BILL ANALYSIS Ó
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|SENATE RULES COMMITTEE | SB 812|
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UNFINISHED BUSINESS
Bill No: SB 812
Author: Hill (D), et al.
Amended: 8/18/16
Vote: 21
SENATE TRANS. & HOUSING COMMITTEE: 10-0, 4/5/16
AYES: Beall, Cannella, Allen, Bates, Galgiani, Leyva, McGuire,
Mendoza, Roth, Wieckowski
NO VOTE RECORDED: Gaines
SENATE ENERGY, U. & C. COMMITTEE: 11-0, 4/19/16
AYES: Hueso, Morrell, Cannella, Gaines, Hertzberg, Hill, Lara,
Leyva, McGuire, Pavley, Wolk
SENATE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE: 7-0, 5/27/16
AYES: Lara, Bates, Beall, Hill, McGuire, Mendoza, Nielsen
SENATE FLOOR: 39-0, 6/1/16
AYES: Allen, Anderson, Bates, Beall, Berryhill, Block,
Cannella, De León, Fuller, Gaines, Galgiani, Glazer, Hall,
Hancock, Hernandez, Hertzberg, Hill, Hueso, Huff, Jackson,
Lara, Leno, Leyva, Liu, McGuire, Mendoza, Mitchell, Monning,
Moorlach, Morrell, Nguyen, Nielsen, Pan, Pavley, Roth, Stone,
Vidak, Wieckowski, Wolk
NO VOTE RECORDED: Runner
ASSEMBLY FLOOR: 80-0, 8/30/16 - See last page for vote
SUBJECT: Modified limousines and tour buses: standards and
inspections
SOURCE: Author
SB 812
Page 2
DIGEST: This bill makes changes to the California Highway
Patrols (CHP) authority to inspect charter-bus terminals and
order vehicles out of service, with the goal of increasing
regulatory scrutiny of operators with poor safety records.
Assembly Amendments remove most of the provisions in the bill as
passed out of the Senate, including language changing the
frequency of inspection for operators based on their past
performance record; language requiring the development, by
regulation, of a new inspection fee structure and a
performance-based inspection program; language requiring that
10% of terminal inspections be unscheduled; and language
establishing that two consecutive unsatisfactory ratings on
terminal inspections trigger the loss of an operator's license.
Additionally, the amendments extend the compliance deadline for
prior legislation related to modified limousine safety by one
year.
ANALYSIS:
Existing law:
1)Requires that charter-party carriers of passengers and
passenger stage corporations:
a) Obtain a permit from the California Public Utilities
Commission (CPUC).
b) Register all individual buses with the CPUC.
c) Conduct safety inspections on each of their buses at
least every 45 days.
d) Correct any defects that are found during an inspection
before transporting passengers.
e) Keep detailed records of inspections and repairs
performed.
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2)Requires the CHP to:
a) 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
carriers with more than 100 buses, inspections are not
scheduled in advance.
b) Collect a fee of $15 per bus (not to exceed $6,500
total) to offset the cost of terminal inspections of
charter-party carriers. These fees are deposited in the
state Motor Vehicle Account.
c) Reinspect, within 120 days, any terminal that receives
an "unsatisfactory" rating in an inspection.
3)Authorizes the CHP to recommend that the CPUC suspend a
carrier's operating authority when the CHP finds violations at
a terminal that constitute an imminent threat to public safety
or a consistent failure to comply with regulations.
4)Requires the CPUC to follow the CHP's recommendation, pending
a hearing.
5)Requires operators of modified limousines to ensure that
sufficient door and window exits, as specified, are installed
on certain vehicles by January 1, 2017.
6)Requires the CHP to establish standards for operability of
window exits on modified limousines by January 1, 2017.
This bill:
1)Encourages the CHP to conduct surprise inspections of tour bus
operations to the extent that it is possible to do so.
2)Clarifies that the CHP is not prohibited from conducting
surprise inspections of tour bus operations with fewer than
100 buses.
3)Requires the CHP to conduct a follow-up inspection 30 to 90
days after a terminal receives an unsatisfactory rating in a
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regular inspection.
4)Requires the CHP to order a bus out of service if it finds,
either during a terminal inspection or at some other time,
multiple safety violations that could constitute an imminent
danger to public safety.
5)Forbids the operator of a bus that has been ordered out of
service from transporting passengers until the CHP has
verified that the safety violations have been corrected.
6)Extends the deadline for operators to comply with modified
limousine emergency exit requirements, and for CHP to develop
standards for window exits, to January 1, 2018.
Comments
1)Purpose. According to the author, SB 812 puts forward common
sense policies to improve the safety of tour buses driven in
California. Since 1986, the CHP has had a program in place to
inspect the safety of tour buses in the state. Since the
inception of the program, the CHP has inspected thousands of
buses and caught many mechanical problems. However, the
author states that there are components of the inspection
program that need to be updated and strengthened, and the
purpose of SB 812 is to do that. The bill encourages the CHP
to conduct surprise, unannounced tour bus inspections and
requires the CHP to order a bus out of service if it finds
safety violations that endanger the public. It also shortens
the amount of time a bus operator has to fix safety problems.
2)What's covered? This bill deals with bus transportation by
charter-party carriers and passenger stage corporations. It
does not affect school buses or public transit buses. A bus
is defined as a vehicle designed to carry more than 10 people,
including the driver. Charter-party carriers transport
passengers traveling under a single contract for a fixed fee.
Passenger stage corporations transport passengers over a fixed
route between regular termini.
3)San Francisco tour bus accident. On November 13, 2015, 19
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people were injured when a City Sightseeing bus crashed into
construction scaffolding in San Francisco's Union Square. The
bus was originally a transit vehicle and had been retrofitted
as a double-decker open-air tour bus before it was sold to
City Sightseeing. 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.
4)Related legislation: AB 1574 (Chiu, 2016). The San Francisco
bus crash has drawn attention to the problem of unregistered
"ghost buses" and to the possibility of improving the CHP's
bus inspection program. The former issue is the target of AB
1574, a companion bill which compels the CPUC and the DMV to
ensure that the former has a record of all commercial buses
registered with the latter. AB 1574 imposes additional
triggers for bus inspections and broadens the authority of the
CHP and the CPUC to impound vehicles.
5)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
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.
6)Tour bus safety: What's right and what's wrong. Tour buses
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are quite safe relative to other forms of ground
transportation. In the year 2013, for example, only 43 of
32,719 U.S. traffic fatalities (0.13%) occurred in accidents
involving a tour bus. In California, only 6.5% of traffic
fatalities and serious injuries occur in accidents involving
commercial vehicles - a category that includes trucks as well
as several different types of buses. It is also worth noting
that the CHP's terminal inspection program is more
comprehensive than its counterparts in other states.
However, some of the bus companies that have been involved in
recent accidents in California have been found to be out of
compliance with state safety regulations. In some cases,
violations were not detected prior to the accident; in other
cases, they appear not to have been adequately addressed after
detection. For example, City Sightseeing had a record of
satisfactory ratings on terminal inspections prior to the
November 2015 accident, but in a surprise inspection following
the crash, the CHP found multiple serious violations in the
terminal. A 2013 bus crash near Pala, California, involved a
company that had received multiple "unsatisfactory" ratings in
terminal inspections in the three years leading up to the
crash.
7)Fixes: Surprise inspections, inspection follow-up, and
out-of-service orders. The above examples suggest that public
safety may be improved by the changes to the existing tour bus
terminal inspection proposed in this bill. Clarifying the
CHP's authority to conduct surprise inspections of smaller
operators may increase the likelihood that safety violations
will be detected before accidents occur. For terminals that
receive an unsatisfactory rating in an annual inspection, this
bill shortens the follow-up inspection window from 120 days to
30-90 days. The bill also requires the CHP to order
individual buses out of service when serious violations that
threaten public safety are found, and forbids operators from
transporting passengers in vehicles that have been ordered out
of service until the CHP certifies that the violations have
been corrected.
8)More time for the limousine industry. On May 4, 2013, a
limousine fire on the San Mateo-Hayward bridge killed five
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passengers who were unable to get out of the vehicle. Several
other occupants escaped by climbing through the partition
window separating the passengers from the driver.
Approximately one month later, on June 9, 2013, nine
passengers successfully exited a limousine in Walnut Creek
prior to the vehicle catching fire while idling. In response
to these incidents, several bills were introduced to provide
additional safeguards to the limousine industry, including a
terminal inspection program (SB 611, Hill, Chapter 860,
Statutes of 2014) and requirements relating to emergency exits
in modified (also known as "stretch") vehicles (SB 109,
Corbett, Chapter 752, Statutes of 2013).
In the interest of efficiency, the CHP attempted to adopt the
new regulations required by these bills in a single rule
package, but the complexity of the inspection component (which
has been subject to subsequent, clarifying legislation) has
delayed the implementation of other limousine safety measures.
Under existing law, operators must install pop-out emergency
windows on certain vehicles by January 1, 2017, but the CHP
has yet to issue standards for window exits. In order to give
operators more time to comply with the pending rules, this
bill was amended in the Assembly to extend the compliance
deadline by one year.
FISCAL EFFECT: Appropriation: No Fiscal
Com.:YesLocal: Yes
According to the Assembly Appropriations Committee, any costs to
CHP should be minor and absorbable.
SUPPORT: (Verified 8/30/16)
California Association of Highway Patrolmen
California Bus Association
OPPOSITION: (Verified 8/30/16)
SB 812
Page 8
None received
ASSEMBLY FLOOR: 80-0, 8/30/16
AYES: Achadjian, Alejo, Travis Allen, Arambula, Atkins, Baker,
Bigelow, Bloom, Bonilla, Bonta, Brough, Brown, Burke,
Calderon, Campos, Chang, Chau, Chávez, Chiu, Chu, Cooley,
Cooper, Dababneh, Dahle, Daly, Dodd, Eggman, Frazier, Beth
Gaines, Gallagher, Cristina Garcia, Eduardo Garcia, Gatto,
Gipson, Gomez, Gonzalez, Gordon, Gray, Grove, Hadley, Harper,
Roger Hernández, Holden, Irwin, Jones, Jones-Sawyer, Kim,
Lackey, Levine, Linder, Lopez, Low, Maienschein, Mathis,
Mayes, McCarty, Medina, Melendez, Mullin, Nazarian, Obernolte,
O'Donnell, Olsen, Patterson, Quirk, Ridley-Thomas, Rodriguez,
Salas, Santiago, Steinorth, Mark Stone, Thurmond, Ting,
Wagner, Waldron, Weber, Wilk, Williams, Wood, Rendon
Prepared by:Sarah Carvill / T. & H. / (916) 651-41218/30/16
20:09:26
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