CHP Will Go Lightly on O.C.’s Overweight Buses : Transportation: Troopers won’t cite several vehicles even though they hit the road hard when they exceed federal standards of 20,000 pounds when loaded. A new waiver law is stalled in Congress.

Overweight Orange County buses will be allowed for now to stay on the freeways without being cited despite today’s expiration of a waiver exempting them from federal weight standards, the California Highway Patrol said Thursday.

“We’re going to withhold enforcement,” CHP spokeswoman Julie Page said.

That’s good news for the Orange County Transportation Authority, which operates at least 20 buses weighing, when loaded, more than the 20,000 pounds per single axle allowed by federal regulation.

“This is something that everybody realizes needs to be fixed,” OCTA spokeswoman Lisa Tanaka said. “It’s a longstanding nationwide problem.”

“Overweight vehicles break down the pavement,” Tanaka explained, adding that some large OCTA buses exceed the federal standards for a variety of reasons, ranging from the inclusion of government-required anti-smog equipment to the need for sturdy vehicles built to last.

While federal highway weight standards had long existed, Tanaka said, they were rarely enforced. Then four years ago, CHP officers began citing Orange County buses for breaking the law.

Disturbed by a series of highway stops during which some passengers commuting from Santa Ana to South County were ordered off buses apparently to lessen the weight on the vehicles’ axles, OCTA officials persuaded Congress in 1993 to enact a temporary waiver exempting public transit buses from the federal standards.

That waiver expires today.

After learning from the Department of Transportation that the weight requirement could be permanently altered or removed only by an act of Congress, Rep. Jay Kim (R-Diamond Bar), a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, included a new waiver for the buses in the transportation bill approved by the House earlier this year.

But the act is stalled in a legislative traffic jam, moving nowhere until House and Senate members reach a compromise on the National Highway System bill that authorizes next year’s transit projects.

“The National Highway System bill is still in [House and Senate] conference and, unfortunately, that’s the only recourse for Orange County,” said C. Bruce Allen, a spokesman for Kim. “Starting Oct. 7, until and whenever [the bill] gets passed, the highway patrol can . . . pull people over.”

CHP officials say that’s not their intention.

“We know it’s coming up,” said Gabe Montoya, a CHP officer in Santa Ana. “Normally, we take a position that we will withhold enforcement until the thing is worked out.”

If approved, the new waiver would remain in effect at least until 1997, according to Allen. At that point, he said, Congress is expected to take up the bus weight issue as part of the debate on renewing the Intermodal Surface Transportation Act.

Back in Southern California, meanwhile, technicians and engineers are working on a solution, namely a new type of lightweight bus made out of a glass composite.

“It’s something similar to fiberglass,” said Jim Hart, a spokesman for Northrop Grumman Corp., which is working on the project with the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority.

The work is also being overseen by OCTA, according to Hart.

“It’s going fine,” he said of the project, slated to receive $54 million in government funding. “We expect to have a prototype by October, 1996.”