.

Unitrans is now hiring drivers. The deadline to apply to become a driver for the spring quarter is Feb. 4.

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