Posted on 06/07/2010 11:20:57 AM PDT by a fool in paradise
...On average, that's nearly three accidents or fender benders each day.
Two accidents this year involved buses and Metro's light rail — both the result of bus drivers running red lights...
The Chronicle's review of accidents, citations and breakdowns involving the Metropolitan Transit Authority's 1,210 buses documented a total of 1,029 wrecks last year.
Metro Police classified 338 of them as “preventable,” meaning the bus drivers involved could have taken measures to prevent the accidents; 220 caused at least $1,000 in damages or resulted in people ending up at hospitals.
Altogether, at least 334 people were injured in bus or light rail accidents last year, according to the National Transit Database maintained by the Federal Transit Administration. ...The Chronicle also looked at traffic tickets issued to on-duty bus drivers. In the past five years, drivers have gotten nearly 860 tickets for everything from improper left turns to driving at night without headlights.
The most common violations — 400 of them — were speed-related.
Among the others, 112 were for running red lights and 119 involved improper lane-changes. More than 170 drivers have had two or more violations; nine of them have had four or five.
The Chronicle's analysis also found nearly two-thirds of the tickets issued to bus drivers were dismissed. Records most often cite “Police officer not present.”
Other reasons include “insufficient evidence” or “defective complaint.”
...Skabowski said Metro doesn't require its drivers to report citations. Instead, it relies on the Department of Public Safety for ticket information: “We review that information, drilling down if it's our vehicle or not. It's difficult the way DPS' database is structured.”
...More than 19,000 passengers lodged complaints against Metro last year, with one man complaining that his driver stopped often in the middle of a route and ran into McDonald's to eat....
(Excerpt) Read more at chron.com ...
The Chronicle's analysis also found nearly two-thirds of the tickets issued to bus drivers were dismissed. Records most often cite “Police officer not present.” Other reasons include “insufficient evidence” or “defective complaint.”
Gads.
Assuming one incident per vehicle, which probably isn’t true ... that means 85% of the METRO fleet was in wrecks last year.
My family had three teenagers at once, and we didn’t have anywhere NEAR that sort of record.
Shut it down. One offshore well had issues out of 30,000 proposed and Obama pulled the plug.
http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news/13_undercover&id=7461426
Barnicle is playing catch up to Wayne Dolcefino at KTRK ch 13 in Houston including video of a bus running a red light.
Maybe Wayne could find a photo of a Metro bus that is NOT running a red light. That would be a real discovery.
And the city doesn’t fine their own. The tickets may be written but they’ve been overwhelmingly dismissed.
It’s one thing to say for the red light cameras. While they don’t count against your license, half the money goes to a private company and they aren’t so willing to let non-emergency police and metro drivers flaunt the law. Cities with red light cameras usually pass along any fines to the drivers of those vehicles.
Runnning red lights? Doesn’t suprise me. I saw two metro busses doing over 70mph in a 45 zone on the way to work the other day.
And they often take both lanes (vearing from curb to center stripe back to curb) when driving down some of our winding roads.
They are pretty cavalier when you confront them about their driving. They utter things like “if you have any issues, you should report them to metro” with a blaise attibute.
Most metro transit systems have been hotbeds of diversity and striving for a gender balanced work force for the last 20 years. Management spends more time building small empires than actually working at the process of moving human beings from one place in the city to another in an efficient and timely manner.
The transit unions have most city council members in the palm of their hands and have made it almost impossible to fire a driver, especially if that driver contributes to the diversity profile.
If you want to see this actual bus stop at McDonald's for 15 minutes or so be on North Eldridge between Briar Forest and Richmond Av. around 5:45pm any day Monday through Friday. You will not be disappointed as the driver eats there every day.
It’s Bill White’s fault.
If the Terror Train & Metro were a private enterprised, Big Government would have shut them down long ago.
I bet you can’t even fire one of those drivers if you wanted to.
Oh Willie !
Isn’t goobermint transportation wonderful ??
Now the toy train’s hitting busses too !
Two accidents this year involved buses and Metro's light rail — both the result of bus drivers running red lights...
It's the bus drivers' fault.
Get rid of the buses,
Get rid of the bus drivers.
Houston needs more light rail instead.
Traffic lights go to red on demand of the rail line. The rail line itself is permitted to run red lights.
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