RTD Declines to Sidetrack Faulty Buses

Southern California Rapid Transit District directors, despite learning that a dozen more buses have developed cracked rear suspension frames, sidetracked an effort Thursday to pull their entire stock of the trouble-plagued buses off the streets.

The board members--relying on assurances from the buses’ builder, Neoplan USA Corp., and their own staff that the buses are safe--rebuffed a call by board member Nate Holden for an immediate recall of all 415 Neoplan buses.

“If we have a (bus) accident, we’re going to have a problem explaining this away,” Holden said in pushing his colleagues to demand an immediate recall by the bus manufacturer.

“We’ve got a lot of bugs in this vehicle, and it’s got to be debugged,” he said.

But Holden was able to persuade only one of his colleagues, John F. Day, to support his motion, and the board instead voted to send the proposal to one of its committees for further study.

While Holden claimed that the move was tantamount to sending the matter to “a graveyard,” other directors said the delay was needed to keep the RTD from taking a precipitous move on the Neoplan issue.

“We don’t want to get into an adversarial position with the company. We want the cracking problem resolved, and they have not found the cause yet,” said Nikolas Patsaouras, RTD president, explaining why he voted to defer action on the Holden proposal.

In either case, the RTD action and debate reflected a deepening dilemma over the Neoplan buses: The district would be hard-pressed to do without the buses, which make up one-fifth of its rush-hour fleet. Yet the district is gambling that it will not have a major safety--and liability--problem if it continues using the buses and repairing them one by one as problems become apparent.

RTD General Manager John A. Dyer told board members Thursday that 94 buses--up from the 81 reported a week ago--have cracks in the A-frame of the rear suspension system, but only one is still out of service.

“The buses are operative. We have had no major failure whatsoever,” Dyer said.

He added that the district has stepped up its monitoring of Neoplan buses, and that the buses will remain on the road after assurances from the company that the buses can be safely operated “provided the crack does not exceed 3 1/2 inches. . . .”

The Colorado-based Neoplan company has been making temporary repairs on the buses--grinding out and rewelding the cracks--at the district’s Van Nuys facility. But a permanent solution, Dyer said, could take more than a year.

However, Holden, an appointee of Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, argued that the district should stop being “wishy-washy” and pressure the company to comply with a federal request that Neoplan voluntarily recall its buses.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in a letter last month to Neoplan officials, referred to the cracked support frames and problems with defroster units on buses as “safety-related defects” that pose a potential hazard unless replaced or repaired quickly.

The federal agency warned that problems with the A-frame could cause a driver to lose control of the bus, noting that the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority reported an “A-frame collapsing” last August. The agency also said problems with a defroster unit on another Neoplan bus in Washington were blamed for an electrical fire.

In his report Thursday, Dyer said, “The defroster deficiency has been noted on only a few district buses” and said the problem can be remedied with minor repairs.

Neoplan officials have denied that any safety problems exist and, in a letter to the RTD, reiterated that stance.