unfair bus competition, evading regulations

[Patrick Boylan]

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/12 ... ashes?lite" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Feds shut down five bus companies; action follows series of LA-area crashes
By Joel Grover and Chris Henao, NBCLosAngeles.Com
...
The Federal Motor Carrier Administration has ordered the LA-based bus company called "It's Good Promotion" to stop doing business immediately. The company, based in East Los Angeles, ran buses from LA to Mexico.
Investigators uncovered something even bigger: they say It's Good Promotion was illegally allowing at least four other "unsafe bus companies," that had previously been shut down by the government, to continue operating, by using the It's Good Promotion name and federal registration number to evade authorities.
...
In their investigation, the FMCSA found serious violations from It's Good Promotions bus operations, including:

Allowing a driver who tested positive for illegal drugs to continue driving
Using drivers that didn't have valid U.S. commercial driver's licenses
Failing to make sure its buses were properly repaired and maintained

It's hard for me to imagine a railroad that would let anyone stay on the job who failed a drug test, or who hadn't maintained qualifications.

[jogden]

Fly by night bus operations, like these, are actually more common than you think. I am a CDL holder and drove charter and tour buses in Alaska and the western half of the US for several years, and I remember many commercial vehicle inspectors talking about different companies that they were trying to shut down, for various reasons. It is because of operations like this that every state has weigh stations. Weigh stations are about a lot more than the weight of a vehicle, they give authorities the opportunity to inspect a vehicle, its paperwork, and a driver and his/her paperwork, and make sure everything checks out.

It is easier for a motor carrier to evade authorities, using the highway and road network than a railroad, using the rail network. Roads are generally open to the public to use without any regulation. Many states have safety inspections required annually or biannually for vehicles. Commercial vehicles are held to federal safety standards and must have all the documentation to prove they meet those standards on board. However, despite all these safety requirements, a vehicle operator does not need to prove that any of them have been met prior to gaining access to the road network. Roads are patrolled, and violators are caught that way, but gaining access to the road network does not depend on meeting all the requirements.

The railroad, by nature is different. First of all, everyone in the country does not have ready access to their own equipment (locomotive, private car, etc.). The rail network is also smaller, making it easier to patrol. Since most of the operators on railroads are organized corporations, rather than private individuals, it is easier for regulating organizations to conduct inspections and verify that they are following all the requirements. Basically, because of the nature of the railroad industry, it is pretty hard for a fly by night operation to exist. At the very least, the railroad tracks would give them away!

[ThirdRail7]

These 5 were in addition to the 52 closed a few weeks ago.

Please allow a few "fair use" quotes:

U.S. DOT shuts down 52 unsafe bus companies
By Chris Boyette, CNN
updated 10:59 PM EST, Thu December 12, 2013

http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/12/travel/do ... companies/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

(CNN) -- U.S. transportation officials shut down 52 bus companies and 340 vehicles Thursday as part of as an eight-month effort targeting unsafe motor coach operations, according to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

Called Operation Quick Strike, the sweeping action from New York to California involved companies in 22 states and the District of Columbia. The companies were put out of business after more than 50 specially trained investigators conducted detailed reviews of safety practices at the 250 most at-risk motor coach companies based on roadside inspection and safety data, according to a statement from the agency.

"Bus travel is increasingly popular because it is a convenient, inexpensive option for students, groups and families," U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said. "But it must also be safe."

Thursday's announcement comes weeks after the National Transportation Safety Board expressed concerns with the thoroughness of FMCSA investigations, citing four deadly crashes involving operators who were already on the radar of the oversight agency.
******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
Dan Ronan, spokesman for the American Bus Association, a Washington-based trade group representing the motor coach, tourism and travel industry, praised the federal initiative.

"The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has done the right thing by finding companies running illegally or in an unsafe manner," he said. "More than half the fatalities and injuries in the industry were caused by a small group of providers. There's no shortage of bus companies. There are plenty of good ones out there."

As a result of the investigation and inspections, 52 motor coach companies were put out of business and shut down for safety violations such as failure to maintain their buses adequately, inadequate drug and alcohol driver testing and overwork of drivers.

Tour bus safety should get same treatment as aviation, advocate says

Other companies took action to correct the safety violations, and 28 avoided being shut down, the agency said.

In all, 340 vehicles of the more than 1,300 inspected were taken off the road for safety and maintenance violations, according to the report.

Additionally, inspectors looked into more than 1,300 carriers that had little to no inspection history with the safety agency, and more than 240 were will be investigated further.

The railroads would never get away with these antics. Additionally, the railroads would not be able to open up under another name days after being shut down.

[dowlingm]

Short lines perhaps, but if messing about was going on in Class Is would there be a notion of them being "too big to fail"?

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/tsb-says- ... -1.2451186" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Milwaukee_F40C]

There's some lousy bus companies. But the government has also been up to putting unfair regulatory pressure on a lot of smaller companies in favor of the major established (and politically "contributing") ones. The NTSB's recent report on "curbside" companies was a joke. They attempted to distinguish between curbside companies and conventional companies such as Greyhound, but then counted some of Greyhound's accidents as curbside accidents- which inflated the accident statistic for curbside companies.

[BandA]

I've never ever seen a weigh station that was open in Massachusetts in 40 years.... saw one on the tv news once. They occasionally bust school bus companies and busted the Fung Wah and Lucky Star a couple of years ago (after several years of everybody knowing they cut corners).

[Patrick Boylan]

I admit that I too rarely have seen weigh stations open, but is it really effective for them to advertise their hours?
http://boston.cbslocal.com/2010/10/01/c ... -highways/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The equipment the truck team uses, computers and scales, are portable, allowing the troopers to set up shop anywhere there’s adequate space. Since some trucks dodge the weigh stations, the team often does much better when it works in parking lots in commercial areas, rather than the actual weigh stations.