COUNTYWIDE : Bus Drivers to Get Extra Training

Sensitivity training for bus drivers?

In Orange County, you bet.

Transit officials moved Monday to increase the amount of instruction that drivers receive, following a controversial altercation last month on a bus involving a wheelchair-bound passenger.

Operations Manager John Catoe told board members of the Orange County Transportation Authority that the driver was suspended without pay for trying to prevent the passenger from boarding a bus at the Santa Ana Transit Terminal.

Catoe said the driver had violated strict policy by failing to ask other, non-disabled passengers to move from a seating area designed but not reserved exclusively for wheelchairs. In a confrontation with the passenger, the driver put the wheelchair in reverse. The passenger was not injured.

The 16 hours in extra training for all 1,200 bus drivers is in addition to regular instruction that all new drivers receive when first hired, which includes a module on being sensitive to passengers with “special needs,” Catoe said.

In other action Monday, the board moved to tighten controls on a nine-city monorail project and scrutinize planned routes, projected ridership and public support more thoroughly.

OCTA Chief Executive Officer Stan Oftelie warned that he was uncomfortable with the “progress and process” of plans for the proposed 47-mile system, partly because of outdated cost, population and travel data.

Although the Transportation Authority board approved the multibillion-dollar project in principle last October and commissioned a $750,000 feasibility study that began in February, Oftelie told board members: “Now is the time to challenge some of our fundamental assumptions.”

The OCTA has about $465 million lined up for the project, and officials have hinted broadly that another sales tax increase and federal funds will be needed to raise the remaining capital.

Meetings are being held with South Coast Plaza and Disneyland executives, whose opposition to having urban rail stations either on or next to their property has surfaced in informal conversations with transportation officials.

“If we have major businesses who don’t want it,” OCTA Chairman Gary L. Hausdorfer said. “I’d say that’s a bit strange. And then we scratch our heads and either they’re on the wrong track, pardon the pun, or we are.”

Transportation Authority board members agreed that at their next board meeting they would approve the hiring of consultants to perform a “peer review” of the urban rail project--a sort of reality check--and earmark $1 million or more for a yearlong study of county residents’ travel habits.

The move toward stricter Transportation Authority control of the project reflects a turf battle between the OCTA and the nine-city consortium that is actively pursuing the elevated system.

Until now, the nine-city group was handling most route issues, even though the Transportation Authority is footing the bill.

And while supporting tougher project scrutiny, consortium representatives said they were misled into believing that Monday’s meeting was supposed to be a joint session.