O'ahu Transit Services Inc., operator of TheBus, has fired 42 drivers and suspended 410 more during the past five years.

The disciplinary actions include two recent high-profile cases involving a driver arrested on suspicion of driving while under the influence and another caught on video playing a hand-held game.

While those two incidents were embarrassing for the city's bus service, they are isolated incidents, according to OTS and the city, which pays the private nonprofit company to run TheBus. Most disciplinary actions during the five years were for preventable accidents, attendance problems, driving without a valid commercial driver's license and other undisclosed reasons.

Whether the disciplinary problems at TheBus are high or low is difficult to determine, since there are no national numbers on public-transit bus driver disciplinary actions. However, the number of disciplinary actions taken against drivers over the five years is not unusual given the scope of operations at TheBus, which employs about 955 drivers and uses 525 buses, said Roger Morton, OTS president and general manager.

The disciplinary record shows that TheBus is doing a good job enforcing its policies, he said.

"Running a bus system is a tough business — there's a lot of exposure," Morton said. "We try to run the best service we can, but we're not perfect."

From Sept. 27, 2003, through Sept. 26 of this year, bus drivers lost nearly 7,194 days to suspensions, according to an Advertiser review of five years of bus driver disciplinary records.

OTS would not disclose the identities of disciplined drivers.

Typically, the identities of discharged city workers, including police officers, are public. However, OTS maintains that it is a private company not subject to the state's open-records law. Additionally, OTS said federal law prevents disclosure of details surrounding policy violations that may have involved drug use or some instances of sexual harassment.

The city, which subsidizes about $130 million of TheBus' $160 million in annual costs, has access to bus driver disciplinary records under terms of its contract with OTS. However, the city said it does not have bus driver disciplinary records.

BREAKING IT DOWN

According to what was released by OTS, 42 drivers were let go during the past five years. That includes 30 regular employees and 12 new employees terminated during probation. Many resigned during the termination process.

Just how that compares with Mainland public bus systems is unclear. At the San Francisco Municipal Railway bus system, the number of fired bus and street-car operators grew from 43 in fiscal 2007 to 55 the next year, with most firings tied to safety violations, according to a September article in the San Francisco Chronicle. TheBus, which only carries about a third of the 700,000 daily riders carried by the San Francisco bus system, fired 17 drivers in 2007 and eight so far this year.

Those figures include a 36-year bus driver arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence in August. That driver is no longer employed by TheBus, Morton said. The incident was the first time a driver was arrested for driving under the influence and only the second time a bus driver has been investigated for driving while under the influence in about two decades, Morton said.

Another high-profile incident in those figures is the October 2005 arrest of a city bus driver suspected of attempting to sexually assault a 15-year-old male bus passenger. That driver was discharged.

Wayne Yoshioka, director of the city's Department of Transportation Services, said egregious cases of driver misconduct were not representative of the behavior of bus drivers overall.

"By far, most of the drivers are courteous and really professional in the way they do their business, so I think these are really, truly isolated incidents," he said. "My feeling is OTS does a good job of making sure that it keeps track of its employees and when an incident happens, they're prompt in taking action right away."

INATTENTIVE BEHAVIOR

Incidents where drivers were disciplined for inattentive behavior, such as using a cell phone, occurred at least a half-dozen times during the past five years, according to OTS records. That excludes written warnings, which are common for a first offense. Bus drivers can carry cell phones, but they must remain turned off while driving their routes. The 18-year veteran of TheBus caught using an electronics device in September was suspended, but has since returned to duty, according to OTS.

Drivers in other cities also are getting caught using their cell phones. In Boston, dozens of Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority bus drivers and subway operators have been disciplined for using cell phones while on the job during the past 2 1/2 years, according to a June Associated Press probe. The Boston transit system has about 1.2 million riders a day.

On any given day, TheBus carries about 235,000 passengers. On average, bus operators, who together drive about 65,000 miles a day, have about one preventable accident a day. A preventable accident can range from a scratched mirror or passenger injury to a collision with a car or pedestrian.

An accident is judged to be preventable if the bus driver did not do everything possible to avoid it, according to OTS policy. A major accident occurs if a passenger is treated for injuries or if there's property damage exceeding $5,000. Drivers can be fired after one major accident or if they have five accidents within three years.

Honolulu's narrow streets and high passenger load factors, which result in more standing passengers, increase the potential for accidents, OTS said.

Most accidents typically are analyzed and used to help better train drivers, said Ralph Faufata, OTS vice president for transportation.

"Anybody that gets into a preventable accident is retrained, and anybody who gets into any major accident, preventable or unpreventable, is also retrained, so we take things very seriously around here," he said.

SAFETY COMPARISON

The safety record for TheBus appears to be in line or better than the national average. In 2007, TheBus experienced 1.9 collisions per million miles of service, which was below the 2006 national average of 4.1 collisions per million miles of service. National safety statistics for 2007 were unavailable.

The rate of passenger injuries at TheBus in 2007 was 1.1 per million miles, which was in line with the national average, according to OTS.

One pedestrian has died in a collision with a bus during the past two years, according to OTS, which did not specify whether the incident was preventable.

The two recent incidents at TheBus that generated media attention did not involve injuries or fatalities. However, the repercussions of accidents involving buses and trains were highlighted by two recent high-profile accidents: