Deirikobin (in-service garage trips)

A trip that carries passengers while doubling as a run out of or back into the garage. It runs signed for a destination such as a garage rather than the route's usual terminus, so if you are getting off within the section it covers, it effectively adds to the number of buses you can take.

What deirikobin means

A deirikobin is a trip that carries passengers while doubling as the movement out of the garage into service, or back to the garage at the end of it. A bus that leaves the garage in the morning and starts revenue service on the spot is a 出庫便 (shukkobin, a pull-out trip); one that takes passengers along the way as it heads home after finishing service is a 入庫便 (nyukobin, a pull-in trip); together they are called deirikobin. It is a neat piece of operating economy: a stretch the bus has to cover anyway is put to work carrying passengers. Once you know how it comes about, the skew toward pull-out trips in the morning and pull-in trips at night makes natural sense.

What those buses that only go partway really are

Scan the timetable at a stop and you may notice a scattering of trips, mostly around morning and night, whose destination differs from that of the great majority. Trips signed ◯◯車庫行き (for a garage, shako) or ◯◯営業所行き (for a depot office, eigyosho) are the classic examples, and most are pull-in trips working their way back to the garage. Because they do not run through to the usual terminus, they are a bus you cannot use if you want to ride near the end of the route, but for anyone getting off at a stop along the way they are simply one more usable departure.

With this knowledge, the timetable looks different. If the stop where you get off comes before the garage, you may count the garage trips in too, so the number of buses effectively available to you rises. The thinner the service in a given part of the day, the more your wait hinges on whether you can count that one extra departure. Conversely, board without checking the destination and the stop in front of a garage partway along becomes your terminus, leaving you to get off there and wait for the next bus all over again. Make a habit of asking "how far does this trip go?" whenever you see a destination other than the usual one. How to check is explained in our article on how to read bus destination signs.

How this differs from kaiso

The term easily confused with deirikobin is kaiso, running out of service. Both involve movement between the garage and the routes in service, but the decisive difference is whether passengers are carried. A kaiso movement carries no passengers, shows 回送 on the destination sign, and does not call at stops. A deirikobin, short though its destination may be, is revenue service, running with a route number and a destination displayed. When you spot a bus heading for a garage, remember it this way: if the sign reads 回送 you cannot board, and if it gives the name of a stop you can.