Archives for National Bus Trader

As Americans, we have a lot of things to be proud of. Among them is the serious effort we have made, as a society, to provide mobility to practically everyone, irrespective of their age, health, agility or strength. Across the spectrum of transportation sectors, regulations have not only formalized the duties for providing this service, but also provide the details for considerable guidance. Unfortunately, these same regulations do not always provide much wisdom or reflect much common sense. Cranes and Craniums One provision of the ADA and another response to it illustrate how stupid and thoughtless we can be: Focusing

In a perfect world, or even a logical one, the individual or entity that caused an incident would be held responsible for it. Within our litigious society, this is often not the case. Tales from My Backyard In the J-walking capital of North America, most Manhattanites recognize that laws that operate elsewhere have no meaning here. One of them is the notion that pedestrians have the right of way. In a logical society genuinely concerned about safety, pedestrian’s rights would be limited, and they would be held accountable for failing to exercise their responsibilities. So too would be vehicle operators,

Alcohol and bus ridership present a curious enigma. As a matter of public policy, we allow intoxication. As a matter of free market dynamics, we encourage it. And rightfully so, we want to protect those intoxicated from hurting themselves and others. In the transportation field, an important contribution to all these objectives is to “mode split” drunkards from personal occupancy vehicles to public transportation – or, more simply, turning drunken drivers into drunken passengers, while they “leave the driving to us.” While carting around otherwise-dangerously-intoxicated motorists has its obvious, merits, it also creates some dilemmas for those charged with transporting

One far-too-underused benefit of membership in a multi-disciplinary professional community is the chance to observe the issues and challenges faced by colleagues in fellow sectors. On June 11, 2007, NHTSA held another landmark hearing on the subject of seat belts on school buses – revisiting issues last explored in 1999 at a similar hearing hosted by the NTSB. Unlike that last hearing, this one provided a rare departure from the normally rigid isolation among the various transportation communities, and the mostly pupil transportation community audience was well-stocked with representatives from the motorcoach field – including a few individuals who, like

As the person in a law suit constantly required to provide the “technical perspective,” a number of things have always troubled me – irrespective of which side of the case I’m on. One pet peeve is the common inability of attorneys to let the case expand until they capture the complete array of evidence before forming conclusions and strategies to sell them. Another is the tendency of our legal system to deny most Motions to Dismiss because the liability cannot be determined without an examination of a string of facts unlikely to matter – a reasonable and prudent approach were

When I was four years old, my parents got me a ticket to fill the audience (the “Peanut Gallery”) of my favorite TV show, the Howdy Doody show – emceed by a behind-the-scenes, cigar-smoking alcoholic named Buffalo Bob Smith, with help from the freckled and far-more-famous puppet he did not even operate. Inside the busy, chaotic, poorly-signed and intimidating studio, the announcement for the Peanut Gallery to assemble was made and, obviously unable to read, I found myself alone in a labyrinth of hallways with no remote clue where to go. Freaked out, I ran back crying to my Dad,

In the last installment of NBT, the notion of adding a rear door to motorcoaches used in certain duty cycles – primarily transit-oriented commuter/express and some scheduled/intercity service – was raised as a solution to both safety- and efficiency-related issues. Because all motorcoaches must have two doors by 2012 to comply with provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act, variations of this requirement are worth discussing: A “lift door” between the axles would accommodate wheelchair users and other disabled passengers needing the lift. But such a door would provide few other benefits. So alternatives – particularly those employed in the

Three decades ago, many transit bus runs were so featherbedded that literate drivers could write short stories during a typical layover. On Today’s typical layover, a fixed route bus driver can barely catch his or her breath. With a smattering of traffic or a few drops of rain, recovery time vanishes completely, and the driver is doomed to several consecutive hours of unrelenting stress and fatigue. With the advent of full accessibility, and more recently the ADA, this situation became far more frenetic: These days, transit drivers never know when a wheelchair user might appear, whose boarding, wheelchair and passenger

Serendipity is often defined as having the courage and wisdom to change those things one can, and accept those one cannot. This concept suits itself well to the prevention of motorcoach incidents. Our obsession with liability, with those responsible for paying for it being third parties, has understandably unhealthy consequences: Liability has so vastly surpassed the concern for safety that tradeoffs of one for the other have begun to undermine both. One unnecessary and fixable example of this principle is the litany of incidents, and their inevitable lawsuits, where passengers fall down (or up) the stepwell. But the victim’s attorneys