WASHINGTON -- Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration boss John Hill appears to be a man of his word.

In January, he won wide applause from motorcoach operations from across the country when he spoke at the Motorcoach Expo in New Orleans and promised to step up the agencys oversight of the industry.

Now, it looks like hes doing just that.

In recent appearances before congressional committees, Hill has rattled off a laundry list of activities the FMCSA is doing to get and keep unsafe coaches and drivers off the highways.

Hill, who became administrator of the federal agency last August after serving as its chief safety officer for more than three years, told U.S. House members that passenger safety remains a top priority at the FMCSA, and motorcoach operators can expect to see higher scrutiny through more inspections from federal and state authorities.

"Whether it be a college student boarding a bus for a summer cross-country trip, a senior citizens group traveling by charter bus to see the Grand Canyon, or a class trip to Washington D.C., it is our duty to ensure our passenger carriers provide safe transportation," he emphasized.

Most motorcoach operators welcome strong federal oversight because of the increased possibility of nailing unsafe and unscrupulous owners, long a thorn in their sides and a black mark on the industry.

"The availability of motorcoach safety data is more limited than that of property carriers due to fewer driver and vehicle safety inspections and a fewer total number of compliance reviews," Hill said in his congressional testimony. "However, we believe that bus companies deserve more careful program attention and dedicated enforcement resources because they transport people rather than cargo."

He pointed to two new initiatives that he stressed will help bolster FMCSAs oversight one that will help track unrated and high priority motorcoach operators who appear to run unsafe operations and the other that will develop a comprehensive safety analysis.

More Compliance Reviews

The program to identify possibly unsafe carriers will involve a dramatic jump in the number of compliance reviews the agency hopes to conduct this year to 1,600, from 600 the previous year, according to Hill.

In testimony before another House committee, Hill said the FMCSA would complete a compliance review of every motorcoach operator that has not been rated.

Later, FMCSA spokesman Duane DeBruyne told Bus & Motorcoach News that the high target number of 1,600, which would amount to 43 percent of the 3,700 registered motorcoach companies in the country, is a top priority of the agency and the administrator is confident it can be reached.

DeBruyne said each state FMCSA director already has been assigned a share of the compliance reviews and that about 10 percent of the reviews were completed from mid-February to near the end of March.

Hill also told House members that the safety analysis initiative will reshape how FMCSA approaches its safety mission over the next few years by developing more effective and efficient ways to reduce commercial motor vehicle accidents. Among the measures, he said, are having more regular contact with carriers and drivers, better identifying unsafe carriers by improving its process of gathering data, and having a wider range of interventions beyond safety audits and compliance reviews to more quickly identify high safety risk behavior.

Increased scrutiny

In addition to the two initiatives, Hill said FMCSA plans to apply more stringent safety standards for passenger carriers through an enhancement of SafeStat and the risk pointer system. Such changes, he said, will assure that passenger carriers receive a higher scrutiny through more frequent on-site reviews.

Spokesman DeBruyne said the details of the initiative still are being worked out, but could involve reducing the safety threshold for reviews, which would trigger more reviews.

States will soon be pitching in more, too, according to Hill. He said state agencies that receive motor carrier safety assistance program funds are being required to include bus inspection programs in the safety plans they file with the FMCSA. Several states currently do not have formal bus inspection programs, although most receive federal funding.

States also are being encouraged to increase the number of compliance inspections they conduct each year, he said. The effort is being carried out by FMCSA field offices working with state authorities.

Hill said the FMCSA also has stepped up its strike force activities, which involve large-scale inspection operations. The most recent was conducted in November in 14 eastern states, from Maine to Virginia. Working with state officials and nearly two dozen law enforcement agencies, the task force conducted more than 1,300 bus and driver safety inspections during a two-week period.

The inspections, which included all five levels, resulted in 1,679 violations, including 1,412 for vehicles and 267 for drivers. Also, 156 coaches were taken out of service and 43 drivers were ordered off the road. That translates to an out-of-service rate of roughly 12 percent for the coaches and more than 3 percent for the drivers.

All of the increased activity resulted in more than 26,000 inspections of all types last fiscal year, double the previous years total. Looking at bus fires, too

Bus fires also are getting new attention from the FMCSA.

Hill said the agency has instructed its field offices and state partners to begin immediately listing all fires in commercial vehicles as crashes. In the past, they were not counted on any accident lists, which made it difficult for the agency and the industry to track their numbers and causes.

Hill told members of the committee that the FMCSA also is taking a closer look at new motorcoach companies and is conducting on-site inspections of them within nine months of their beginning operations rather than the 18 months required by federal law. He said that where we have indicators of safety problems, the FMCSA immediately goes to the company.

Curbside carriers also are being targeted by the agency with a special task force continuing to track and inspect them, according to Hill. He said the task force identified 24 of them in the Northeast corridor last year and assigned satisfactory safety ratings to 18 of them and conditional ratings to three others. Two others, he added, went out of business and a third has yet to be inspected, but will be soon.