Currently, Coast Mountain buses have a system called TMAC (Transit Management and Communication designed and manufactured by Cubic) installed. This system presents the Operator with route details, including on-time performance, control of destination boards.
Data for this is culled from Trapeze, software which includes features like route planning, timetable creation, blocking, runcutting, and rostering.
In the era before mobile communications, data was compiled from mainframe computers, and printed on paper. This was inserted in a polythene sleeve. Known as the “paddle”, it is still used, and taken to every bus when leaving the yard, though today, it is there just in case the TMAC malfunctions. (Although in cases of diagreement between it and TMAC, the paddle is considered correct, mainly because being paper, Road Supervisors can easily scribble notes and comments on the sheets.) Today, in this sleeve are various additional information pages, which add rigidity. In the past, that wasn’t the case, and a strip of cardboard was inserted for that purpose. That is in most depots — North Vancouver had a unique solution, as Jason Sharpe and myself discovered when archiving some paddles. Clerks at NVTC cut up expired plastic car card advertisements! Jason collected some of these and intends taping them back together to recreate the period ads!
(Back when CN provided passenger rail service, this car card appeared on buses.)