BILL ANALYSIS Ó
SENATE COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND HOUSING
Senator Jim Beall, Chair
2015 - 2016 Regular
Bill No: AB 1677 Hearing Date: 6/28/2016
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|Author: |Ting |
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|Version: |5/31/2016 |
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|Urgency: |No |Fiscal: |Yes |
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|Consultant|Sarah Carvill |
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SUBJECT: Vehicles: tour buses: safety inspections
DIGEST: This bill requires the California Highway Patrol (CHP)
to develop protocols for collaborating with representatives of
local government to increase the number of tour bus inspections
within their jurisdictions.
ANALYSIS:
Existing law:
1)Defines "charter-party carriers of passengers" (CPCs) as
persons engaged in the transportation of persons by motor
vehicle for compensation over any public highway.
2)Defines "passenger stage corporations" (PSCs) as corporations
or persons engaged as a common carrier, for compensation, in
the ownership, control, operation, or management of any
passenger stage over any public highway in the state between
fixed termini or over a regular route, as specified.
3)Defines a "bus" as a vehicle designed, used, or maintained for
carrying more than 10 persons, including the driver, which is
used to transport persons for compensation or profit, or is
used by any non-profit organization or group.
4)Defines a "tour bus" as a bus operated by or for a CPC or PSC.
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5)Requires that CPCs and PSCs obtain a permit from and register
all individual buses with the California Public Utilities
Commission (CPUC).
6)Requires the CHP to regulate the equipment, maintenance, and
safe operation of tour buses.
7)Requires all tour buses to be inspected every 45 days by the
tour bus operator, or more often if necessary to ensure safe
operation, to correct any defects that are found during an
inspection before transporting passengers, and to keep
detailed records of inspections and repairs performed.
8)Requires the CHP to conduct annual terminal inspections on a
representative subset of each carrier's buses and records to
verify that buses are being maintained in accordance with the
law. For companies with fewer than 100 buses, inspections are
scheduled in advance.
9)Requires that a terminal that receives an "unsatisfactory"
rating in an inspection must be inspected again within 120
days.
This bill:
1)Requires the CHP to develop protocols for entering into
memoranda of understanding (MoUs) with local governments, upon
the request of and in consultation with those entities, to
allow the CHP to increase the number of inspections of
locally-operating tour buses.
2)Provides that any such MoU must contain a provision requiring
the local government entity to reimburse the CHP for all costs
associated with the additional inspections.
3)Requires that any additional inspections conducted by the CHP
pursuant to such an agreement not be duplicative of the
inspections the CHP must conduct under existing law.
COMMENTS:
1)Purpose. According to the author, dangerous vehicles fall
through the cracks of the existing tour bus regulatory system,
causing preventable tragedies on our streets. In a 2013
report, the California State Auditor concluded that CPUC's
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oversight of passenger carriers is insufficient to ensure
consumer and public safety. The CHP inspects tour bus
terminals for the CPUC, but inspections cover only a sample of
each bus company's fleet each year. This results in the
inspection of a fraction of all buses, about 30 %. The author
argues that, as the entities most closely impacted by the tour
bus industry, local governments would benefit from uniform
guidelines and statutory authority to collaborate with CHP to
inspect tour buses that directly affect their communities and
visitors. This bill requires the CHP to develop protocols for
entering into memoranda of understanding (MOUs) with local
governments in order to increase the number of tour buses
being inspected.
2)Background: San Francisco tour bus accidents. On November 13,
2015, 19 people were injured when a City Sightseeing bus
crashed into construction scaffolding in San Francisco's Union
Square. Despite early speculation that the vehicle's brakes
may have failed, on March 23, 2016, the CHP announced that the
cause of the crash was driver error. Post-crash
investigations revealed that City Sightseeing had not notified
the CPUC when it added the bus to its fleet, as required by
law, and the CHP identified other safety violations at the
company in a December 2015 terminal inspection. Tour buses
have caused two pedestrian fatalities in the last two years,
most recently in January, when an 82-year-old man was struck
and killed as he attempted to cross a busy street in the
Western Addition neighborhood. The other incident occurred in
the crosswalk in front of City Hall, and prompted San
Francisco to pass an ordinance preventing tour bus drivers
from narrating their tours while driving. A tour bus burst
into flames on Haight Street in May of 2015. Summer of 2013
saw a similar tour bus fire, as well as an incident in which a
tour bus struck a power line in the Richmond District.
3)Terminal inspections: What they do and what they don't do.
Buses must undergo frequent maintenance, which is why existing
law requires operators to perform their own safety checks and
routine repairs on every vehicle at least once every 45 days -
far more often than regulators could be called in for
inspections. There are also tradeoffs between the number of
buses that are checked in an inspection and the amount of
notice given to operators, on the one hand, and the impact to
an operator's service on the other. While the ideal
inspection program might involve surprise terminal visits in
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which all buses are physically examined, this approach would
severely compromise an operator's ability to deliver reliable
service to paying customers. The current terminal inspection
program balances these tradeoffs by checking a subset of
vehicles and examining terminal records to determine whether
operators have established systems that ensure that all of
their vehicles are safely maintained. One assumption
underlying this approach is that it would be extraordinarily
difficult for operators to persuasively "fake" correspondence
between maintenance records and actual under-the-hood
conditions. Importantly, terminal inspections also include
examination of records related to driver safety, so these
inspections are relevant to accidents caused by driver error
as well as those caused by mechanical failures.
4)Uniformity versus vigilance. This bill provides a pathway for
local governments to increase oversight of tour buses
operating within their jurisdictions if they perceive a need
for additional scrutiny. As originally written, the bill
would have granted local governments the authority to conduct
supplemental inspections themselves. This provision prompted
concerns that the bill would erode the statewide consistency
conveyed by the CHP inspection system and subject carriers to
multiple, differing enforcement schemes in each jurisdiction
in which they operate. Amendments taken in the Assembly
require additional inspections to be conducted by the CHP at
the expense of local entities, and specify that additional
inspections may not be duplicative of those conducted under
the existing program. The current version of the bill does
disrupt the uniformity of the current system, but to a much
lesser degree than the original proposal.
Related Legislation:
AB 1574 (Chiu, 2016) - requires the CPUC to verify with the
Department of Motor Vehicles that the buses, limousines, and
modified limousines used by PSCs and CPCs have been reported and
meet safety requirements. This bill is also being heard in this
committee today.
SB 812 (Hill, 2016) - changes existing terminal inspection
program administered by the CHP to make it more
performance-based. This bill is pending hearing in the Assembly
Transportation Committee.
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Assembly Votes:
Floor: 52-26
Appr: 14-6
Trans: 10-4
FISCAL EFFECT: Appropriation: No Fiscal Com.: Yes
Local: No
POSITIONS: (Communicated to the committee before noon on
Wednesday,
June 22, 2016.)
SUPPORT:
Consumer Attorneys of California
San Francisco, City and County of
San Francisco Bicycle Coalition
Walk San Francisco
OPPOSITION:
None received
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