Seniors Series: Longtime bus driver retires after 40 years with LAVTA

After four decades with LAVTA, 80-year-old bus operator Diane Farner retired in March this year.

And as a longtime staple in the Tri-Valley, Farner has seen plenty of transition, from bus technological developments to change with her passengers as she watched them grow from her bus-driving days within school districts, to her time with Wheels.

Farner is retiring — somewhat reluctantly — due to medical reasons, she said. When looking back on her bus driving days, Farner is glad of the experience, training and technical knowledge she has gained.

“Wheels is a great organization they have good people, they have people that try and help, and understand,” she said. “I feel I’ve had a great life with them, all the agencies I’ve worked with. I am very fortunate and very lucky I’ve come out of it knowing I did help a lot of people.”

Diane Farner and her family moved up to the region in 1971, with her husband working in Alameda as a plumber at the Naval Air Station and later continuing on with the civil service.

Farner herself continued working, all the while raising two boys.

She began driving for Livermore schools in 1978, when she was working as a noon supervisor there. She later worked for the Dublin school district, moved on to work for Livermore’s Rideo bus service, then began working for the Livermore Amador Valley Transit Authority in 1987.

Farner recalls the early days of the Livermore Amador Valley Transit Authority, established in 1985 and continuously changing the name until it settled on the name “Wheels” a year later. The name “Wheels” came from a bus rider and Las Positas college student at the time, she said, who won a contest creating the idea.

“We were not over at the LAVTA office, where it is now,” she remembers. “We later moved to the offices on Route 10 in 1990. It was under the first general manager, Vic Sood who had LAVTA offices built over on Route 10 Ave. to be by the Valley Memorial Hospital, when they got built.”

Communication was a struggle before radios were available for bus drivers, Farner said. “When LAVTA went into Pleasanton and Dublin it was nice and convenient for bus riders, because the bus drivers knew the area they were going in — at the time they didn’t have radios,” she said. “When we finally did get radios we would call dispatch, and dispatch would hold the buses for us when we would get into where we were going.”

It was up to the public to help the bus drivers in the event of a bus breakdown, or a disruption with fellow passengers. At the time, AC Transit didn’t have radios either, Farner said.

“We would get out waving in front of the bus to flag them down, to stop them, telling them we had passengers for them,” she said. “AC Transit was good about helping us — we were helping them.”

Drivers were required to have Red Cross training, Farner said, adding, “We even saved people’s lives.” According to Farner, medical problems were common, often due to heart attacks. Drivers would call in for an ambulance to rescue a rider, or wave down an officer; sometimes they would even change their route to drive the rider to the hospital.

“It was extremely convenient just having the other riders step out, put the person with the medical issue on the board or gurney, and get them inside the hospital,” she said.

At that time the bus riders weren’t supposed to go off route, but according to Farner if they didn’t, “It might have been too late for a lot of the people that needed help along the line there. We did the very best we could.”

Even animals were considered — an animal medical center by the transit center cared for creatures injured by the bus.

“There were a lot of things you were doing helping different people out, Wheels is a people-to-people program, always has been,” Farner said.

Farner will miss the people she’s worked with, she says, because she grew up with them. “I wish all the people who are there good luck going on to other places,” she said. “I wish my managers with LAVTA, I wish them luck, I only wish the very best for them.”