On an early Saturday morning, I drove a New York City charter coming from the North where the first stop was Battery Park/Statue of Liberty Ferry. I've always wanted to try this shortcut, but it wasn't until the Chinatown busses efforts around the year 2000, with help from City Council transportation committee chairman John C. Liu, to free up the (Grand Central Pkwy/I278) 2 mile section between the Triboro Bridge/Robert F.Kennedy Bridge and the top of the BQE (Brooklyn-Queens Expressway) for commercial (trucks & busses) traffic, that I took the plunge and tried this routing out.

Granted, it was very early on Sat. morning, about 8:30 am to be exact, but I was pleased and astounded to find that the travel time - at a very slow and safe 40-50 MPH - from the Triboro bridge to Battery Park was a very impressive 23 MINUTES!!! I arrived at the sidewalk disembarking area of Battery Park at 8:53 am!

The recent fire Dec. 31,'06 that destroyed a Peter Pan-Bonanza coach has added yet another chapter to the ongoing industry-wide discussion of motorcoach fires. Media attention on motorcoach fires reached its incendiary point near Dallas, Texas in Sept. 2005, when a "Global Limo" E-model MCI burst into flames killing 23 nursing home patients who were being evacuated from Houston to Dallas ahead of a forecasted Hurricane Rita landfall. The fire was reportedly caused by a bad bearing in the rear right wheel, according to NTSB final investigation. It is also likely that oxygen tanks stored improperly caused the explosions that rapidly devastated the fully involved fire scene.

I am simply fed up with reading newspaper stories about catastrophic motorcoach collisions or rollovers resulting in passenger ejections and fatalities/or critical injuries. Just like an ostrich, our industry leaders, govt. agency safety leaders, and legislative bodies have their proverbial heads in the sand.

For decades, authoritative heads have said that safety belts on busses and motorcoaches are unnecessary due to factors such as "compartmentalization", "monocoque motorcoach construction", high-back seats, and lower G-forces during an average motorcoach collision compared with auto vs. auto.

Part 40 of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations deals exclusively with drug and alcohol testing procedures. There are over 167 pages of legal procedures and tests described in this chapter. It is very complex even for the most savvy amongst us!

Random testing of CDL drivers at a transportation company ranges from 25% to 50% of the driver corps annually. These random tests are conducted throughout the calendar year on a month-to-month basis.

It is detrimental to the career of the professional motorcoach operator that he or she knows what is contained in any medicine or Over-the-Counter (OTC) drug he is taking. Just as the operator has to take personal responsibility of any safety violation that exists on a motorcoach (i.e. slow brakes, etc.) and repercussions from said violations, so is he responsible for his actions caused by taking medications, OTC products, or of course products containing alcohol.

It's getting more and more difficult to conduct a fluid NYC sightseeing tour in any way with a 45 ft. motorcoach. Seriously speaking, its getting to the point where the driver has to bring with him body armor to protect him from the overzealous ticket-writing police, the rude and discourteous yellow cabs, not to mention those obnoxious bicycle "pedicabs" that are all over the place now, most without any tail or headlights.

The city MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority) has made a point of taking over block upon block of sidewalk real estate with their enlarged regular bus stops (for the articulated New Flyer Bus) and their interboro Express bus services (brown signs). These are all no stopping zones, so if a cop is having a bad day with his wife; you're looking at a hefty fine!

Interstate buses go to, 2 Waterbury's, 3 Hampton's, and 7 Springfield terminals!!! So, which one are you going to?

I remember the story of the Toronto traveler, we'll call him Mike, who got on a bus at the Toronto bus terminal after his cousin, who was a professional hockey player playing for the Portland Pirates in Maine, asked him to come visit him. Mike sat in the back of the bus, and after several bus changes (Mike asked the drivers at each terminal which bus to go to) he moved closer and closer to the front of the bus. Finally, after a couple of days, Mike sat in the front seat and the driver chatted him up a bit.