Steps Taken to Avoid Bus Overloading

The California Highway Patrol has instructed bus drivers for the Orange County Transit District to begin taking more accurate head counts of their passengers to avoid overloaded buses, the two agencies announced after a meeting Thursday.

The agencies met a day after a CHP officer stopped an overcrowded OCTD bus heading from the Santa Ana Civic Center to South County and ordered several riders to disembark during the morning rush hour. It was the second time in as many weeks that a bus on Route 85 was stopped for being overloaded, and the third time in six months.

Seeking a solution to the ongoing dispute, OCTD officials agreed Thursday to test-load several buses with weights to determine how many passengers can safely board a bus and stay within CHP safety limits. OCTD spokeswoman Joanne Curran estimated that the maximum number of passengers probably will be about 65, but “sometimes it is a question of one person” causing a bus to become too heavy.

Once transit authorities arrive at a maximum-passenger figure, bus drivers will have to bypass any extra passengers at bus stops, a practice that is not common now, Curran said.

CHP Lt. Dwight McKenna, who attended Thursday’s 40-minute meeting with two other CHP representatives, said two-axle buses may carry a maximum of 20,500 pounds per axle.

Curran added that overweight buses may pose risks to other drivers if there is too much strain on a bus’s brakes. Carrying too many passengers may also interfere with a driver’s vision, she said.

McKenna said a short-term solution under consideration by the two agencies would put more buses on some of the busiest lines, such as Route 85, which twists from Santa Ana’s Civic Center to the residential neighborhoods of Dana Point.

The issue of overcrowded buses comes as a rapidly increasing number of blue-collar workers take public transportation to service and construction jobs in South County communities such as Laguna Hills and Dana Point. Illustrating the dependence that many people have on public transportation, more than 90% of Orange County Transit Districtriders who returned a 1990 survey said they did not have a car available.

“You can’t say Orange County runs empty buses,” Curran said. “The urbanization of Orange County has arrived.”