Chinatown bus operator ordered shut down

[hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com]

Many critics of Amtrak say the subsidy would be better spent on buses
instead of trains. They cite the low fare "Chinatown" buses as an
example.

However, the low-fare buses have their problems, as reported by the
NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/27/nyregion/chinatown-bus-operator-ordered-to-shut-down.html?hp

[Jym Dyer]

> Many critics of Amtrak say the subsidy would be better
> spent on buses instead of trains. They cite the low
> fare "Chinatown" buses as an example.

=v= Much of the cost of Chinatown buses are externalized.
The cost of the roads they use, and maintenance costs from
heavy vehicles in particular, are not reflected in their
fares. We pay for them instead in taxes.

=v= Amtrak, on the other hand, inflicts less cost overall
but has to pay every penny of it. So these critics are
not making a fair or accurate comparison.
<_Jym_>

[Glen Labah]

In article <Jym.26Feb20...@econet.org>,

Jym Dyer <j...@econet.org> wrote:

> =v= Amtrak, on the other hand, inflicts less cost overall
> but has to pay every penny of it. So these critics are
> not making a fair or accurate comparison.
> <_Jym_>

There's also a bit of overhead Amtrak has that it really shouldn't
because it should be a role played by others. Slowly that is changing,
but it still isn't there yet.

For example, what is now APTA standards for HEP, COM and MU were first
created and maintained by Amtrak. It shouldn't have been Amtrak that
had to put forth the expense and effort to develop all that as a
de-facto national standard but that is how it wound up happening.

Then there's stuff like the railroad retirement board payments that used
to be a part of the Amtrak budget line item, but had very little to do
with actual Amtrak service.

If I remember right, there was also one year about 15 or so years ago
congress dumped a bunch of money into MagLev research, and did so by
counting it with Amtrak funding but Amtrak didn't actually see it. It
just went into their line item in the budget and back out again to some
group doing research.

Sure, there's money at Amtrak I'm not too happy about how it got spent,
but I'm also not too happy about stuff like our local airport authority
using tax money for subsidizing flights from here to Japan.

--
Please note this e-mail address is a pit of spam due to e-mail address
harvesters on Usenet. Response time to e-mail sent here is slow.

[hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com]

On Feb 27, 1:51 am, Glen Labah <gl4...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Sure, there's money at Amtrak I'm not too happy about how it got spent,
> but I'm also not too happy about stuff like our local airport authority
> using tax money for subsidizing flights from here to Japan.

Everything you say is true. As mentioned, Amtrak is burdened with
legacy costs of ADA compliance, asbestos and PCB mediation, and
pensions. Unfortunately, the passenger doesn't know nor care about
these things, they focus on the bottom line ticket price. (Of course,
with air fares, the advertised price is much less than what is
actually paid, thanks to the "fees" added on. Perhaps Amtrak should
do the same; after all, consumers have been brain washed by corporate
America to accept that b/s.)

[danny burstein]

In <1b97bdf1-624a-4b1a...@r13g2000yqg.googlegroups.com> hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com writes:

>Everything you say is true. As mentioned, Amtrak is burdened with
>legacy costs of ADA compliance, asbestos and PCB mediation, and
>pensions. Unfortunately, the passenger doesn't know nor care about
>these things, they focus on the bottom line ticket price. (Of course,
>with air fares, the advertised price is much less than what is
>actually paid, thanks to the "fees" added on. Perhaps Amtrak should
>do the same; after all, consumers have been brain washed by corporate
>America to accept that b/s.)

Under pressure (not sure how much was actual law/regulation and
how much was jawboning), in recent months the airlines have
had to be more honest in their listed fees. There are certainly
still plenty of got'chas, but less than a year ago.


--
_____________________________________________________
Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key
dan...@panix.com
[to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]

[conklin]

"Jym Dyer" <j...@econet.org> wrote in message
news:Jym.26Feb20...@econet.org...

A bus does not have much externalized cost and is three times more
fuel-efficient than Amtrak on a passenger-mile basis.

[Jimmy]

> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/27/nyregion/chinatown-bus-operator-ord...

Vehicles removed from service because of cracks. That would never
happen on an Amtrak train, right?

yaw damper brackets:
http://discuss.amtraktrains.com/index.php?/topic/585-acela-fix-update/

side sills of power unit carbodies: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/amtrak/message/4017

brake rotors:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/11/AR2005051102089.html

Moral of the story: Stuff happens to vehicles, regardless of mode.
Inspections catch the problems. They get repaired. Life goes on.

Even if Fung Wah doesn't recover, the discount bus industry is here to
stay.

Jimmy

[Sancho Panza]

Alternatives are abundant:
Washington Deluxe-$21
DC2NY-$30
TripperBus-$1
GotoBus-$20
EasternShuttle-$20
Vamoose-$30
New Century Travel

[hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com]

On Feb 27, 6:04 pm, Jimmy <JimmyGeldb...@mailinator.com> wrote:


> Vehicles removed from service because of cracks.  That would never
> happen on an Amtrak train, right?

These cites are 6-11 years old. They involve the Acela when it was
newly delivered equipment.

> Even if Fung Wah doesn't recover, the discount bus industry is here to
> stay.

What will happen to the discount bus industry if it were truly
required to meet all safety regulations at all times?

[Phil Kane]

On Thu, 28 Feb 2013 08:04:02 -0800 (PST), hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:

>> Even if Fung Wah doesn't recover, the discount bus industry is here to
>> stay.
>
>What will happen to the discount bus industry if it were truly
>required to meet all safety regulations at all times?

The sound that you will hear is the industry swirling around the
drain.....

"Stand Clear of the Closing Doors, Please"

Phil Kane - Beaverton, OR
PNW CP HALL MP 29.9 - OE District

[Jimmy]

hanco...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
> Jimmy <JimmyGeldb...@mailinator.com> wrote:
> > Vehicles removed from service because of cracks.  That would never
> > happen on an Amtrak train, right?
>
> These cites are 6-11 years old.  They involve the Acela when it was
> newly delivered equipment.

It was 5 years old in 2005. But why does that matter? The point was
that inspections revealed cracks, and the fleet was pulled from
service.

> > Even if Fung Wah doesn't recover, the discount bus industry is here to
> > stay.
>
> What will happen to the discount bus industry if it were truly
> required to meet all safety regulations at all times?

Inspections found flaws before there was an actual incident. It
sounds like safety regulations are working as intended.

Jimmy

[Sancho Panza]

It looks a lot more as if the whole attack was based on a majorly
twisted and mangled study:

"over the past two years, the government has forced 27 bus companies
based in Chinatown to close. The regulatory clampdown was fueled by a
government study that found curbside carriers were disproportionately
killing their passengers. Released by the National Transportation Safety
Board, a federal agency, the study concluded that curbside bus companies
were “seven times” more likely to be involved in an accident with at
least one fatality than conventional bus operators. That finding was
reported by The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Businessweek, USA
Today, the New York Daily News, WNYC, and Reuters, among others.
Although the study did not single out Chinatown bus companies the
headline in Businessweek read, “Chinatown Buses Death Rate Said Seven
Times That of Others.”

The study is bogus. Not only is the “seven times” finding incorrect, the
entire report is a mangle of inaccurate charts and numbers that tell us
virtually nothing meaningful about bus safety. There’s no evidence that
curbside or Chinatown buses are any less safe than any other kind of bus.

How did the study authors figure curbside bus companies are “seven
times” more prone to fatal accidents? For starters, they counted 37
accidents during the study period involving curbside buses in which
there was at least one fatality. When I rebuilt the study data and
contacted the companies involved, I found that, in 30 of those 37
accidents, curbside buses were not involved. In fact, 24 of those 30
misclassified cases involved Greyhound’s conventional bus fleet.
(Greyhound’s curbside subsidiary BoltBus had no fatal accidents during
the study period.)

The National Transportation Safety Board denied my requests for the
study data, even though it was a taxpayer-funded report with an impact
on policy. After my Freedom of Information Act request also failed to
return the information following a six-month wait, I began
reconstructing the study data from other sources.

Proceeding on the time-honored hunch that people who are hiding
something have reason to do so, I generated a list of the 37 fatal
crashes using a database obtained from a federal contractor that
collects nationwide accident data. I analyzed that data with help of
Aaron Brown, a quantitative analyst with the hedge fund AQR Capital
Management. Brown was the first to point out major flaws in the NTSB’s
methodology in an article published by Minyanville.com, accusing the
study authors of “statistical malpractice.” I also consulted with Ed
George, a professor of statistics and department chair at the University
of Pennsylvania’s Wharton business school, who examined the study for
the purposes of this article.

A Chinatown bus headed from New York City to Washington, D.C. ||| Jim
EpsteinJim Epstein

“When I first read the NTSB report, I thought this is just terrible
statistics,” says Brown. “But it goes way beyond that. It’s almost as if
someone took some random data and shook it together.”

The NTSB study grew out of a horrific March 2011 bus crash in the Bronx
that killed 15 people. The accident, involving a bus company called
World Wide Travel, was both a tragedy and an anomaly. From 2001 to 2011,
there were an average of 34 fatal intercity/cross-country bus accidents
each year. During the same period, there were an average of 23,000 fatal
passenger car accidents annually. For every mile traveled, passengers
are three times as likely to die when riding in a car than in a bus (of
any sort), according to data obtained from the National Highway Traffic
Safety Administration. [*]

One reason the World Wide Travel crash led to a broad study of industry
safety is that it was a "Chinatown bus," according to a slew of media
reports (see here, here, and here). Today, companies owned and operated
by Chinese immigrants make up only a fraction of the industry, but
“Chinatown bus” is often misused as a blanket term for all curbside
carriers, particularly when safety is in question. The owner of the
company wasn’t Chinese, nor was the bus driver. But when the accident
occurred the bus was destined for New York City’s Chinatown to drop off
its passengers, so it was a “Chinatown bus.”

Enter Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY), who had been scrambling for evidence
that Chinatown buses were unsafe going back to 2005. The senator had
told the New York Post at the time, “My daughter goes to college in
Boston, and many of her friends ride these buses, and they said they
were worried about them.” After the World Wide Travel crash, Schumer
held a press conference calling the safety record of these “low-cost
tour bus” companies “alarming” and demanded more regulation. Schumer and
Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-NY) sent a joint letter to the NTSB requesting
that it conduct a broad study of bus safety.

NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman, Sen. Charles Schumer, and Rep. Nydia
Velazquez announce the results of the NTSB's study of curbside busing,
October 31, 2011. |||Velazquez and Schumer also made clear what they
wanted from the study. “There is ample evidence,” the lawmakers wrote
the NTSB, “that the incident involving World Wide Tours [sic] is not an
isolated incident but rather just one example of an industry that, in
many cases, is operating outside the bounds of city, state and federal
transportation safety guidelines.”

After six months, the NTSB released its report on October 31, 2011.
Among the lead findings was the one that curbside bus companies were
seven times more likely to be involved in a fatal accident than
conventional bus operators—“an amazing statistic,” noted Sen. Schumer at
a press conference announcing the report.

The "seven times" finding caught the attention of Aaron Brown, who has a
background in statistics and applied math. He knew something was wrong.
“The figure was very hard to accept,” says Brown. “It takes thousands of
data points to reliably establish a number like seven times in this sort
of study.” Realizing that fatal bus accidents are relatively rare, Brown
doubted the researchers could have gathered enough data to publish such
a number without major qualification.

So he obtained a copy of the study. “In situations like this, usually I
find that there’s an asterisk in the study and the researchers are
making a more guarded statement that’s been brushed aside by newspaper
reporters,” says Brown. “But in this case, the report said the same
thing as the news accounts.”

In a public docket accessible online, there is a list of the 71
companies that the NTSB classified as “curbside” and the 51 companies
classified as “conventional.”

These lists are jaw dropping. Greyhound and Peter Pan—the two most
iconic conventional bus lines—were A woman and her son wait for a bus
from New York City to Tampa ||| Jim EpsteinJim Epsteincategorized as
“curbside” carriers.[**] It’s as if a major study of the restaurant
industry had classified McDonald’s and Burger King as leading outdoor
food trucks. Also, lesser-known carriers like Martz Trailways and
Fullington Trailways are on the list. I spoke with officials at both
those companies, who confirmed they are conventional bus carriers
without any curbside lines.

On the “conventional” carrier list, Hampton Jitney is listed. Apparently
the study authors never took part in the New York City summer ritual of
getting picked up on the streets of the Upper East Side for a weekend on
Long Island’s beaches. (A call to Hampton Jitney confirmed that the
company has no lines that pick up or drop off at a conventional station.)

The largest company on the conventional list is New Jersey Transit, a
statewide public transit system, with its 2,172 buses. If public transit
systems meet the study criteria, why stop with New Jersey Transit?[***]

The NTSB report states that during the study period these 71 curbside
companies had 37 accidents with at least one fatality, and with a total
of 52 fatalities.[****] I correlated the list of companies with federal
accident data and came up with almost the same results: 37 fatal
accidents and 51 fatalities. (My list is available here.)

Then I called every “curbside” company on the list that had experienced
a fatal accident, including Greyhound, which was responsible for 24 of
those accidents. Nearly every company I reached was not a curbside
operator. I found that 30 of the 37 accidents that the NTSB classified
as involving curbside buses did not involve a curbside bus. This alone
invalidates almost all the study’s findings. But that’s just the beginning.

The study reported that curbside carriers had a fatal accident rate of
1.4 per 100 buses, while conventional carriers had a rate of 0.2 per 100
buses. Since 1.4 is seven times greater than 0.2, that’s how “seven
times“ more got reported. Since the numerator 1.4 comes from the number
of fatal accidents tallied at 37, we already know the calculation is
wrong. But what about those “100 buses” the study put in the denominator?

Passengers wait for a bus from New York City to Washington, D.C. ||| Jim
EpsteinJim EpsteinSome press write-ups (see USA Today, Reuters, and the
Los Angeles Times) naturally assumed that the study meant that curbside
buses were seven times more prone to fatal accidents. To arrive at that
figure, study authors would have had to add together all the buses
operated by curbside companies. In fact, had the NTSB calculated the
results in this way, the data would have shown essentially no difference
between the fatal crash rates of curbside buses and conventional buses,
even assuming the study had not mistakenly attributed those 30 extra
accidents to curbside buses.

But as Aaron Brown first surmised and as the NTSB confirmed in an email,
the study authors took a different approach which was misleading. They
calculated the fatal accident rate for each bus company and then
averaged together the company rates without taking into consideration
the size of each company.

This would not have been such a problem had the number of buses operated
by each company been about the same. But that wasn’t at all the case.

In practice, Greyhound—let’s say for a moment that the study was right
in calling it a curbside bus company—had 1,515 buses and 24 accidents.
Another bus company on the list, Sky Horse Bus Tour, had one bus and one
fatal accident. The two companies were given equal weight. As a
counterfactual, let’s assume that Sky Horse’s single accident hadn’t
occurred, but Greyhound had had 1,515 fatal accidents instead of 24. The
NTSB would have come up with the same “seven times” finding. It’s as if
a rookie baseball player with three at bats and one hit received the
same ranking as a starter with 600 at bats and 200 hits.

Even if the NTSB’s method of ignoring company size told us something—and
even if the accident data weren’t wrong—the NTSB’s “seven times” finding
would still have little meaning because it doesn’t achieve what
researchers call statistical significance.NTSB, "Report on Curbside
Motorcoach Safety," p.45, fig. 9|||

The chart used to arrive at the “seven times” finding is pictured to the
right. There are two vertical lines in the middle of each measure called
error bars. They’re drawn according to a “95% confidence interval,” a
standard measure of statistical significance. The bars completely
overlap. This means the results could have easily occurred purely by
chance. A research journal with any standards would have flagged this
finding as inconclusive and not fit for publication. Instead, the NTSB
promoted this number to reporters without mentioning how little it
actually means.

“The key to statistical analysis is that it is innocent until proven
guilty,” says University of Pennsylvania Wharton School statistician Ed
George, who examined the NTSB study for the purposes of this article.
“You would start with the assumption that there’s no difference in the
safety rating of curbside and conventional bus companies. Then you look
for persuasive evidence otherwise. The error bars overlap in this chart,
so there is not persuasive evidence.”

Other problems with the NTSB study abound. The agency had no data on
miles traveled, generally a key measure in any analysis of
transportation safety. And the study is derived from a federal data set
known for its errors and omissions because it relies on local law
enforcement agencies to voluntarily report data only every two years.
The study acknowledges these limitations, but the press release didn’t
mention them.

When I emailed NTSB press officer Eric Weiss with all the problems with
the study and asked for an explanation, he offered this response: “The
NTSB stands by its report.”
--http://reason.com/archives/2013/05/07/government-assault-on-chinatown-bus-indu/print

[conklin]

"Sancho Panza" <otter...@xhotmail.com> wrote in message
news:519994e6$0$25640$607e...@cv.net...

It is obvious that politics has corrupted the NTSB.

[Sancho Panza]

The epidemic infection of the entire Department of Transportation was
clear with LaHood's trying to decapitate Toyota in the acceleration episode.

[danny burstein]

In <V_KdndQAQN34hwfM...@earthlink.com> "conklin" <nilkn...@earthlink.net> writes:

[snip]

>It is obvious that politics has corrupted the NTSB.

politicians may be assholes, but at least they don't
repost a dozen screensful just to add a one line
dumb comment.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On May 20, 9:38 am, Sancho Panza <otterpo...@xhotmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/20/2013 8:43 AM, conklin wrote:

> "Sancho Panza" <otterpo...@xhotmail.com> wrote in message

> >> report.” --http://reason.com/archives/2013/05/07/government-assault-on-chinatown...

>
> > It is obvious that politics has corrupted the NTSB.
>
> The epidemic infection of the entire Department of Transportation was
> clear with LaHood's trying to decapitate Toyota in the acceleration episode.

Reason Magazine or Institute is not a trustworthy source for
"information" about governmental activites, because it is a
"libertarian" "think tank" for right-wing ideologues, If the source
had been presented at the top of the copy, I would not have bothered
reading past the first paragraph.

Moreover, it was asinine of both Conky and "Sancho Panza" to repeat
the entire thing in order to add a 1- or 2-line comment.

[Sancho Panza]

On 5/20/2013 10:10 AM, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> On May 20, 9:38 am, Sancho Panza <otterpo...@xhotmail.com> wrote:
>> On 5/20/2013 8:43 AM, conklin wrote:
>> "Sancho Panza" <otterpo...@xhotmail.com> wrote in message
>>> news:519994e6$0$25640$607e...@cv.net...
>>>> On 3/3/2013 2:16 AM, Jimmy wrote:
>
>>>> When I emailed NTSB press officer Eric Weiss with all the problems with

>>>> the study and asked for an explanation, he offered this response: �The
>>>> NTSB stands by its
>
>>>> report.� --http://reason.com/archives/2013/05/07/government-assault-on-chinatown...

>>
>>> It is obvious that politics has corrupted the NTSB.
>>
>> The epidemic infection of the entire Department of Transportation was
>> clear with LaHood's trying to decapitate Toyota in the acceleration episode.
>
> Reason Magazine or Institute is not a trustworthy source for
> "information" about governmental activites, because it is a
> "libertarian" "think tank" for right-wing ideologues,

If you find one factual aspect to quibble about, please post it here.
Otherwise, stomping the messenger was discredited a couple of millennia ago.

[John Levine]

>> Reason Magazine or Institute is not a trustworthy source for
>> "information" about governmental activites, because it is a
>> "libertarian" "think tank" for right-wing ideologues,
>
>If you find one factual aspect to quibble about, please post it here.
>Otherwise, stomping the messenger was discredited a couple of millennia ago.

The problem is that the Reason Foundation has a habit of making up
"facts" to support the conclusions they started with. It's certainly
not worth my time to hunt down all of their sources to figure out what
they warped or omitted this time.

Nobody seems to deny the cracks and botched repairs that caused Mass.
to shut down Fung Wah.

--
Regards,
John Levine, jo...@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly

[Sancho Panza]

On 5/20/2013 11:12 AM, John Levine wrote:
>>> Reason Magazine or Institute is not a trustworthy source for
>>> "information" about governmental activites, because it is a
>>> "libertarian" "think tank" for right-wing ideologues,
>>
>> If you find one factual aspect to quibble about, please post it here.
>> Otherwise, stomping the messenger was discredited a couple of millennia ago.
>
> The problem is that the Reason Foundation has a habit of making up
> "facts" to support the conclusions they started with. It's certainly
> not worth my time to hunt down all of their sources to figure out what
> they warped or omitted this time.

It seems that the supposedly reputable Washington officials do not mind
making up a lot more facts using taxpayers' funds, especially to fit
their agendas. But then again, that is nothing new.

[conklin]

"Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:0c9af94f-86d1-47cb...@h13g2000yqe.googlegroups.com...

===google altert====

I don't trust Reason either, but I do read it because every now and then
they really to show something to be off kilter.

[Jimmy]

John Levine <jo...@iecc.com> wrote:
> The problem is that the Reason Foundation has a habit of making up
> "facts" to support the conclusions they started with.  It's certainly
> not worth my time to hunt down all of their sources to figure out what
> they warped or omitted this time.
>
> Nobody seems to deny the cracks and botched repairs that caused Mass.
> to shut down Fung Wah.

Fung Wah's problems are a different issue from the article's claim
about the general safety of "curbside buses". (They couldn't exactly
write an article about companies owned by ethnic Chinese.)

http://reason.com/archives/2013/05/07/government-assault-on-chinatown-bus-indu

I took the article with a grain of salt, considering its source. But
they did make some very good points about the mistakes in the
government report.

It's ridiculous that the NTSB refused to provide the raw accident data
they used to form the conclusion. That alone is reason to refute the
whole report.

The NTSB categorized Greyhound as a curbside carrier, which makes no
sense. They're the antithesis of a low-cost startup competitive bus
company if ever there was one.

They calculated the fatality rate incorrectly. They calculated fatal
accidents per bus for each company, and averaged them together,
*without normalizing for the size of the company*. So when one
company, Sky Horse Bus Tour, had one bus and one accident, it drove up
the entire average.

And there's not enough data for the "seven times more dangerous" claim
to be statistically significant. It's hard to argue with that if you
have any understanding of statistics.

Peer review is a good thing. I hope a respected transportation or
statistics researcher picks up on this flawed report, and makes an
issue out of it.

Jimmy

[Glen Labah]

In article <519994e6$0$25640$607e...@cv.net>,

Sancho Panza <otter...@xhotmail.com> wrote:

> It looks a lot more as if the whole attack was based on a majorly
> twisted and mangled study:

Some months ago, a "Chinatown" bus of sorts (Vancouver BC based Korean
outfit that does charter buses) managed to crash in eastern Oregon and
create quite a lot of deaths and injuries. They discovered a long list
of safety violations including the driver working over hours.

There was some noise at the time that lax enforcement of bus safety
standards should be solved.

Therefore, it seems to me that this move for more strict enforcement of
bus safety laws was to be expected.

[hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com]

On May 20, 9:48 pm, Jimmy <JimmyGeldb...@mailinator.com> wrote:



> It's ridiculous that the NTSB refused to provide the raw accident data
> they used to form the conclusion.  That alone is reason to refute the
> whole report.

As menitoned, Cato and Reason do not have a great track record.

"Reports" from these advocacy groups sometimes have a great deal of
"poetic license". Do we know with certainty that the NTSB refused to
release the _relevant_ data? Do we know with certainty that this
"report" matched the right data with the conclusions? Other such
advocacy reports failed to do so.

(Like when they claimed a bus operating in rush hour traffic would
make better time than a commuter train.)

[hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com]

On May 20, 10:51 pm, Glen Labah <gl4...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Some months ago, a "Chinatown" bus of sorts (Vancouver BC based Korean
> outfit that does charter buses) managed to crash in eastern Oregon and
> create quite a lot of deaths and injuries.  They discovered a long list
> of safety violations including the driver working over hours.

The NYT has been reporting for a long time safety issues of the
curbside carriers.

[Glen Labah]

In article
<c28b68de-328d-4149...@z8g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>,

Granted, Oregon DOT got hauled into the assorted accident lawsuits as
well, because (among other things) they didn't have a road side barrier
strong enough to stop a bus:

http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2013/04/odot_n
amed_in_suit_filed_in_co.html

In any event, the bus industry was given fair warning that the NTSB and
its allies were about to land like a ton of bricks on those operators
found with safety violations.

BoltBus still operates here just fine, and they are a curbside operator
as well. They have more sense than to violate any of the rules.
Despite the increased scrutiny on all bus operators after the accident,
they came out just fine.

If all bus operators were being persecuted, then it seems like all the
operators would be having trouble.

[conklin]

"Glen Labah" <gl4...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:gl4317-5866D7....@mx05.eternal-september.org...

>
> BoltBus still operates here just fine, and they are a curbside operator
> as well. They have more sense than to violate any of the rules.
> Despite the increased scrutiny on all bus operators after the accident,
> they came out just fine.
>
> If all bus operators were being persecuted, then it seems like all the
> operators would be having trouble.
>
> --
> Please note this e-mail address is a pit of spam due to e-mail address
> harvesters on Usenet. Response time to e-mail sent here is slow.

I took a good look at a Megabus when it stopped at Pilot. The customers, on
line at McDonalds, said the bus was just fine and comfortable. It was also
just a few years old (2 maybe) and looked clean and well-kept. Inside was
clean too. So, unless the driver was drunk or something, it is hard to
assume that it had safety violations. Oh yes, the tires looked great too.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On May 21, 8:47 am, "conklin" <nilknoc...@earthlink.net> wrote:

> I took a good look at a Megabus when it stopped at Pilot.  The customers, on
> line at McDonalds, said the bus was just fine and comfortable.  It was also
> just a few years old (2 maybe) and looked clean and well-kept.  Inside was
> clean too.  So, unless the driver was drunk or something, it is hard to
> assume that it had safety violations.  Oh yes, the tires looked great too.

Now that's an astonishing one even for Conky.

The janitorial staff is competent, and therefore the bus is safe???

[John Levine]

>I took a good look at a Megabus when it stopped at Pilot. ...

Megabus belongs to the Stagecoach Group, a Scottish travel
conglomerate that owns Coach USA, Gray Line, and a bunch of train and
bus services in the UK. They are adequately funded and it's not
surprising that their equipment would be well maintained.

Neon and BoltBus are subsidiaries of Greyhound which is in turn owned
by First Group, the other Scottish travel conglomerate. I'd expect
them to have adequate maintenance, too.

It's the buses run by no-name companies with no money for maintenance
that scare me.

ObRail: Stagecoach also owns Southwest Trains, which runs commuter and
mid-distance service to Southampton and Bournemouth, southwest of
London. Their trains go 100 mph, which is not particularly fast, but
they do it with DC third rail traction. I can report from experience
that the ride is quite smooth. Why can't our commuter trains do that?

[Jimmy]

hanco...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
> Jimmy <JimmyGeldb...@mailinator.com> wrote:
> > It's ridiculous that the NTSB refused to provide the raw accident data
> > they used to form the conclusion.  That alone is reason to refute the
> > whole report.
>
> As menitoned, Cato and Reason do not have a great track record.
>
> "Reports" from these advocacy groups sometimes have a great deal of
> "poetic license".  Do we know with certainty that the NTSB refused to
> release the _relevant_ data?  Do we know with certainty that this
> "report" matched the right data with the conclusions?  Other such
> advocacy reports failed to do so.

The Reason article provides links to its primary sources (unlike the
NTSB report).

Here's the NTSB document categorizing bus companies, which includes
Greyhound in the curbside list: http://reason.com/assets/db/13674378837429.pdf

The Reason author got his accident data from http://mcmiscatalog.fmcsa.dot.gov/
. He made a chart here: https://opendata.socrata.com/Government/NTSB-Curbside-Bus-Fatalities-For-Open-Data/3d5a-68w9
. The number of accidents for curbside and non-curbside buses (as
miscategorized by the NTSB) matched the NTSB's numbers.

Not much wiggle room there. And since you have access to the raw
data, you're also welcome to form your own educated conclusions.

"The National Transportation Safety Board denied my requests for the
study data, even though it was a taxpayer-funded report with an impact
on policy. After my Freedom of Information Act request also failed to
return the information following a six-month wait, I began
reconstructing the study data from other sources."

Since the Reason author didn't post a written FOIA denial letter from
the NTSB (since it appears the NTSB just didn't bother to respond),
it's theoretically possible that he was lying. But why would he? And
it would be easy for the NTSB to refute this, if they wanted to.

For completeness, here's the NTSB report: http://www.ntsb.gov/doclib/safetystudies/SR1101.pdf

> (Like when they claimed a bus operating in rush hour traffic would
> make better time than a commuter train.)

Now there's a claim without a cite.

Jimmy

[Jimmy]

Glen Labah <gl4...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Sancho Panza <otterpo...@xhotmail.com> wrote:
> > It looks a lot more as if the whole attack was based on a majorly
> > twisted and mangled study:
>
> Some months ago, a "Chinatown" bus of sorts (Vancouver BC based Korean
> outfit that does charter buses) managed to crash in eastern Oregon and
> create quite a lot of deaths and injuries.  They discovered a long list
> of safety violations including the driver working over hours.
>
> There was some noise at the time that lax enforcement of bus safety
> standards should be solved.
>
> Therefore, it seems to me that this move for more strict enforcement of
> bus safety laws was to be expected.

The federal and state governments absolutely should enforce vehicle
and driver safety laws.

What they should not do is publish a report saying curbside buses are
seven times more dangerous than conventional buses, when the
statistical analysis behind the statement is just plain wrong.

Jimmy

[Stephen Sprunk]

As much as I hate to defend Conky, there is _some_ logic to what he
said. The only reason a business would cut corners on maintenance is to
save money, and such a choice would correlate strongly with a similar
choice to cut corners on cleaning. It has nothing to do with the
competence of their janitors--or mechanics.

S

--
Stephen Sprunk "God does not play dice." --Albert Einstein
CCIE #3723 "God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the
K5SSS dice at every possible opportunity." --Stephen Hawking

[hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com]

On May 21, 1:31 pm, Stephen Sprunk <step...@sprunk.org> wrote:

> As much as I hate to defend Conky, there is _some_ logic to what he
> said.  The only reason a business would cut corners on maintenance is to
> save money, and such a choice would correlate strongly with a similar
> choice to cut corners on cleaning.  It has nothing to do with the
> competence of their janitors--or mechanics.

Cleanliness and mechanical maintenace are independent from each other.

Indeed, a sleazy operator have keep his buses clean to present the
appearance of competence, while mechanical maintenance suffers. Also,
there is no guarantee of driver workload or qualification (some of the
issues given by the NYT report.)

[hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com]

On May 21, 12:44 pm, Jimmy <JimmyGeldb...@mailinator.com> wrote:

> Since the Reason author didn't post a written FOIA denial letter from
> the NTSB (since it appears the NTSB just didn't bother to respond),
> it's theoretically possible that he was lying.  But why would he?  And
> it would be easy for the NTSB to refute this, if they wanted to.

Why would he lie?

Advoacy groups, particularly Reason and Cato, are known for selecting
and presenting facts to bolster their case and ignoring facts that
would hurt their case. They might use measures out of context to the
situation at hand.

For example, a recent report by an airline advocacy group charged that
Amtrak isn't responsible for certain expenses when in fact it is.

A former frequent poster to this newsgroup, Merritt Mullen, often
pointed out the B/S in their reports. So does NARP.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On May 21, 1:31 pm, Stephen Sprunk <step...@sprunk.org> wrote:

> On 21-May-13 09:38, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> > On May 21, 8:47 am, "conklin" <nilknoc...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> >> I took a good look at a Megabus when it stopped at Pilot.  The
> >> customers, on line at McDonalds, said the bus was just fine and
> >> comfortable.  It was also just a few years old (2 maybe) and looked
> >> clean and well-kept.  Inside was clean too.  So, unless the driver
> >> was drunk or something, it is hard to assume that it had safety
> >> violations.  Oh yes, the tires looked great too.
>
> > Now that's an astonishing one even for Conky.
>
> > The janitorial staff is competent, and therefore the bus is safe???
>
> As much as I hate to defend Conky, there is _some_ logic to what he
> said.  The only reason a business would cut corners on maintenance is to
> save money, and such a choice would correlate strongly with a similar
> choice to cut corners on cleaning.  It has nothing to do with the
> competence of their janitors--or mechanics.

Cleaning crews are a lot cheaper than mechanics.

[conklin]

"Jimmy" <JimmyG...@mailinator.com> wrote in message
news:08643a79-746e-4247...@a8g2000yqp.googlegroups.com...

=google alert==

The only statistic which needs to be cited is accidents and/or fatalities
per 100 million miles. Short of that, it is all meaningless.

[Phil Kane]

On Tue, 21 May 2013 12:31:29 -0500, Stephen Sprunk
<ste...@sprunk.org> wrote:

> The only reason a business would cut corners on maintenance is to
>save money, and such a choice would correlate strongly with a similar
>choice to cut corners on cleaning.

Another reason is the incompetence of top management who has their own
idiosyncratic way of doing things which has no correlation to money
i.e. "we always do it this way". Not all companies are run by MBAs
who see nothing else but the bottom line.

Phil Kane
Beaverton, OR

[Stephen Sprunk]

On 21-May-13 14:02, hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
> On May 21, 1:31 pm, Stephen Sprunk <step...@sprunk.org> wrote:
>> As much as I hate to defend Conky, there is _some_ logic to what
>> he said. The only reason a business would cut corners on
>> maintenance is to save money, and such a choice would correlate
>> strongly with a similar choice to cut corners on cleaning. It has
>> nothing to do with the competence of their janitors--or mechanics.
>
> Cleanliness and mechanical maintenace are independent from each
> other.

Not really; one doesn't cause the other, but they do correlate well
because they have the same root cause, i.e. money or lack thereof.

> Indeed, a sleazy operator have keep his buses clean to present the
> appearance of competence, while mechanical maintenance suffers.

It's possible but rare in my experience.

> Also, there is no guarantee of driver workload or qualification (some
> of the issues given by the NYT report.)

That also correlates with cleanliness and maintenance because, again, it
has the same root cause.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On May 21, 6:26 pm, Stephen Sprunk <step...@sprunk.org> wrote:

> On 21-May-13 14:02, hanco...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>
> > On May 21, 1:31 pm, Stephen Sprunk <step...@sprunk.org> wrote:
> >> As much as I hate to defend Conky, there is _some_ logic to what
> >> he said.  The only reason a business would cut corners on
> >> maintenance is to save money, and such a choice would correlate
> >> strongly with a similar choice to cut corners on cleaning.  It has
> >> nothing to do with the competence of their janitors--or mechanics.
>
> > Cleanliness and mechanical maintenace are independent from each
> > other.
>
> Not really; one doesn't cause the other, but they do correlate well
> because they have the same root cause, i.e. money or lack thereof.
>
> > Indeed, a sleazy operator have keep his buses clean to present the
> > appearance of competence, while mechanical maintenance suffers.
>
> It's possible but rare in my experience.

Are you familiar with the phrase "Potemkin village"? Or have you heard
of Theresienstadt/Terezin?

[hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com]

On May 21, 6:26 pm, Stephen Sprunk <step...@sprunk.org> wrote:

> On 21-May-13 14:02, hanco...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:

> > Cleanliness and mechanical maintenace are independent from each
> > other.
>
> Not really; one doesn't cause the other, but they do correlate well
> because they have the same root cause, i.e. money or lack thereof.

No, they don't _necessarily_ have the same root cause. Certainly,
many businesses neglect one or the other (or both) to improve
profits. The NYT series of articles suggest the curbside buses are
inadequately maintained.

> > Indeed, a sleazy operator have keep his buses clean to present the
> > appearance of competence, while mechanical maintenance suffers.
>
> It's possible but rare in my experience.

I've seen it often, not only in transportation, but other fields, too.