Drivers: Bus management firm neglects safety

Friday, Jan. 10, 2003 | 10:59 a.m.

Despite objections from some drivers, the Regional Transportation Commission approved a five-year contract extension for the management company operating the Las Vegas Valley's bus system.

The commission board approved the extension, worth about $50 million a year, 6-0 at its regular meeting Thursday. Several drivers, unhappy with working conditions, management and the contract that came out of a fractious strike last summer, said management company ATC should not have gotten the contract extension for the Citizens Area Transit system, which operates about 50 routes in the valley.

"The drivers in the CAT system are not happy with the contract," CAT bus driver Steve Mora said. "What we're headed for is another walkout.

"We have very serious safety issues that need to be resolved. Duct tape does not solve the problems of these vehicles."

Mora said an incident in mid-December in which a wheel literally came off a bus with passengers on Interstate 15 is emblematic of the safety problems.

RTC board members, ATC management and staff, however, discounted the safety concerns. They said those are a product of the five-week strike, which left many drivers unhappy with the wage and benefit terms negotiated in the ultimate settlement.

"We maintain the buses to the manufacturers' specifications," said ATC Chief Executive Officer Jim Long, who is based at the company headquarters in Chicago.

"Any driver who has a safety problem, he has the God-given right not to operate it," agreed ATC Senior Vice President Bill McCloud, also from Chicago. But McCloud added that drivers could be disciplined for bringing a bus back if there was not a serious safety problem.

RTC Assistant General Manager Curtis Myles said the same drivers made similar accusations after the strike ended in June. But the RTC's own maintenance supervisors have looked into the accusations and have not found problems, he said.

ATC, an arm of a multi-national bus management company, is "doing better than what we would expect," Myles said. "They are meeting or exceeding maintenance standards when you measure it by the number of maintenance dollars per 100,000 miles."

In the December incident, a bearing in the wheel caused the hub to seize and tearing the entire hub off the bus, Myles said. The RTC is looking into what happened but such problems are not unknown, he said. No one was hurt.

"That one, we're going to go back and take a look at that."

Mora and other drivers are not only unhappy with the management company, but the union that represented them in negotiations. The group has formed a group called Transit Drivers Association of Nevada, which they are backing as an alternative to the Amalgamated Transit Union local.

The troubled union local is now under direct management by the international union leadership. The union did not return phone calls Wednesday or Thursday.

If there is another walkout, the bus management company would avoid at least one potentially costly outcome. The contract extension includes far lower fines for missed or late buses than the old contract -- $25 compared to $500 under the original terms.

During the strike, ATC racked up a potential $10 million fine for buses that did not appear. But the commission board in July decided to waive almost all of the potential fine, arguing that the company would pack up and leave Las Vegas if the penalty was assessed and the company needed to remain to ensure continued service.

Myles said the new terms better represent the real cost to the RTC if a bus misses a run. The $500 fine "is not a realistic assessment of what we lose" in fares and federal funding, he said.

Myles said the new contract is better than the old agreement because it provides specific guidelines for security and maintenance.

Some of those changes include securing the lots where buses are maintained and making sure buses are available to bring in emergency response personnel or evacuate civilians in the event of a catastrophe.