NATIONAL COALITION OF SCHOOL BUS SAFETY NEWS 2007

Important School Bus Data Not Tracked
February 7, 2007

SEATTLE - It's the most frightening of scenarios: a school bus carrying kids hit by a train. We've seen the damage and despair wrought by these accidents in other states. The consequences are too much to contemplate.

KING 5 Investigators discovered that the state doesn't have any information on thousands of crossings, and it had three years to get it done.

"A minor accident - there's no such thing at a railroad crossing," said Bruce Gardner, Clover Park School bus manager.

That's why it's crucial for states to know when school buses cross dangerous intersections. Federal law mandates lights and gates when there are a substantial number of school buses over any one crossing. But the KING 5 Investigators have found that out of 3,500 crossings in Washington, the state has tracked only 25 of them.

"It's disconcerting, it's disgusting, it's outrageous, it makes me angry,” said Bob Comer, a train accident expert.

Comer has spent 20 years investigating train accidents. He says no bus data means some of the area's busiest crossings are unprotected.

“Every bus driver needs to have flashing lights and a gate arm to tell them a train is coming,” he said. “Our children's safety and the safety of all the bus drivers is critical.”

Since 2003, the federal government has asked states to track this information. The Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission says it doesn't have the staff to get the job done.

"For each crossing we would have to contact the local school district or the local jurisdiction and see if they have done traffic study at that crossing,” said spokesperson Vicki Elliott.

So that's just what we did: we gathered data from school districts all over Western Washington. Some told us we were the only ones who ever asked for the information.

"In the 15 years that I’ve been here, no one has stopped by the office, called, asked anything about the train crossings or school safety for that matter,” said Dr. Steve Rasmussen, Superintendent of the Franklin-Pierce school district.

Here are some of our findings:

• In Lakewood, we found 34 buses pass through each day at Thorne Lane.
• Right next to Ford Middle School in Parkland, on E. 104th Street, 40 buses pass through the crossing.
• 232 buses go through the crossing at Bridgeport Way near Tacoma each day.

Washington state has no school bus data for any of these crossings.

“I’m not surprised at all,” Comer said. “I’m just shocked that any state would make excuses and say we've only had three years to get the information.”

It took us less than a week's work. We looked up the districts on the Superintendent for Public Instruction's Web site, and called every major district in Western Washington. Clover Park school buses had the most: 500 school buses cross various tracks every single day.

It took transportation director Bruce Gardner about two hours to come up with the data we needed. The state knew who had the answers but officials never asked the questions.

“You've given us information we didn't have before through the Superintendent of Public Instruction, so we'd take a look at that and see what we'd find,” Elliott said.

In the meantime, children continue to ride on buses driving through railroad crossings, at places where there is no margin of error.

Just this afternoon, we received a phone call from the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission. They told us the commission has now come up with a plan to get some of this information. They are going to contact school districts and get the numbers on the railroad crossings that concern administrators.

By JESSE JONES / KING 5 News

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