Students, workers union say UCSC slow to address safety concerns ahead of bus crash

UC Santa Cruz students and university worker union representatives say they want the university to take safety concerns seriously after a loop bus crashed near the base of campus Tuesday night. They say students and workers have previously raised concerns about the school’s old bus fleet, but the university did not take action.

Six people were injured after a UCSC bus ran off the road and crashed into a historic lime kiln near the Cowell Ranch Hay Barn. University officials said they are still investigating the cause of the incident and had not publicly confirmed Wednesday whether or not a mechanical malfunction might have played a role.

Five of the victims are students and one is an employee, UCSC Chancellor Cynthia Larive and Campus Provost Lori Kletzer wrote in a campuswide email Wednesday. Two of the six were critically injured. Three of the crash victims were treated at Dominican Hospital and released, Dignity Health spokesperson Allison Hendrickson said Wednesday.

The university also asked that everyone avoid the area of the collision because the lime kiln that the bus hit was damaged and could have structural issues. The accident came during a busy time in the school year as students prepare for final exams before the end of the quarter.

American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) 3299 labor union interim lead Rebecca Gilpas said that if the cause was, in fact, a mechanical malfunction, there should be “zero tolerance” for the lack of action.

AFSCME represents more than 30,000 University of California employees including service workers, patient care technical workers, skilled craft workers and bus drivers across all 10 UC campuses.

“It’s devastating for us to learn that one of our members was involved in a serious accident,” she said. “The student fees just went up a couple of years ago, and the department promised they were going to get good service, but they haven’t. Somebody has to be held accountable.”

Gilpas said that AFSCME representatives met with university officials in May to raise their concerns about the 30-year-old buses, asking for repairs to the interior of the buses and increased service hours. They also highlighted the aging state of the vehicles, but nothing tangible came of the meeting, she said. Workers have reported temperatures over 100 degrees inside the buses during heat waves, the fact that some old buses only have lap seat belts, and that the windows and roofs leak during stormy weather.

“We told them how the drivers’ chairs were unstable and they had to sit on cardboard, and they talked about water leaks during rain, and it’s all been documented and reported to [the administration],” she said, adding that drivers believed their working conditions were unsafe and made it difficult for them to transport students. “They’re very well aware of it, but they keep on sweeping it under the rug.”

UCSC spokesperson Scott Hernandez-Jason said the crash remains under investigation. He said he didn’t know whether a bus maintenance issue was to blame for the incident or whether the bus involved in the accident had any prior issues. 

All campus shuttles undergo regular maintenance and pre-trip inspections, Hernandez-Jason said. However, on Wednesday, the university pulled all buses similar to the one involved in the crash off the road.

“Out of an abundance of caution, UC Santa Cruz today is providing transit services using 30-foot shuttles and other smaller shuttles while we conduct additional inspections on all of our 35-foot shuttles that are similar to the one involved in the crash,” Hernandez-Jason wrote. 

Third-year UCSC student Ray Diaz said seating on the bus is dilapidated and that he believes the fleet is generally past its service lifetime. 

He added that he “absolutely does not” feel comfortable riding the buses. “These loop buses are packed like sardines, and because they’re old, there’s no air conditioning or cooling systems. It becomes a giant hot box for the students,” he said.

Diaz added that UC Santa Cruz’s Transportation and Parking Services (TAPS) raised fees for tickets given to cars without proper permit from $50 to $75 this academic year, which is frustrating given the issues that buses are having: “How is it that they’ve risen the prices of the tickets that they’re giving out to students, yet they still can’t solve any of these problems?”

Third-year student Sebastián Valdez shares many of the same concerns. In an opinion piece he wrote for Lookout in October, he wrote that TAPS cut bus hours because of mechanical issues and the resignation of several drivers. He added that the agency sometimes sources parts from eBay and Craigslist because they have been discontinued by their manufacturer.

“According to drivers, this translates to regular breakdowns due to mechanical failures in the buses’ cooling systems, transmissions, air brake systems and several other parts,” Valdez wrote.

Valdez told Lookout on Wednesday that he believes students are getting worried about riding the buses. 

“If you go to different social media sites, students are generally scared. Even if people didn’t read my article, they’re going back and looking at this information now,” he said. “Drivers have been saying for a long time that they did not feel comfortable or safe inside the vehicles.”

Though Valdez said TAPS recently told the union that it had replaced some of the old bus seats and would purchase some new parts, he said the continuous safety concerns add more unnecessary stress to students’ already stressful lives. Students had been talking about the issue before Tuesday’s crash and before a bus caught fire near Oakes College in November, he added.

“People are already distressed about things like the cost of living, housing and expensive dining halls,” he said. “Besides just being concerned, I think something like this can mobilize a lot of students.”

Lookout spoke to a handful of students who were riding campus loop buses Wednesday. Some said buses were old, frequently crowded and ran on a timetable that could be unpredictable. 

Natalie Parker Blount, a first-year student studying business management economics, lives on campus and said she rides the bus five or six times a day. She heard about the crash Wednesday morning after a friend sent her a text message asking if she had been in a bus accident. “As somebody who rides the bus a lot daily, that’s a little scary,” she said.

Josiah Sagawa, also a first-year student studying business management economics, was riding the bus Wednesday on his last day of school before the end of the quarter. He said students frequently complained the campus loop buses were outdated but never considered them unsafe until now. 

“It’s just a little bit of fear. Now I’m like, ‘Oh, is this one going to break down?’” he asked. “I see a lot of buses that are out of service.”

Asked about students’ concerns around maintenance and safety of the buses, Hernandez-Jason reiterated that the campus does regular inspections of its bus fleet. 

“We are prioritizing safety and we’ll thoroughly investigate this to understand what happened and make sure that we do what we are able to prevent such things from happening again,” he said.

UCSC bus driver Steve Dufort said he feels safe driving the buses and has been driving for the transit office for about a year. “I’m really confident in the quality of the maintenance,” he said.

Dufort said he was sad to hear about the crash and hopes the driver and the students will be OK.

“Of course it’s a big shock, particularly because of the element of safety that goes into becoming a driver,” he said. “It’s all about safety.”

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