CHP Orders 5 Passengers Off an Overloaded Bus of OCTD : Transportation: Action came on eve of meeting by two agencies to discuss overloading. District officials are startled.

For the second time this month, a California Highway Patrol officer has stopped an overloaded Orange County Transit District bus and ordered riders to disembark. The action on Wednesday came just a day before the two agencies were to discuss a solution to the ongoing public service versus safety dispute.

The bus--which left the Santa Ana Civic Center terminal at 6:34 a.m., heading for South County--was operating under dangerous conditions, CHP spokeswoman Angel Johnson said.

“It’s a matter of safety,” she said. “We are encouraging people to drive safely,” including the OCTD.

The route is one of OCTD’s busiest and most overcrowded.

Though the driver was not cited, five riders who were standing in the aisle were ordered off at a bus stop. They were picked up by another bus a few minutes later, Johnson said.

The stop marked the second time in as many weeks that a bus on Route 85 has been stopped for overcrowding, officials said, and the third time in six months.

The ongoing dispute prompted CHP and Orange County Transit District officials to schedule a 3 p.m. meeting today at CHP headquarters in Santa Ana to discuss the issue, said Joanne Curran of the Orange County Transportation Authority. Since June, the OCTD has been a division of the Orange County Transportation Authority.

Because of the impending meeting, transit officials said they were startled to learn that another bus had been stopped.

“It comes as a mystery to us” why the CHP did not wait for the meeting, Curran said. “It’s not the kind of thing you can handle overnight.”

CHP officials declined to comment on the meeting.

Though they acknowledge the chronic overcrowding on that line, the stop angered transit officials, who asked why the CHP has targeted their bus lines when overcrowding is a widespread dilemma for transit agencies.

“Everyone knows that there’s overcrowding on buses in Los Angeles, San Jose, and many other places,” Curran said. “So we’re also asking for some consistency in enforcement.”

Curran added that the district has been trying to ease overcrowding by juggling routes and restricting ridership but that the problem will continue until the financially strapped agency can purchase bigger, heavier vehicles.

CHP officials said, however, that the OCTD case is different because its buses are two-axle vehicles that are not designed to carry the weight in standing passengers that other three-axle designs can handle.

OCTD officials acknowledged that most of their buses, including those used on Route 85, have two axles.

In the incident Wednesday, Curran said the Route 85 bus, with more than 60 passengers, was traveling south on the Santa Ana Freeway when CHP Commercial Enforcement Officer Paul Pines noticed people standing in the aisles.

Suspecting it was overweight, Pines pulled the bus over when it got off at Sand Canyon Avenue, Curran said. He weighed the axles with a portable scale and found the bus more than 500 pounds overweight.

On Nov. 7, Pine also was the officer who stopped a Route 85 bus, weighed it and found it about 700 pounds overweight. He ordered seven of 68 riders to wait for another bus.

Transit officials said Wednesday that the agency has attempted to abide by state vehicle code regulations, not only by ordering new buses but by taking out seats in some of the older ones. Though not this one, Curran said.

The agency is telling riders to wait or bypassing them, although Curran said that is not always done, adding that a bus driver may not always know if his rig is overweight.

“We do turn away passengers,” Curran said. “The drivers don’t just let everybody cram on there.”

About a year ago, Curran said the agency printed flyers in English and Spanish, apologizing for the overcrowding and asking people to wait for the next bus.

But that didn’t solve the problem, she said.

As a result, the agency has taken buses from underused routes and put them on other lines.

“The situation now is we have some buses with one literally following behind the other,” Curran said.

On Route 85, buses are scheduled every seven minutes during morning peak hours.

Curran said the OCTD buses are safe. The two-axle buses meet federal specifications for vehicle construction standards, though they can fall short of state vehicle regulations when carrying standing passengers.

Curran said she still hopes negotiators will find a compromise that allows OCTD to work out both short- and long-term solutions while not inconveniencing its riders.

She said the transit district is currently awaiting delivery of 10 “super buses” for its busier routes. Those buses, which resemble tractor trailers, can carry far heavier loads than the two-axle buses. Those should be in service within 14 weeks, she said.

Curran said, however, that purchasing enough buses to alleviate the systemwide overcrowding would cost the Transportation Authority more than $11 million. “We just don’t have the money,” she said.

The issue of whether there are enough buses to service the rising number of commuters heading into rapidly growing South County ironically comes as the U.S. General Accounting Office in an audit last week accused four California transit agencies, including the Orange County agency, of buying more buses than needed.

Transit officials had denied those charges.