North County Transit Follows Fine Line on Bus Routes

North County Transit District officials and Carlsbad school district trustees worked out a compromise Thursday to allow continued busing of schoolchildren without threatening the bus company’s federal subsidies.

“Let’s see how far we can go in accommodating the community without breaking any federal laws,” suggested county Supervisor Paul Eckert, a transit district director. “We can modify the routes (to serve school-age riders) until we are told otherwise.”

Bus officials had dropped several new detours into Carlsbad’s fast-growing new subdivisions in the eastern and southern parts of the city when advised by NCTD counsel Dwight Worden that $3.7 million in federal Urban Mass Transportation Administration funds might be withheld if special school bus service was provided.

“It is my opinion that NCTD may not deviate from normal routes, create special bus stops just for schoolchildren, or place special buses in service for exclusive school purposes without violating the UMTA regulations,” Worden ruled. “Violation of these regulations is not, per se, ‘illegal,’ but does jeopardize the district’s federal funding.”

He said federal regulations specifically prevent a federally subsidized bus company from competing with private companies for special school busing services.

Transit district directors Eckert and Ann Kulchin met with Carlsbad school trustees Edward Switzer and Julie Nyegaard Thursday afternoon to strike the compromise.

NCTD General Manager Richard Fifer said that staff members from the school district and bus company will meet to work out route changes that can be added to the service to bring Carlsbad youngsters closer to their front doors without adding appreciably to the scheduled route times or costs.

The transit district assumed the school bus routes from the school district during a budget crunch that began in 1977 and has been operating them since then along with regular service.

Complaints from bus patrons and from the California Highway Patrol that buses were dropping off children on school grounds and were preventing passengers other than schoolchildren to ride some buses brought the issue to the attention of the transit board.

Detours into neighborhoods were dropped by the district this fall, forcing some youngsters in the La Costa-Spinnaker Hills neighborhoods to walk considerable distances to a bus stop on El Camino Real, a busy highway. The same situation was reported by parents in Calavera Hills and other eastern suburbs.