RTC hears safety issues from fired bus driver

Sito Negron

Friday, Dec. 12, 2003 | 9:36 a.m.

The Regional Transportation Commission will continue to look into complaints from a former bus driver who said Citizens Area Transit passengers and drivers are at risk because nobody wants to deal with safety issues related to bus maintenance and criminals.

Steve Mora, who was fired by ATC, the company that manages the system for the RTC, initially brought the issue up in November.

In response, Dave Boggs, ATC Southwest regional vice president, gave a brief presentation at the Thursday RTC meeting, in which he said that for a system that provides 52 million rides a year, its safety record stands up well when measured against systems of similar size.

Boggs told the RTC that there have been four aggravated assaults on CAT buses since 2001, and one aggravated assault at a bus stop.

RTC General Manager Jacob Snow also updated RTC board members about new communications equipment and other measures meant to increase efficiency and safety. For example, he said, the system will begin outfitting buses with cameras in January.

Mora questioned whether that was enough, and whether bus drivers would even get proper training on how to use such devices.

He also ran down a list of incidents he said have not been counted by ATC. He said ATC should be counting more than aggravated assaults.

"If it takes hospitalization to call it assault, we've got a huge problem," Mora said.

"Go to Metro yourself and get the reports because you're not hearing the truth here," he told the RTC.

Valerie Michael, ATC spokeswoman, said after the meeting that Mora's charges have been looked into and are unsubstantiated.

"These are terminated employees (making the charges)," she said. "ATC is a very safety conscious company. We care about our employees and we care about our passengers."

She said that "the specific things he was mentioning today as far as we know never happened or were never reported."

Mora also called for a transit police force. But Snow said it would cost about $5 million a year, something the RTC could not afford without doing damage to the schedule set for projects paid for under Question 10. He also said it would cut into the ability to add new routes, which cost about $1 million each.

Mora said the RTC should be making safety a priority, and questioned how it could spend $16.59 million on double-decker buses -- an item that was approved Thursday -- but not find $5 million for safety issues.

Mora formed a group called Transit Drivers Association of Nevada, which he says includes more than half of the 800 drivers in the system. He opposed the contract signed between ATC and Amalgamated Transit Union in July 2002, and formed the Transit Drivers group after he was fired in January for going to the RTC and arguing that it ought to drop the contract with ATC.

An arbitrator in November upheld his firing and that of two other former drivers. Mora said he appealed the arbitrator's ruling and expects an answer in the next few weeks.