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The Houston Chronicle

December 21, 2008 Sunday3 STAR R.O. EDITION

Cross-border bus regulations lax;Houston a hub for carriers with history of risks

BYLINE: JAMES PINKERTON, TERRI LANGFORD, Staff

SECTION: A; Pg. 1

LENGTH: 1973 words

DATELINE: MONTERREY

MONTERREY - The chilly overnight run from Houston to this industrial city in northernMexico is one of dozens daily that carry passengers past a cactus and yucca-spangled plain.

For immigrants, it is essential and economical, a $43-means-of-travel in a home-spunindustry largely created by Hispanics who arrived in the U.S. during an unprecedented waveof immigration over the last two decades.

But it can also be dangerous and deadly.

This vibrant cross-border transportation industry, which claims Houston as its headquarters,is fueled in part by inconsistent oversight and weak enforcement. A thinly stretched federalhighway safety force has allowed a burgeoning transit network to arise nearly unabated,

with many operators taking advantage of regulatory loopholes to import non-U.S.-certifiedbuses from Mexico, a Chronicle review has found.

Bus companies can change their names and routes overnight, making safety statistics aboutthe trans-border operators nearly impossible to monitor.

But a snapshot of the overall bus industry in Texas shows at least 250 people have died incrashes since 2000, including one accident in Sherman that killed 17 religious pilgrims fromHouston and another in Victoria that killed one man and injured 46 others. Both buscompanies had a history of safety, maintenance or regulatory problems.

John Hill, head of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, acknowledges that theVictoria and Sherman crashes exposed the drawbacks of current regulations. The most

critical shortcoming, he said, is that new bus companies are allowed to operate for up to 18months before inspectors check their buses and drivers. Stiffer fines and improved bussafety features also are needed, Hill said.

"I don't think that new entrants to the bus (industry) should be allowed to operate until wephysically visit them and get into their books," said Hill, whose agency is expected tomonitor 575,000 commercial vehicles, including 3,900 tour buses.

The Houston bus industry draws on customers from cities in the Mexican heartland includingSan Luis Potosi, Zacatecas and Guanajuato who have settled in Houston, or moved on to


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Fatalities, investigations

Without financial backing and management expertise, these stories of hard-workingimmigrants starting their own transportation companies have had tragic endings whenunsafe buses, or impaired drivers, are involved in fatal accidents, here and in Mexico.

A number of fatal crashes this year by marginal operators forced state and federal safetyofficials to contend with a poorly regulated segment of the industry that operates largelyunder the radar.

In August, after a Houston tour bus crashed and killed 17 Vietnamese church members inSherman, U.S. transportation officials temporarily halted licensing new bus operators. Thesame month, Texas Department of Transportation announced it was checking to see howmany of the 201 bus operators who had closed were still operating under a different name.

In the Sherman crash, investigators determined that a retreaded tire on the steering axlehad blown, causing the bus to careen off a highway bridge. Retreaded tires are not allowedto be mounted on the front of a passenger bus.

Angel de La Torre, a Mexican immigrant who owns Iguala BusMex on Telephone Road, saidhe bought the used bus the month before the accident and the retreaded tire already wasinstalled.

`Ì can't bring those dead people back, I'm sorry for that," de la Torre told the Chronicle.`Ìt was an accident, and I don't know what happened."

Federal and state authorities are considering criminal charges against de La Torre.Investigators discovered Iguala BusMex was created three weeks after his previouscompany, Angel Tours, was shut down because of safety problems.

The new company did not have the required $5 million insurance coverage, nor was itpermitted to travel outside the state.

`Ìn all the years I've been in business, no one got hurt on my buses. I've kept my buses ingood shape all the time," insists de La Torre.

Some of the operators transporting Houston immigrants don't even have a terminal.

After dark, and long after closing time, a modest taqueria on Telephone Road becomes oneof the hottest bus stops in Houston. When a Dallas-based bus company, which has operatedunder three different names, was shut down for safety problems, others quickly took overthe well-known location.

Another crash earlier this year uncovered further weaknesses in federal oversight.

On Jan. 2, the fatal crash in Victoria exposed a loophole that allowed companies to importMexican buses not certified for use on U.S. highways. The fatal rollover, apparently causedby a sleepy driver's oversteering, showed the failure of federal regulators to monitor thismassive Texas-to-Mexico market.

The Mexican-made 2005 Volvo bus owned by Capricorn Bus Lines of Houston had beenleased to another Houston bus company owned by a Mexican immigrant. That womanobtained a U.S. Department of Transportation tour bus license despite having no priorexperience and no capital.


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How this bus made it into the country in the first place became the National TransportationSafety Board's central focus, and the probe revealed how immigrant bus companies hadgained such quick footing in the United States.

NTSB discovered that small Texas-to-Mexico bus charters, using lax registration regulationsin California, circumvented federal import regulations to bring cheaper buses into Texas that

were not made to U.S. specifications. Owners of the bus firms quickly learned that althoughTexas required a title of ownership to obtain a new license plate, California did not.

Hard to pin them down

Once a California plate was obtained, bus firms then traded their California plates for Texasones.

Since the Victoria crash and the NTSB investigation, the Texas Department ofTransportation has found that Capricorn and at least 22 other bus lines used this method to"legally" register for license plates for their buses.

There could be more.

``I think even after a period of time we're still not sure what the extent of the problem is,''said Debbie Hersman, the NTSB board member who led the public inquiry into how theCapricorn bus made it to Texas.

Detecting Mexican buses as they cross the Texas-Mexico border is a challenge. At Laredo,the largest inland port on the border, there are only enough inspectors to conduct randomchecks of entering buses.

Fourteen years after NAFTA, there is still not a permanent inspection station at the Lincoln-Juarez bridge in Laredo.

The downtown bridge is the only one of the city's five international crossings where tourbuses from Mexico are allowed to enter. More than 40,000 buses crossed in the latest fiscalyear, yet there is no designated inspection area for them in the crowded port of entry.Passengers are checked for immigration papers.

``It would help out a whole lot if it was an actual facility where the equipment we neededwas in one area," acknowledged DPS officer Ramon Farias, with the commercial vehicleenforcement division.

In a deposition earlier this year, the owner of the bus that crashed in Victoria said it wassimple to cross without proper documents: ``We were coming through and crossing over onthe border and where DOT does an inspection ... and they've let, let it pass across. Then Idon't know why, but they have let it, let us operate."

In 2007, there were 265,000 bus crossings into this country along the U.S.-Mexico border,and only 13,000 inspections were conducted.

Hill, the FMCSA administrator, admits his agency is hampered by a meager inspection staff,noting there are only 148 on the job nationwide, most of them in Texas. The agency doesgive more than half of its $530 million budget to states to conduct roadside inspections oftrucks and buses.

Meanwhile, cross-border transportation continues to rise as Houston's immigrantpopulations grows.


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A recent passenger on the Monterrey to Houston bus trip was Ernesto Alvarez, 43, who buysused cars but dreams of owning a bus company.

"I was talking to a friend about starting a company," Alvarez said. "There is a lot of demandfor bus service."

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BUS DANGERS

The Chronicle reviewed inspection records and safety data from the U.S. Department ofTransportation and Texas Department of Public Safety for all buses and found:

250 deaths in at least 176 Texas bus crashes since 2000

41 Houston residents died in three accidents in the last three years

13,879 injuries in 6,157 crashes

10,000 violations among 670 companies during inspections by state troopers since 2005

580 vehicles and more than 240 drivers were deemed unsafe since 2005 and temporarilytaken off the road

Note: These numbers reflect accidents mostly involving charter buses, but do not pinpointhow many travel into and out of Mexico.

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