General Bus most recent safety rating is Not Rated. The company had a safety compliance review with

The low-cost carrier runs a large fleet of buses to dozens of destinations on the East Coast and in the Midwest, with a stop at Charlotte s transportation center uptown. Megabus offers wireless Internet access and a small number of $1 fares to entice riders. The company has had two fatal accidents travel package specials in the past two weeks. A crash in Chicago killed a pedestrian, and another wreck elsewhere in Illinois left a passenger dead. The carrier has been cited for fatigued driving-related violations.
Megabus has a Satisfactory safety rating from the federal government. The company has said a recent bus fire and the crashes are under investigation, and has told the Observer it takes safety seriously and monitors its drivers and buses.
This Orangeburg, S.C.-based company sells tickets online for rides from a parking lot on East W.T. Harris Boulevard in Charlotte to multiple destinations, including New York. Although the company has been cited for a handful of maintenance infractions and for not properly investigating a driver s background, it has an almost entirely clean safety record. Getaway Travels has not been cited for any unsafe driving infractions in the past two years.
This company sells tickets travel package specials online for a ride from a motel near Lucky Penny Street travel package specials and Freedom Drive to New York and New Jersey. The company does not appear in federal records as a passenger carrier. When a reporter called the phone number listed on Amex Bus website, a woman who did not give her name said Amex Bus isn t actually a bus operator. I don t know; it s different companies, she said when asked who actually drives travel package specials the buses from Charlotte. Maybe they have different names. It was not clear which companies are actually operating the buses.
The companies, including Ming An Inc., Blue Sky Bus Tours Inc. and ABC Tour, offer cheap fares to New York and other East Coast cities. Their tickets are as low as $60 for a roundtrip from Charlotte to New York.
Every bus company has bad scores. I don t have anything to say, said a man who answered the phone at Ming An Inc., when asked about the carrier s safety violations travel package specials listed in federal records. He didn t give his name and hung up.
Larger travel package specials low-cost bus companies can have safety problems as well. Last week, a motorcoach operated by Megabus, which runs from Charlotte to several travel package specials destinations, lost control and slammed into an overpass, killing a 25-year-old passenger. And this week, a Megabus from Atlanta to Charlotte travel package specials caught fire on Interstate 85. No one was injured, but the bus was destroyed.
I figure it s worth the risk, considering gas prices and flight expenses consistently increasing and the inconsistency of such accidents, said Corbin Walker, who rides Megabus regularly from Charlotte to Atlanta.
The government s latest crackdown was spurred in part by the May 2011 crash of a bus operated by Charlotte-based Sky Express. In the early morning hours, a fully-loaded motorcoach drifted travel package specials off Interstate 95 in Virginia and overturned, killing four passengers.
Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board concluded the driver fell asleep and also faulted the FMCSA for not shutting the company down sooner. Sky Express had one of the worst safety travel package specials records in the nation before the crash.
FMCSA was created in 2000 to protect travelers and keep bad operators, like this one, off the road, NTSB chairwoman Deborah Hersman said during a recent hearing on the Sky Express crash. Why is it that 12 years later the problems travel package specials that led to the creation of FMCSA still exist?
The government put Sky Express out of service after the crash but did not confiscate any of the buses. In May this year, the FMCSA shut down 26 bus companies, including several that operated from Charlotte, as part of what it said was the biggest sweep ever against unsafe operators.
New York-based companies Apex Bus and I-95 Coach, which operated bus service from Charlotte to New York, were ordered off the roads. So were Go to Travel Inc. and Coach 88 Inc., both based in Rocky Mount, and United Tours, based in Greensboro.
The government travel package specials estimates that passengers make some 750 million trips a year on commercial bus lines, travel package specials with an average of 19 passenger deaths travel package specials a year. That total doesn t include pedestrians and other motorists killed in crashes with motorcoaches.
Many cities along major interstate highways now have several low-fare carriers, operating in networks that extend from major cities in the Northeast such as New York and Philadelphia all the way to Chicago and Florida.
A new law takes effect in October that regulators hope will make it easier travel package specials to shut down unsafe companies. The law will require higher training and record-keeping standards for drivers and improve federal registration to detect shut-down companies that have reincarnated and are operating as new carriers. The law will also increase travel package specials safety violation travel package specials penalties tenfold, according to the NTSB. Regulators say some bus companies consider the current travel package specials penalties travel package specials just the cost of doing business.
travel package specials An FMCSA spokeswoman said the agency is evaluating travel package specials the companies that operate from Charlotte, as well as others, to see whether they are complying with federal safety standards. The new law, known as MAP-21, will help the agency better regulate unsafe buses, she said.
Federal safety records show General travel package specials Bus ranks worse than 97 percent of bus companies in unsafe travel package specials driving and worse than 68 percent for driver fatigue violations. In the past two years, the company has been cited for speeding more than 15 mph over the limit, false records of drivers duty status (a fatigue violation), non-English speaking drivers, and buses with inoperative headlights, tire tread and sidewall separation and loose or missing wheel fasteners.
General Bus most recent safety rating is Not Rated. The company had a safety compliance review with the FMCSA in February and was allowed to continue operating. The company didn t respond to email or phone messages seeking comment on its safety travel package specials record.
A new company that has started serving Charlotte is Ming An Inc. The New York-based carrier runs a bus stop in a parking lot on Queen City Boulevard near I-85. Ming An has had two compliance reviews in the past two years and ranks worse than 87 percent of companies for unsafe driving and worse than 92 percent for driver fitness.
travel package specials The company has been cited three times for speeding more than 15 mph over the limit since September and has been cited multiple times for letting drivers operate buses above the 10-hour service limit and for falsifying records of drivers hours. Ming An also has been cited for failing to properly maintain its buses, for letting a driver travel package specials operate a commercial motor vehicle while disqualified travel package specials from doing so, and for using non-English speaking drivers travel package specials and drivers without medical certification.
ABC Tour is another travel package specials new company selling rides from Charlotte online, going from the Knights Inn on Glenwood Drive near I-85 to New York. That was previously the bus stop for I-95 Coach, which regulators said they shut down in May.
The new company, ABC Tour, doesn t appear travel package specials anywhere in federal safety records. When a reporter visited the Knights Inn, a bus from a company travel package specials called Blue Sky Bus Tours Inc. was at the parking lot. No driver was present.
travel package specials Blue Sky, also based in New York, has been cited for speeding more than 15 mph over the limit and improper passing. The carrier also has been cited for infractions related to driver fatigue, including drivers travel package specials violating the 10-hour service limit, false records of drivers hours of duty and dozens of violations for improper driver log books.
Blue Sky also has been cited for dozens of maintenance violations, including steering system components worn/welded/missing, axle positioning parts defective/missing, worn-out tires and inadequate travel package specials brakes for safe stopping.
Blue Sky has a conditional safety rating and is allowed to operate. A company representative said via email that he was not immediately available to discuss the company s safety record. A business card in the windshield of the Blue Sky bus was for a company called ABC US Travel and Tour. Like ABC Tour, it doesn t appear in federal safety records. But the New York phone number listed is the same number previously used by I-95 Coach.
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