Frustration grows as RTA buses continue to break

“One is in Denver, and one is broken down up here”

Would you expect a warranty on a $1,000 jalopy that leaks oil and smells like a dog? What if you spent $250,000 on a brand new 44-passenger transit bus that goes only three miles per hour?

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The Gunnison Valley Rural Transportation Authority (RTA) board of directors is at wits’ end combating a seemingly unending stream of mechanical troubles on their four new transit buses. The RTA is now seeking a legal solution to ensure they have reliable transit buses for service between Gunnison and Mt. Crested Butte.
The bus makes several trips daily, and has carried more than 80,000 passengers during its first year of service.
Even after a representative from the bus dealership visited the RTA this fall, authorized to extend the warranty and claiming that most of the troubles were fixed, the buses are still having mechanical issues today.
The RTA contracts with Alpine Express to provide drivers and general service for the buses. The general manager of Alpine Express, Stewart Johnson, came to the RTA’s meeting on Friday, December 12 and gave an update on the most recent problems afflicting the new buses.
Possibly the worst of the problems is an exhaust calibration issue that caused one of the vehicles to lose power on a trip to Crested Butte, limping along the highway into Almont at three miles per hour. Johnson said this was the only time Alpine Express has had to transfer passengers onto a new bus in order to reach their destination.
For the past year the RTA has rarely had a full fleet. They purchased the four buses in the fall of 2007, but before the last one even arrived, the first ones began showing signs of trouble. The buses have been shipped back and forth repeatedly between the dealership mechanic in Denver and an Alpine Express garage in Gunnison. On Friday, Johnson said a mechanic had returned one of the buses that had been in Denver for repair, and had taken a different bus back with him.
“We just got the fourth one back… It arrived without the chains on it, which is why it was down there, but in all honesty Alpine was yelling at them pretty hard to get it back up here,” Johnson said.
“Right now we’ve got two RTA buses running. One is in Denver, and one is broken down up here,” Johnson said. The bus that went back to Denver he called a “repeat offender.”
The bus in the shop in Gunnison (No. 84) has been showing the “check engine” light on several trips, but mechanics could not diagnose the problem, Johnson said. “I can’t run the bus. I can’t advise drivers to just drive through a ‘check engine’ light like that.” He said an engine tech from Cummins was scheduled to be up within a week along with an advanced diagnostics tool to find the problem.
One of the main culprits with the buses has been an emissions control device clogging up, similar to a catalytic converter. Johnson said that issue seems to have been taken care of by the recent repairs, but three of the buses were now having another exhaust regulation issue that causes them to lose power while driving.
Johnson said this has happened several times, and except for the transfer they had to make in Almont, for the most part the problem has occurred just as the bus pulls into its final destination, Gunnison or Mt. Crested Butte.
The buses have also had electrical problems, and all four are wired differently. Johnson said the problems were “highly frustrating on our end and hard to chase down.”
RTA board member Bill Babbitt asked if Alpine Express was using its own vehicles to fill gaps in the schedule, and Johnson said they were.
RTA board member Hap Channell asked RTA director Scott Truex what he thought of the bus situation.
Truex said, “This is the first time I’ve heard it all together, which is why I asked Stewart to be here.” Truex said they needed to get the dealer representative from North American Bus Industries (NABI) back up for a discussion with the board. The last time the dealer was scheduled to meet with the RTA he missed the meeting—the bus he was driving lost power on the way up.
“At what point do we start looking at other options?” asked RTA member Skip Berkshire.
“We’ve been asking that for a year,” said Channell. He asked if Truex felt the mechanical issues were normal in his experience.
“It is not normal,” Truex said.
Board member Jim Starr said the dealership had its chance and failed. “Our need was to have all four buses running reliably by the start of the ski season. We’re there, (the buses) are not. You’re asking when do we pull over into legal action. I think that’s now,” Starr said.
Babbitt asked Truex to authorize RTA attorney Rod Landwehr to examine legal solutions, and send a letter to the bus dealership informing them of the RTA’s intent.
“It’s not like they haven’t been trying (to fix the problems),” Truex said.
“But they haven’t been solving them,” Babbitt replied.
Channell agreed. “That’s it, Bill. We’ve been giving them credit and making some sort of judgment, but we keep saying that time is running out. It’s getting crazy. I’m really having trouble containing my concern and not letting it slip into anger,” he said.
Johnson agreed that simply “trying” to fix the problem wasn’t enough. “The guys at NABI and Cummins are kind of throwing their hands up… saying we don’t know what else to do,” Johnson said. “I think we’re going to have to push this to another level to get some resolution.”
Starr said if the dealer couldn’t find a mechanical solution for the current buses, it seemed the only option would be to get new buses.
“That’s the extreme,” Truex said. “It’s a year and a half out to get new buses, and that’s a problem.”
Channell asked Truex to “express to Rod that we want all possibilities examined.”