Troubles With Shuttle Buses Spur Step-Up in Inspections

Nearly a quarter of the shuttle buses and vans ferrying passengers to John Wayne Airport and other spots in Orange County had serious mechanical problems during recent inspections, and state authorities are stepping up efforts to enforce safety standards.

One California Highway Patrol official said authorities hope a get-tough approach will “prevent the kind of tragedy” that claimed seven lives July 31 when a bus full of Girl Scouts plunged off a winding Palms Springs road when its brakes apparently failed.

Two surprise inspections of shuttle buses and vans last month in Orange County ended with nearly every vehicle getting a ticket for mechanical or paperwork problems and about one out of four being ordered off the road for safety violations, CHP officials said last week.

The mechanical problems were so bad on nine of the 81 vehicles inspected that they had to be towed away for repairs, while a dozen others were fixed by mechanics called to the scene, authorities said. In one case, a tow truck dispatched to help was itself inspected, failed the test and towed away.

Vehicles were found to have inadequate brakes, damaged steering systems, defective taillights and a variety of other problems. One van’s steering was so loose that it “probably looked like a drunk going down the road,” said CHP Sgt. Bill Snell. “It was just an accident looking for a place to happen.”

The special inspections, conducted at John Wayne Airport on July 12 and the Anaheim Convention Center on July 26, were part of a stepped-up effort by state and local law enforcement agencies to keep tabs on the fleet of shuttle vans that descend each day on the airport.

Although the CHP regularly inspects buses that carry 10 or more passengers, there is no state agency mandated to routinely check vans carrying fewer than 10.

But officials with the state Public Utilities Commission, which licenses door-to-door shuttle vans often seen at airports, have in recent months been attempting to respond to complaints from the public by requesting surprise safety inspections at sites up and down California.

Orange County actually fared far better than several other areas. An inspection at Los Angeles International Airport last month resulted in half the vans being pulled off the road. A spot check of shuttle vans at San Francisco International Airport last year yielded like results, prompting officials at the facility to start their own inspection program.

A similar effort is being discussed at LAX, but authorities at Orange County’s John Wayne Airport say they lack the manpower and other resources to regularly inspect vans operated by the 87 different firms there.

“We have no plans to do that at this time,” said Courtney Wiercioch, an airport spokeswoman.

Snell said inspections have been held in the past by the CHP, with one at John Wayne Airport just last spring netting a large number of violators. But he said the PUC wants the enforcement effort to be accelerated in the months to come, with authorities keeping an especially close watch on any shuttle firms that prove to be regular violators.

On Saturday, managers of six of the shuttle services serving the airport were unavailable for comment, employees said.

During the sweep at John Wayne Airport, which stretched from 2 to 10 p.m., a dozen inspectors went over 55 vehicles. It resulted in 123 different violations being found, ranging from bad brakes or steering to simple vehicle registration problems. In 10 cases, drivers were cited for holding the wrong class of license to operate a van or bus.

Six vehicles were taken out of service after the inspections because of mechanical problems. But in each case the errors were corrected at the scene and the buses or vans were allowed to go on their way. Three vehicles--two vans and a tour bus--were towed because their mechanical problems were so severe.

At the Anaheim Convention Center, authorities conducted 26 inspections between 6 a.m. and 2 p.m. and found 17 vehicles with unsafe steering, 14 with bad brakes and dozens of other mechanical glitches. Four big tour buses were towed away, and half a dozen other vehicles were put out of service temporarily until they were fixed at the scene.

“Some of it is very dangerous, but on the whole it’s mostly just maintenance work they can fix. They just don’t take the time,” Snell said. “It’s just like things on your car that you’ve been putting off fixing.”

Snell said no single van or bus operator stood out by earning alarmingly more violations than any other. The names of the various operators tagged during the sweep were not immediately available, but he said the list included just about every van or bus company normally seen at John Wayne Airport, including several shuttles operated by hotels and rental car agencies.

“Yeah, it’s a bad situation,” Snell added. “Most of these are going full blast 24 hours a day, and they can’t seem to get the vehicle in to do anything other than just the regular routine maintenance.”

Despite the sweeping number of operators snared in the inspections, there seemed few cases where passengers appeared in immediate danger because of mechanical glitches, Snell said, adding that the CHP’s safety checks are “so strict we generally catch these mechanical problems before they get so bad as to become a safety problem on the road.”

Moreover, most of the shuttle operators “want to comply” with the rules, he said. “They don’t want the embarrassment. It’s bad for business. And they don’t want to be sued.”