Public transit buses – like the city-operated T – and school buses seem pretty similar. After all, they both have seats, they both have wheels that go round and round, and they both carry thousands of people per year.

But there is a significant difference. School buses must pass a safety inspection by the Kansas Highway Patrol each year before they are allowed to transport children.

No independent safety inspections are required for public transit buses.

T buses are instead inspected by MV Transportation mechanics every 3,000 miles or 45 days.

MV Transportation is the private company the city hired to operate its public transit system.

Cliff Galante, the city’s public transit administrator, receives monthly maintenance reports on each of the city’s 12 transit buses. Galante said those reports provided him a good picture of how well safety systems were maintained. He said he has never sent city-employed mechanics to inspect a bus.

Willa Myslivy, 2, sits with her mother, Rachel Myslivy, as the two take the T home on Thursday afternoon. Myslivy said that she and her daughter ride the Lawrence transit daily and are happy with the service. The city hires its own inspectors, MV Transportation, who examine vehicles every 3,000 miles or 45 days.

“The bottom line is that if they weren’t properly maintained, that would show up in excessive downtime, and that isn’t happening,” Galante said.

Inadequate oversight?

Other transit operators, though, questioned the system. Wayne Zachary, director of driver development and safety for Laidlaw, which operates the school district’s buses, said he was surprised no outside inspections were conducted.

Becky Popp, president of Lawrence-based chartered bus company Kansas Transportation, said she didn’t think the city’s system of oversight was adequate.

“I have known maintenance people to not actually maintain a vehicle but say that they did on a report,” Popp said. “There are a lot of people who don’t really want to work that hard.”

Galante said he was confident reports provided by MV were accurate representations.

“We’ve never had a red flag that would suggest we need to change our system,” Galante said. “I would have no qualms sending in an independent inspector, if I thought there was a problem.”

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Mike Sweeten, general manager for MV’s Lawrence operations, also said the public should rest assured that the buses are safe. He said the company had powerful incentives to keep the buses in good working order because the company could be held liable for any accidents caused by poor maintenance and would stand to lose its city contract.

“We fully understand we would suffer the consequences if we didn’t do our job properly,” Sweeten said.

MV in 2004 was paid $2.2 million to operate and maintain the city’s transit system. The contract is structured in such a way that MV pays for bus parts out of the money it receives through the contract rather than being reimbursed by the city for specific parts purchases.

Similar systems

Lawrence resident Sharilyn Wells rides closely behind driver Dan Nelson Thursday afternoon on the T.

The system in Lawrence is not unique. A 2001 report commissioned by the Federal Transit Administration found that states generally were lacking in mandating safety inspections or programs for public transit buses.

“A substantial number of transit buses in the U.S. today are subject to little or no statutory guidance in the area of safety,” wrote the authors of the 2001 FTA transit bus safety program report.

Kim Stich, a spokeswoman for the Kansas Department of Transportation, said her department does conduct annual vehicle inspections of the state’s small transit systems, such as those operated by senior service agencies. But Stich said that those inspections weren’t performed on the state’s five metro transit services – in Johnson County, Wyandotte County, Lawrence, Topeka and Wichita – because the bulk of the funding for those services comes from the federal government. She said KDOT leaders believed federal officials had better authority to conduct inspections for those programs.

The FTA does conduct a triennial review of every transit system that receives federal funding. But that review, which Lawrence passed in July, does not involve physical inspection of the buses. The safety portion of the review primarily examines maintenance records and safety plans.

Paul Griffo, a spokesman with FTA, said his agency differed with KDOT. He said inspections should be the responsibility of the states because they are closer to the day-to-day operations of transit systems.

“It is difficult to compare one state to another because the oversight does vary so much,” Griffo said. “Some states do an excellent job of it. In others, more could be done.”

Galante said he thought the current system was working well. He said the best evidence was a T bus had never had an accident related to a maintenance problem during its five years of operations.

National studies also indicated that fatality crash rates for public transit systems are about one-tenth those of automobile travel.

“I don’t want anybody to think that we discount safety at all,” said Galante, who took over as the city’s transit administrator in July. “I have told everyone involved in the system that safety is our top priority.”

Galante said if state or federal agencies wanted to begin requiring safety inspections for buses, he would not object.

“I wouldn’t have a problem with it, but I don’t really think it is needed because we haven’t had a history of problems,” Galante said.

– Staff writer Chad Lawhorn can be reached at 832-6362.