During the summer of 1969, Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, thousands flocked to Woodstock, and a cab driver named Tom Conway decided he’d give bus driving a try. More than 45 years later, Conway is still behind the wheel and is officially UTA’s longest-serving employee.
After a 10-day training class, Conway started driving for Salt Lake City Lines on September 2, 1969. Unlike driving a cab, the pay was steady and reliable, Tom said – and at $2.71 per hour, it was a decent wage for the time. Although he’d had plenty of driving experience, his time as a cabbie hadn’t prepared him for navigating narrow turns behind the wheel of a bus with no power steering.
“I remember it being kind of scary for me to handle those long buses and make right hand turns without running over the curb or hitting a telephone pole. Like a lot of new drivers, I was behind schedule a lot until I started to get more experience,” Conway said.
In those early days, Conway said, he and other extra board operators were asked to distribute fliers encouraging people to support their cities in joining a special transportation district, which would eventually become UTA.
The first UTA bus operator uniforms were identical to the ones mailmen wore, Conway said, except for a few shoulder patches. He wore long-sleeved shirts bearing his 117 badge number and a tie in the winter and short-sleeved shirts in the summer, removing his tie only when he could no longer stand the heat in his non-air-conditioned bus. Eventually, he said, those mailman uniforms gave way to ones with bell-bottom pants.
UTA’s first few decades gave Conway the chance to drive a variety of bus models, including buses with seats that all faced the center aisle, articulated buses and buses designed to look like trolleys. Conway even got the chance to serve as a school bus driver, when UTA briefly provided service to local school districts in the early 1970s. Conway recalls parking his bus diagonally in the street to block vehicle traffic while the children boarded and exited the bus. The makeshift school buses had no flashing lights, so Conway would turn on one of his blinkers to signal caution to drivers.
“I remember that once we got out of the school bus business, drivers were glad not to be saddled with that responsibility any more,” he said.
Conway stayed with UTA over the years because it was a steady job with good benefits and pay. He said that as a naturally shy person, interacting with riders helped him “wear off the rough edges.” In 1980, it even helped him meet his wife.
“She was a passenger (who would ride to) Research Park. We got to talking and I could tell that she was kind of attracted to me and I was attracted to her. We started dating, and it wasn’t too long before we were engaged,” he said.
Conway retired in 2005 and did part-time work for charter companies before coming back to UTA just a few years later. He’s logged nearly 43 total years of service for UTA and has no plans to retire anytime soon.
“We like the pay, like the benefits and hope to stay here as long as possible,” he said.
If you’re interested in a career as a UTA bus operator, visit our Be a Bus Operator page.