Tour bus safety is under scrutiny
Lee urges inspections of all such vehicles in state
“We are demanding the CPUC orders an entire inspection of every single tour bus.”
Mayor Ed Lee
San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee called Friday for every tour bus in the state to be inspected each year in the wake of the violent crash of an uninspected double- deck coach near Union Square that apparently lost its brakes.
State regulators said the wrecked bus shouldn’t have been on the road — that it had not been checked by the CHP, which is in charge of such inspections, because the company that owns the vehicle had failed to register it, as required, with the California Public Utilities Commission.
But under state protocols for annual inspections, two- thirds of a carrier’s fleet goes unseen — a practice that critics call flawed and dangerous.
“They claim that the system does work, but obviously what we are seeing is that it doesn’t work,” said state Sen. Jerry Hill, D- San Mateo, who wants regulators to tighten oversight of big commercial vehicles. “What this shows us is that the system obviously is not safe. It needs to be reviewed and changed if necessary.”
Lee went further, saying, “We are demanding the CPUC orders an entire inspection of every single tour bus, 100 percent.”
He said the current practice of sampling the maintenance of a commercial fleet is not working in an industry that serves millions of people.
“I know that it’s not sufficient, given the number of buses on our streets that are operating in those capacities, that not 100 percent of buses are inspected. That’s not enough,” he said.
“We’re going to ask that they start immediately.”
The lawyer representing the driver of the City Sightseeing bus that crashed Nov. 13 said the air- compression brakes failed before the runaway vehicle slammed into construction scaffolding, seriously injuring eight people.
Police have not commented on the cause, but city Supervisor Jane Kim said investigators suspect a mechanical problem. Lee said Friday, “It is still under investigation, because we have to have all the sides of what happened there. The bus driver is saying one thing, and the company is saying another.”
Bus inspected and passed
City Sightseeing’s chief executive, Christian Watts, told The Chronicle in a written statement that the bus — a 2000 Orion — had passed an internal company inspection on Oct. 25, and that such inspections are done at least every 45 days.
But state regulators said the bus was introduced into the company’s fleet sometime in the past two years without proper notice to the Public Utilities Commission. Had such notice been made, the CHP said, the bus might have been given an initial inspection.
Later, the bus apparently twice escaped inspection during the annual check by the CHP’s Motor Carrier Safety Unit, which looked at a portion of City Sightseeing’s fleet of two dozen vehicles.
Monica Christopher, who supervises the motor carrier unit at the CHP’s Golden Gate Division, said her inspectors checked nine buses from the City Sightseeing fleet both in 2014 and in September. In each of the checks, the company’s vehicles received a passing rating.
“We do a critical item inspection,” she said. “We look at brakes, tires, steering components, lights, emergency exits, air bags, undercarriage inspections.”
Christopher said the agency’s policy is to check a “defined representative sample.” In the case of the City Sightseeing fleet, that amounted to a third of the vehicles.
Inspection ratings issued
“We’re trying to assess the preventative maintenance practices of that particular carrier,” she said. “We are able to issue an inspection rating on those findings.”
Christopher acknowledged that City Sightseeing’s alleged failure to register its bus — and the fact that it went undetected in recent audits — undermined her agency’s ability to evaluate fleet safety.
Craig Weaver, the manager of the unit statewide, said most accidents are caused by operator error, not maintenance problems. He stressed the state has a very low accident ratio per miles traveled for commercial vehicles — about 40 percent lower than the national average.
Weaver said the state’s program and maintenance protocols aim to impose “as minimal a burden on the carrier as possible and at the same time assess maintenance practices.”
Companies, he said, are typically notified in advance of an inspection. But, in his experience, the notice does not give them enough time to preemptively fix problems.
“I can call three weeks in advance,” he said, “and they will still have compliance issues.”
He said the CHP cannot inspect every bus before it first goes into service.
“Just because you inspect a bus one day, doesn’t mean it will pass the next. It is the responsibility of the carrier to make sure they have the practices in place to assure” safety, he said. “We believe our program is one of the premier in the nation — we do tremendously more than anybody else does.”
Come 2017, the CHP unit will take on the task of inspecting an unknown number of stretch limousines as well. The staff in the Golden Gate Division includes two dozen full- fledged investigators and another 10 in a yearlong training process. There are three unfilled positions.
The state Public Utilities Commission, which regulates all passenger carriers, has also faced questions over whether it has adequate staffing and oversight.
After a 2013 fire on the San Mateo Bridge killed five nurses in an overloaded limousine, the state auditor found the commission’s supervision of its passenger transportation carrier unit was “insufficient to ensure consumer safety.”
High turnover cited
The review cited mismanagement and high turnover in a division that lacked a system to deal with complaints against carriers, leveled minimal penalties for violations and had not been aggressive in collecting state- mandated operator fees.
The head of the commission’s safety enforcement arm, Elizaveta Malashenko, said Friday, “Of course, we would support more inspections — whatever the CHP thinks is the best way that this needs to be handled. I would rely on their expertise.”
She called the finding that the wrecked bus was not certified or inspected by the state an “alarming situation.”
Still, Malashenko said the commission is making progress even though it has just 20 inspectors to oversee all 12,000 commercial carriers.
“The audit has brought out a lot of problems at the PUC, and we are working very hard to address those specific points,” she said, adding that the state auditor’s office “has communicated to us that they are very happy with our progress.”
Sen. Hill said there was an assumption that major commercial carriers had more resources and were better equipped to handle vehicles internally.
“I don’t think we can say that now,” he said. “The whole policy needs to be reviewed and changed.”