‘FIXING’ TO ROLL AGAIN
The Chinatown bus company from hell is rising from the dead.
Fung Wah Bus — which was called “an imminent hazard to the public” by government officials who shut it down last year — has gotten back its operating authority from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, The Post has learned.
The problemplagued company’s notoriety grew in 2008 when a pedestrian was fatally struck by an illegally parked Fung Wah bus that had been slammed by a dump truck on Canal Street in Chinatown.
The company’s buses — which shuttled passengers between New York and Boston for dirtcheap fares — were also found to have cracked frames, and the company was not testing drivers for drugs or booze.
In the order to shut down the company last year, officials said Fung Wah’s practices were “an im minently hazardous and potentially dangerous risk for its own drivers, passengers and for the motoring public.”
But over the past year and a half, the company has gotten its act together, the feds have determined, and has passed multiple bus inspections.
But Fung Wah is not out of the woods yet — the company still has to get a permit from the city Department of Transportation to operate in New York.
And in order to get an intercity bus permit, officials say the firm’s application will have to be reviewed by the US Department of Transportation and approved by a local community board.
With city approval, the company could be operational by next year.
The company says its buses have been rehabbed with new engines and repaired frames, and its drivers and mechanics are being held to higher safety standards.
“We are in the process of work ing with federal, state and local authorities to demonstrate that a new page has been turned,” said company President Pei Lin Liang.
But Kenya Volcy, 19, a college student catching a Pandora bus in Chinatown Wednesday, said she won’t switch to Fung Wah.
“It’s dangerous,” she said. “I don’t think it’s fair to let them reopen. It’s accepting their illegal activities. It’s their fault they were shut down.”