OCTA Officials Will Monitor Troubled Bus Radio System, but Won’t Replace It

Orange County transit officials said Monday they would monitor, but not replace, the agency’s highly criticized $12-million radio communications system.

The Orange County Transportation Authority’s system linking dispatchers to drivers and other employees has been faulted by drivers themselves and the county grand jury. Critics say the system is unreliable, fraught with radio interference problems and plagued by many zones in which it is inoperable.

But OCTA’s response to the grand jury, approved Monday by the OCTA board, was that the system was “adequate, reliable, [and] meets specifications.”

“The system works, and we’re working on areas where communication is difficult,” said Art Leahy, the agency’s chief executive.

Following the June grand jury report that outlined the system’s flaws, Bill Campbell, county supervisor and the agency’s chairman, requested a full report on the system’s inadequacies.

At the time, a review was being conducted by the Richter Group, communications consultants, which reported that the system met specifications and compared favorably with those at other transit systems.

“At this time, there are no major technical deficiencies that would indicate a degraded or partially functioning system,” the Richter report said.

The grand jury reported that after eight years, $12.7 million and three project managers, the then state-of-the-art communications system still had problems and remained unreliable.

The grand jury’s report said that the bus locator gave erroneous locations, silent bus alarms sometimes didn’t work or were tripped by accident, voice communication was spotty, and the computer system and its backup sometimes crashed.

Leahy and other OCTA officials said the system had had troubles, but that most had been addressed. Radio interference still occurs when buses are in Los Angeles County and drivers still travel through dead zones on Pacific Coast Highway, they said.

“These are being monitored,” Leahy said.

Campbell said the grand jury’s report helped the agency move quickly to address the system’s problems.

OCTA was prohibited from erecting a tower for cellular communication in an area near Dana Point and San Clemente where there are radio dead spots, but is building one on Santa Catalina Island to serve the county’s coastal area, Campbell said.

Several speakers urged OCTA directors not to approve the agency’s report to the grand jury. “The system is unstable, unreliable and unsafe,” said Robert N. Ives, an attorney who read a statement on behalf of Mark Lucy, OCTA manager of central communications.

Ives said that OCTA retaliated against those critical of its radio system, saying that after Lucy criticized the system he was passed over for a promotion. OCTA denied the accusation.

The same accusation was reflected in the grand jury report, which found that OCTA employees felt that complaining about the radio system would hurt their careers.

Ian Telfer, a vice president of engineering at Cinergy Innovations Inc. of Sunset Beach, said the firm was hired to design the radio system and then monitor it until earlier this year, when it was fired.

Telfer said the firm found flaws in the way OCTA managed implementation of the system. He has alleged that the company was fired because it voiced concerns about the communications system, a charge OCTA officials deny.

They said a recent Teamster survey of 1,200 bus drivers asked about radio problems. Fifty-four drivers cited problems, including coverage and interference.