The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; Buses

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. Nothing seems simple any more, especially if it involves federal regulations. If you stick with us for a few minutes we`ll tell you a little tale about buses that says a lot about the way things work -- or don`t work -- in this country. Today is the day on which new federal standards for city buses were supposed to go into effect. The federal government has poured millions of dollars into the design and purchase of new urban transit buses, and wants to make, them easier for elderly and handicapped -persons to use. Hence, the new standards announced months ago.

But it stops being simple right there. Things are so confused that the federal agency involved, the Urban Mass Transit Administration, will not even confirm to us that the federal regulations actually went into effect today. Why does all this matter? Well, let`s begin at the beginning. Jim?

JIM LEHRER: Robin, buses have always gotten short shrift from the transportation historians and the nostalgia buffs. People just don`t sit around their fireplaces swapping old bus trip stories the way they do about trains, trolleys, planes and ships. And few songs have been written about riding the bus to and from work. But the bus, non-sexy and unglamorous as it, may be, has been an integral, vital part of our transportation system since the early 1900`s. It began with the jitney.

(Film showing various models of buses from 1907 to 1959.)

LEHRER: As you can see, buses haven`t changed that much through the years. They began as a platform on wheels with seats under a roof that took people from place to place, and that`s what they still area They ride smoother, they have more seats, they`re air conditioned and their motors are now in the rear, instead of upfront; but other than that nothing has much changed. And in some ways that simple fact is at the heart of a complicated dispute. Robin?

MacNEIL: The dispute involves what kind of new bus cities can buy with federal help. The federal government pays eighty percent of the cost of replacement buses, and with each bus costing between sixty-five and eighty- five thousand dollars these days cities arc! not likely to order them without federal approval. A consortium of six southwestern cities led by Houston, Texas, wants to buy 480 buses of this model. It is the RTS-2, built by General Motors. It was the only bus ready for production which met the specifications of the Houston consortium. The Urban Mass Transit Administration gave its approval for federal funding. One of the advanced features of the GM bus is that it can kneel, or descend on hydraulic lifts, to make easier entry for old people and the handicapped. That brings its floor level to within twenty-four inches of the ground. But the GM bus has made other manufacturers unhappy. AM General, the bus division of American Motors, has sued UMTA, claiming that the specifications approved could only have been met by GM, leaving American out in the cold. As a result of that lawsuit production of buses is slowing to a halt as factories are tied up and hundreds of men are being laid off.

The man in charge of buying the buses for the Houston consortium is Barry Goodman,, administrator of the Houston mass transit system. Mr. Goodman, does this lawsuit mean that you can`t buy any buses at the moment?

BARRY GOODMAN: At the moment that`s exactly what it means, and it has been well over. a year since the Houston consortium advertised for bids for the new, advanced-design buses.

MacNEIL: You could have bought existing buses, buses of conventional design running today, could you not?

GOODMAN: That`s correct. We could have bought conventional coaches. But we feel that to attract transit ridership, to make the improvements necessary in the areas of energy and pollution and mobility that we need the best vehicle we can get, the most attractive vehicle -- the vehicle that is going to raise bus transportation to above what it has been for the last twenty-five years, a second-class form of transportation, because we feel that particularly in the Southwest and emerging, growing cities that bus systems will have to be the backbone of public transportation for the future.

MacNEIL: You could have bought these old buses up until today, the day on which these new federal regulations and specifications were supposed to have gone into effect. Now, every time we telephoned UMTA, which was many, many times, they were unable to tell us whether the regulations are going into effect or not. What do you know about that?

GOODMAN: I tried calling UMTA several times and they told me that they could not talk about the regulations or about advanced design buses. What I have heard from sources is that the Department of Transportation has, decided to delay implementation of the new regulations requiring the low floor until the Houston consortium litigation -- the AM General v. UMTA litigation -- is resolved.

MacNEIL: I see. The low floor being the closeness to the ground with the object of making it easier for old people and handicapped people to get in.

GOODMAN: Yes.

MacNEIL:. And that new regulation would have set that floor level at what?

GOODMAN: I believe twenty-four inches.

MacNEIL: Which is what the GM bus can achieve when it`s down on. its knees, so to speak?

GOODMAN: That`s correct.

MacNEIL: You used to work for UMTA yourself as a counsel, and you obviously know a lot of their operation. What do you think of their handling of this affair?

GOODMAN: I think UMTA has tried to handle this affair in as productive a manner possible, in as professional a manner possible. But UMTA right now is drawn between competing interests, the interests of the elderly and handicapped community, the interests of the manufacturers to continue to market -- at least, some manufacturers the current design bus as much as they can. The procurement for the advanced-design bus, the Houston consortium, was the most intensive, open, inviting bus procurement in the history of UM`PA. In other words, the competitors in the transit marketplace were given as much opportunity in this procurement process to compete and to comply with the specification as in any procurement in past history.

MacNEIL: What is all this confusion doing to cities like Houston that need new buses?

GOODMAN: It is slowing down our efforts to increase ridership. We have buses on the road in excess of a half a million miles on each vehicle, over thirteen, fourteen years old. They`re past their useful life. Houston is an automobile-oriented city, as are many of the cities in this consortium, and we need attractive public transportation systems to help resolve our mobility problems. These new advanced-design buses-are one of the ways we can start solving the problem and so we are delayed, in effect, in bringing new riders to the system and all the added benefits we get from reducing the gasoline consumption and reducing the pollution.

MacNEIL: Mr. Goodman, thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: The RTS-2, the bus Mr. Goodman`s group wants to buy, is a kind of stepchild of an ambitious government program known as Transbus. It began in the 1970`s as a way to develop a really new and modern bus, one that was quieter, easily accessible and less polluting among other things. The Department of Transportation spent twenty-seven million dollars on its development, and all three major bus manufacturers made their prototypes. This was GM`s entry; this one was built by AM General; and this is the Rohr Flxible model. But while the Transbus was going through its various tests the government granted a General Motors request to proceed with the manufacture of an interim model, the RTS-2. It has some, but not all, of the Transbus features. It`s this government decision that is now tied up in the courts by AM General on the grounds that it favors GM. B.R. Stokes has been closely involved in this overall - and sometimes confusing -- situation. He`s the executive director of the American Public Transit Association, the transit industry`s lobbying arm here in Washington. First, Mr. Stokes, I understand-that you have another view on what the UMTA regulations that were supposed to come out today -- why they didn`t come out or what the situation is, is that correct?

B.R. STOKES: Yes, the new Secretary of Transportation, Brock Adams, issued regulations which became effective yesterday but will appear in the Federal Register tomorrow which in effect delay the February 15 date to an effective date of May 27. He has called for public hearings in April on the entire question that is raised by the regulations and the entire Transbus matter and in connection with the procurement of the advanced-design buses has asked for comments by February 24, which will be a week from next Thursday; after which a procurement policy will be promulgated and presumably the procurement of advanced-design buses can proceed.

LEHRER: These are just on the back burner and continue in a holding state.

STOKES: Exactly. But the current-design bus procurement can proceed as it has in the past because the effective floor height -twenty-four inches, as mentioned by Barry Goodman a moment ago has been waived now until an effective date of May 27.

LEHRER: In other words, back to the question that Robin was asking Mr. Goodman, he can go and continue to buy the old buses, which he doesn`t want to do.

STOKES: Precisely.

LEHRER: All right, now let`s get back to Transbus. What happened to Transbus?

STOKES: I think the simplest answer is that after a very ambitious program beginning to develop to get Transbus in one step, it`s actually going to take two steps. It became clear to those in the industry who were involved with the industry advisory board -- I`m talking about operators themselves -- as early as the fall of 1974 that the program itself in terms of achieving a Transbus in one fell swoop probably would founder, and we began then promoting the idea of an interim step; and I believe this is really what has happened. Both GM and the Flxible Bus Company have introduced what we call advanced-design buses; we think they`re probably -- according to various people`s figures -- seventy-five or eighty-five percent of Transbus, and they will serve very well for a number of years. And then the next evolution will be the full Transbus. There were mechanical problems, there were policies in the U.S. government in terms of exactly how this bus would be financed -- the tooling and this sort of thing -- to get it into actual service that really caused the program to founder. But Transbus is still very much alive we`re just dealing now with Son of Transbus -- in other words, the advanced-design bus.

LEHRER: What about the AM General position that this interim bus discriminates against them? They were all set to build a Transbus rather than this interim bus, and now mainly GM but also Flxible to a lesser degree can now build this interim bus -- only they can.

STOKES: They and the other two manufacturers are presented with some very serious problems. We have done our level best since this real crisis situation developed, and we actually wired President Ford last October about the situation to get something started on it. We think that AM General aid Flxible to a degree, can continue to bid on current-design buses and to keep their lines going until such time as both can convert to a newer-design bus. But the transit industry is demanding -- the operators who represent the pub lie who ride these buses -- are demanding something new. After all, we haven`t had, really, a new-look bus on the streets since 1959 Modifications, improvements, yes; but we`ve had no real new bus on the street since that time. And the operators, most of whom are public officials and who represent the riding public, are demanding something better, something more eye-appealing, something they can maintain better, something that has a more useful life; and it simply has to come about. We have to have product improvement, we have to have innovation, we have to have the very best we can present to the public.

LEHRER: And they`re just not going to buy these 1059 model buses any more.

STOKES: It would be like trying to compete with a modern airline with DC- 3`s. They`re simply no good any more.

LEHRER: You said it was a crisis situation. We`ve heard what Mr. Goodman has said. That`s the 1959 model that`s showing right there, and for all practical purposes that particular model.is, what, ninety-nine percent of the buses that are now in the street today?

STOKES: Exactly.

LEHRER: It`s been improved a little bit, but not very much.

STOKES: AM General came into the field in 1974 for the first t irae . . .

LEHRER: That`s a Flxible there, is it not?

STOKES: I believe it`s a Flxible, as well as I can see. AM General came into the field in 1974 and has made some improvements -- I`m sorry, not 1974; in 1972 -- and has made some differences in appearance, this sort of thing; but still we`re talking basically about the bus that was first introduced in 1959.

LEHRER: Mr. Stokes, thank you. Robin?

MacNEIL: As we mentioned earlier, today`s the day UMTA`s new regulations should have gone into effect to make buses more accessible to the elderly and the handicapped. As we`ve just heard, those regulations have apparently been waived and delayed. But some of the intended beneficiaries were already dissatisfied with those- regulations. Debbie Yager is a member of a Philadelphia based group known as Pennsylvania Disabled in Action, and it has filed its own suit against UMTA. Ms. Yager, what is the purpose of your lawsuit?

DEBORAH YAGER: The purpose of our suit is to force the federal government to deal with the Congressional mandate. Congress has passed laws five times requiring that all public mass transportation be accessible to the elderly and the handicapped. And UMTA has refused to enforce that law.

MacNEIL: In what way? Were they not bringing out regulations that buses had to have a floor level of twenty-four inches specifically designed for the elderly and handicapped?

YAGER: Yes; and the original Transbus specification, however, called for a bus with a twenty-two inch floor height maximum.

MacNEIL: To somebody who knows nothing about this, that might seem like real quibbling...

YAGER: Yes, indeed it might.

MacNEIL: Why is it important?

YAGER: Because the prototype bus that came out of the Transbus project from Rohr Industries in fact had a floor height of seventeen inches, kneeled another five inches so that the effective floor height from the street was twelve inches. Now your average curb is six inches. That leaves you one six-inch step to negotiate to get on the bus. The added benefit of that is that in order to ramp something so that somebody in a wheelchair or somebody with difficulty . walking can use it, the best bet is a foot of ramp for an inch of height; and with your bus height being around ninety- six inches you can`t have a ramp that`s too long or it doesn`t fit under the bus. And as it works out you`ve got a six-inch step and a six-foot ramp and seventy-two inches, and it all fits together perfectly.

MacNEIL: I may be learning more about ramps and bus heights than I ever wanted to know. Okay, I think I get it. Now, what is your opinion of the bus that Mr. Goodman wants to buy in his consortium for Houston, the RTS-2, the one we saw in that film?

YAGER: That bus does not meet the needs of disabled and elderly people. There is an option available for that bus that would have a hydraulic lift for wheelchairs. Now, that`s all well and good for somebody in a wheelchair, but somebody who has a standing disability -- somebody who walks on crutches, an older person with a, cane -- I think would find it quite difficult, in fact very uncomfortable to ride upon a lift without anything to hold onto. There are some other problems, if I may go into detail. A lift would only be used when somebody needed it, particularly somebody in a wheelchair; a ramp, once it is out, can be used by any passenger who is boarding. Therefore it becomes a routine maintenance item rather than an unusual maintenance item. Number two, the ramp decreases boarding time for able-bodied passengers as well as disabled passengers, can be used by everybody and makes a general difference all around.

MacNEIL: I see. What is your version of what happened to the Transbus? Mr. Stokes says that we`re now having a two-stage progress towards it instead of a one-step; what do you believe happened?

YAGER: I would be very happy if I thought we were having a two-stage progress towards Transbus, but it seems that the in-between decisions are being made first and the long-term decisions are being made second. It would seem to me -o be much wiser to make the decision about what`s going to happen to Transbus, what`s going to happen to the low floor, seta timetable for that and then work out the interim arrangements.

MacNEIL: Why did UMTA drop it, in your view?

YAGER: I think that there is an unholy alliance between UMTA and General Motors, quite frankly.

MacNEIL: Of what kind?

YAGER: You see, In 1965 there was an antitrust suit brought against General Motors. As a result of that suit there was a consent decree, and General Motors had to during the following ten years share any new technology that it developed with other bus manufacturers. In 1966 General Motors was prepared to introduce that RTS bus; it was called the RTX at the time. That bus was first shown at a meeting of the American Public Transit Association in New Orleans in 1975, which is ten years. The consent decree has expired, General Motors can bring new technology onto the market without the risk of having to share it. The Transbus project is already going on and evidently General Motors had gotten an agreement from UMTA that you can go ahead and produce that bus anyway.

MaCNEIL: Okay. We can`t hear from UMTA directly or from General Motors or any of the other manufacturers because they all declined our invitations to appear on this program. Jim?

LEHRER: But we do have Mr. Goodman and Mr. Stokes here. Mr. Goodman, what do you think of Ms. Yager`s theory? Is this an unholy alliance between GM and UMTA?

GOODMAN: I don`t think it`s an unholy alliance, I think what we have is a situation where you have very few manufacturers in this competitive marketplace for transit buses. Until recent years you only had two manufacturers who made the big buses. And I think the manufacturers are capable of building any equipment that, from a technical standpoint, the consumers demand. I think that the manufacturers largely control the type of product that we get on the street and I think this is a separate issue from the elderly and handicapped issue. Certainly full accessibility on your large coaches has been a heated issue for many, many years, but I`m confident that the manufacturers -- all three of them, General Motors, American Motors and Flxible -- could incorporate a safe, viable wheelchair lift on the large buses if they had a mind to. The issue in my mind on the E and H accessibility, as we call it, is whether or not the large buses that operate on fixed routes are really a viable form of transportation for elderly and handicapped. Are there other accessibility barriers which have to be overcome before the money and energy that would be pumped into developing that technology would be worth it?

LEHRER: In other words, the elderly and the handicapped shouldn`t ride these buses -- they should have other forms of transportation?

GOODMAN: The separate but usual argument is one that has been in debate. In Houston, for example, we have some smaller buses with wheelchair lifts that operate on three barrier-free routes. We also have a paratransit application, paratransit being the utilization of small vehicles such as taxicabs or vans with wheelchair lifts for door-to-door service and feeder services. The issue in my mind is from an economic standpoint and from a standpoint of ridership if we equipped all the large coaches with wheelchair lifts would we really be serving the elderly and handicapped community with the money that we have to spend on transit?

LEHRER: All right; I want to ask Mr. Stokes here a question on the conspiracy theory of General Motors and UMTA. Do you agree with that -- is that what`s going on?

STOKES: No, I don`t at all. I think that the three manufacturers, as Barry Goodman just indicated, aren`t a highly competitive market. The last figures I saw for a normal year of bus production-- each one of them had roughly a third of the market; we`d like to see it get back to that kind of a situation in which the transit operator, using public money on a competitive, low-bid basis, can expect to receive competition from the three manufacturers. I do not in any way agree with this sinister theory that Ms. Yager had mentioned.

LEHRER: But it really isn`t competitive, is it, Mr. Stokes? Under the RTS thing, only General Motors really qualified for Mr. Goodman`s consortium, did it not? AM General wasn`t even building an RTS, and Flxible just barely was.

STOKES: Under the specifications as finally drafted it was UMTA`s position -- and this is the basis of the suit -- that competitive bidding could have ensued. The fact is that they only` got one bid. Now Flxible, another large bus manufacturer, has announced its advanced-design bus and is ready to take bids on those buses; but we agree with the federal government that there was nothing wrong with the Houston bid. We filed an affidavit through UMTA -- through the U.S. government, agreeing with their position in this particular case in order to get the best product into the market so that the public can benefit from the very best available.

LEHRER: And no hanky-panky.

STOKES: No hanky-panky, absolutely.

LEHRER : Robin?

MacNEIL: Ms. Yager, do you have a reply on whether they should put lifts and facilities for the handicapped on all buses?

YAGER: I have a couple of things. I think that one thing that may not have been clear about what I was saying initially is that the Transbus -- the low-floor Transbus -- is a better bus for everybody, and it`s much better than the RTS -2.

MacNEIL: But it doesn`t exist yet.

YAGER: The capability for it does exist. Rohr Industries on May 5 at the Transbus hearings sari that they could have the bus available by 1979; AM General has also indicated that they could have Transbus available by 1979, predicated on the regulations `coming out soon enough.

MacNEIL: I`d like to bring up another point. Evidently you believe that the elderly and the handicapped should have equal access to the same buses as everybody else...

YAGER: I think it`s very important. I would like to ask Mr. Goodman a question, if I might. And that is., what hours does that demand-responsive service run, how far advanced is the reservation, and what is the fare?

GOODMAN: This is a project that is at UMTA now and not approved; but the answer to the question is that if approved by UMTA -- and we anticipate that it will be approved -- it would operate over the same hours as the normal bus system at probably a fare that would be lower than the bus system`s current fare for commuters, and operate either by advanced reservation; demand-responsive or as a feeder system to the minibuses that we now have that are equipped with the wheelchair lifts.

MacNEIL: Could I, in conclusion, raise one point which seems to me to be an important point in all this -- and I`d like all your views on it. Starting with you, Mr. Stokes, has all this intervention by the federal government - -.the financial assistance they`ve given to the design of buses, to the purchase of buses by cities and the regulations they`ve been bringing in -- has it improved the mass urban transit situation, or is it messing it up? We hear so much today about the federal government frustrating people`s designs; is this good or not?

STOKES: I`ll have to answer it in two parts. In terms of the assistance, it is undoubtedly and unquestionably and provably been a major factor in the beginning of the renaissance of public transportation. Ridership has turned around, lots of things have happened in the industry. We still have a long way to go. This industry was given up for dead for about twenty-five years, and it`s going to take us a while to pull out. But the federal assistance, beginning only in 1964, has been a major factor in the ability of public transit to begin to do the kind of job it can do. As far. as regulations, some have been good, some have been bad. I think under the new Secretary, under the new administration in Washington, we`re going to have an opportunity to perhaps review all of the regulations that have flowed from the two agencies in the past two or three years, and these are the ones which have been particularly troublesome -- in particular this one today which was postponed till May 27. The Secretary indicated that he merely wanted an opportunity to review a regulation that had come into effect under a previous administration, just as he`s reviewing airbags, the Concorde and other things. So we think we`re going to have an opportunity to take a look at the entire regulation mess and hopefully bring a little order out of it.

MacNEIL: What`s your view on that? Has the government involvement in this since 1964 improved urban mass transit significantly or is it messing it up?

YAGER: I think it`s improved it, and I think that government involvement is the only chance the disabled have to get access to mass public transportation.

MacNEIL: And what about for the traveling public in general? Do you agree with that, that it has?

GOODMAN: Yes. I think it has been a ,major improvement. We have only scratched the surface. A very interesting statistic is that in the twelve years of Urban Mass Transportation Administration`s existence they have not yet approved in those twelve years money equalling one year appropriation for federal highways, and this is very interesting.

MacNEIL: That is an interesting statistic, and we`ll end it right there. Thank you, Mr. Stokes, in Washington. Good night, Jim.

LEHRER: Good night, Robin.

MaCNEIL: And thank you both here. Jim Lehrer and I will be back tomorrow night. I`m Robert MacNeil. Good night.