Ewa Szczawińska joins the lady drivers
What do you think when you see a woman behind the wheel? If you are a woman, what do you hear from the male drivers? Chauvinist stereotypes. "Of course, a woman!" I've heard it a million times, sitting in a car next to my male friends. I have even started to believe it subconsciously, as I realised just before my encounter with the lady tram drivers of Warsaw. Not for them puny vehicles with rubber tyres. These big steel monsters weigh almost 20 tonnes.
After passing through the barriers (Wola tram depot is guarded like Fort Knox), I find myself in a building which is instantly recognisable as belonging to a state institution dating from the '60s; cavernous, empty, wide corridors with grey-painted doors, but short on information. If you turned up without having an appointment, you would not know where to go or who to ask for help. This, of course, is because everyone in the tram depot knows everyone else. And then there's the furniture, the stuff on the recently-renovated first floor would instantly summon back to my mum her youthful days in socialist Poland. But the funny thing is, you can smell the trams, the cigarette smoke in the corridors and somehow detect the scene of the old regime. And find it even pleasant, somehow.
Now to my subject. Lady tram drivers weren't seen that often on the tracks 10 years ago. But now their number is on the increase in all the cities with trams. Everyone is used to seeing happy women drivers at the controls. Male dominance in the control cab has gone forever. Wola is home base for 182 trams, which travelled a combined 9,951,999 kilometres in 2002. There are 259 drivers, and 44 are women. We talked to three.
Ilona Kuberska was a real discovery. She's a pretty student, and yet a tram driver for the past five years. So you may be taken to work by a charming student of IT at the Warsaw Military Academy. How about that? Ilona also speaks good English; she's lively and communicative - and she likes driving trams.
Marzena Steć has worked for two years at the tram depot. She gives the impression of being a reliable driver that you can count on not to make you a public transport accident victim.
Anna Szulińska is a veteran of the rails, a driver for the last 13 years. She is the sort of lady you expect to find sitting quietly in a passenger seat. Matching her up with a large hunk of metal on wheels is somehow rather disconcerting.
What's the attraction of life on the open rails? For all of them it was a matter of the bread of life. Money. Marzena is bringing up two children alone. She loves the job: "I've liked driving everything since my childhood." Ilona had to earn money to help the family. And, of course, she needed the funds to carry her ambitious studies to the end. Anna had to find another job, when her previous company got into financial difficulties.
You may think there is nothing simpler than driving a tram. You keep on the tracks, push two buttons to open or close the doors (or not even this, as aboard the newer trams the passengers operate the doors themselves), push two pedals, and that's it. You couldn't be more wrong. When you take over a tram, you take the responsibility for two carriages packed with passengers, and for other road users. The men behind the car wheel drive like madmen.
"The work is stressful. You need to be careful all the time. You have to have a lot of patience," Marzena says.
"You have to like it to be a good tram driver," Anna adds. "You must use your imagination and alertness. There have been many situations when we saved car drivers' lives." Females are bad drivers? Yeah, right.
According to Ilona, whom the other two ladies say is optimistic, passengers are happy to see women driving a tram. Some give greetings before Christmas or Easter. But most are rude. Sometimes Anna gets fed up with the passengers' behaviour.
Now to the compensations. Frankly, it is decent money the girls are getting, especially in the present job market. But the downsides of public service are not so attractive. They get up at 3 a.m., when they start the shift at 4 a.m. Or, on the job until midnight, they have no time for a social life.
There are pleasant experiences, too. A few years ago, when Marzena was driving tram numbers 25 and 9, a man got on at Hala Banacha with flowers for her. But she never accepted them. Poor paramour.
The tram-driving course lasts three months. The average take-home pay is zł. 1,700 per month, net. The depot employs some MA's. If ever I lost my job, I wonder whether I might not just pay a call on the Wola depot.
Vital statistics:
A tram 105N2K/2000 (a new banana-yellow one), is 13.950 metres long and 2.354 metres high. It can stand a maximum temperature of 40°C in the shade and a minimum temperature of -30°C. It can serve the city for 30 years. There are 800 million tram passengers in Warsaw every year. The city network is one of the biggest in Europe.
