Transit Officials Turn to Congress for Ticket Relief

Orange County transit officials said Monday that they will seek congressional relief from conflicting federal regulations as a result of recent incidents in which passengers have been forced off local buses cited as overloaded.

The California Highway Patrol has issued five tickets for overweight buses since Jan. 26. Riders--mostly dayworkers--have been forced off to wait for backup vehicles. The latest round of ticketing by the CHP comes after three similar incidents last year.

All of the CHP’s stops of Orange County Transit District (OCTD) buses involve Line 85, which runs from Santa Ana’s Civic Center to Dana Point, partly via Interstate 5.

“We’ve identified a (bus overload) problem, and we’re acting on it,” said CHP Sgt. Bill Snell, a commercial enforcement supervisor. “If they can change the law, that’s fine.”

Snell said the same officer, Paul Pines, has been involved in each stop because Pines is specifically assigned to buses. The tickets, he said, were given to Orange County Transportation Authority managers instead of bus drivers. The citations were for alleged violations of a federal limit of 20,500 pounds per axle.

Both CHP and Transportation Authority officials said Monday that they didn’t know how much in fines or other penalties could be assessed for axle-weight violations.

Tom Fortune, legislative analyst for the authority, said members of the county’s congressional delegation will be contacted to see what can be done. OCTD is now a division of the authority.

“Our ridership is calculated on what the buses structurally will bear” and what federal law permits, Fortune said. “The CHP is enforcing a federal standard (for axle weight) designed to protect the life of the pavement. . . . We support a resolution of the conflicting rules.”

The issue arose at Monday’s authority board meeting, when the agency’s Sacramento lobbyist, former Republican state senator Dennis Carpenter of Newport Beach, said he was recommending that the agency seek congressional intervention.

Carpenter said the CHP would be willing to suspend enforcement once legislation is pending.

Authority staff members said they would pursue the matter with at least two Orange County congressmen, Reps. Ron Packard (R-Oceanside) and Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach), who are members of transportation-related committees.

At a summit meeting last November, authority officials met with the CHP in hopes of averting further trouble. Transit officials claimed that the Highway Patrol was engaging in discriminatory enforcement by stopping only OCTD buses and not those of other transit agencies throughout the state.

Since then, Highway Patrol officials have said that the bus overload problem was first noticed in OCTD buses but that patrol divisions elsewhere were learning of the situation with an eye toward expanding enforcement.

Transit officials said in November that they would, at least temporarily, avoid ticketing by putting more buses on the already overcrowded route or limit the head count on each bus.

“We tried that for a while,” said authority spokeswoman Joanne Curran, “but we ran out of (buses) and the cost of doing this was about ($500,000) a year. We don’t have the drivers, the buses, or the money.”

“It’s not a safety issue,” Curran said. “It’s related to the wear and tear on the highway.”