6

Types of Operations, Driver Compensation, and Safety Issues in the Intercity Bus Industry

Passenger service in the intercity bus industry is provided largely by motorcoaches, which are characterized by integral construction with an elevated passenger deck located over a compartment for stowing baggage. Motorcoaches are generally at least 35 feet in length with a capacity of 30 passengers or more.¹ In the United States in 2022, 1,374 companies operated 24,792 motorcoaches, and in Canada, 192 companies operated 2,838 motorcoaches.² That year, about 40 percent of motorcoach passenger–miles were provided by large companies that operated 100 or more motorcoaches, 27 percent by mid-size companies that operated 25 to 99 motorcoaches, and 33 percent by small companies that operated fewer than 25 motorcoaches.

A general challenge with studying the intercity bus industry is that data on bus operations and passenger volumes are at best incomplete and often unavailable. The federal government publishes statistics on the traffic activity and passenger volumes of intercity rail and airline service but its statistics on highway travel often do not consistently distinguish between intercity bus operations and other bus operations. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) found that, although motorcoach carriers are required to report their annual fleet mileage to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) every 2 years, 64 percent of motorcoach carriers did not report data or did not report it in a consistent and timely

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¹ Motorcoach Census, American Bus Association Foundation, December 2023. See https://buses.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/2023-Motorcoach-Census.pdf.

² Ibid.

way.³ Accordingly, the information presented in this chapter about the intercity bus industry, even information on basic passenger traffic and operations levels, can only be characterized as roughly accurate, with significant gaps, imprecision, and a high degree of aggregation. Significantly for the purposes of this study, there is no source of detailed data on the workforce of drivers operating motorcoaches in intercity passenger service, much less on the compensation that they receive and the pay methods that are used by bus carriers.

In the same manner that it does for long-distance trucking, the charge for this study calls for an examination of compensation methods and working conditions in the intercity bus industry to determine whether these methods and conditions may affect driver safety performance and retention by motor carriers. In the previous two chapters, the paucity of data available for examining the long-distance trucking is documented, especially regarding compensation methods and their potential effects on safety. Nevertheless, considerably more relevant data exist for the long-distance trucking industry than for the intercity bus industry. Moreover, concern about the possible effects of piece-rate pay (e.g., pay by mile, pay by load) and stressful working conditions on the behavior of drivers in long-distance trucking has generated a body of empirical research, albeit not sufficient for establishing firm causal relationships.

Compared with long-distance trucking, the research base on the key matters relevant to this study’s charge is almost nonexistent for the intercity bus industry, perhaps because driver compensation and working conditions have not engendered concerns about the industry’s safety performance and capacity to retain drivers. During this study, and after consulting with experts on the operations and safety of the intercity bus industry, research literature, and NTSB studies and crash investigations, the committee was not able to surface such concerns. While the paucity of data, empirical evidence, and explicit concern about the effects of bus driver compensation and working conditions on safety and retention may not accurately reflect the degree of relevance, it greatly complicated assessments in this study.

Given the circumstances just described, this chapter does not assess the effects of bus driver compensation and working conditions. The discussion does, however, reveal the difficulties that researchers would encounter in pursuing this line of inquiry. The chapter begins with an overview of the intercity bus industry, the diversity of which creates wide variability in bus driver working conditions—from the regularly scheduled services to overnight tour operations. Data on intercity operations are not disaggregated to reflect this variability. The chapter then presents what limited information the committee could find on bus driver compensation methods,

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³ Report on Curbside Motorcoach Safety, NTSB/SR-11/01, PB2011-917002.

which suggests that hourly pay prevails. The discussion then turns to the intercity passenger bus industry’s safety record and considers some specific safety-related issues, including driver fatigue, distraction, and the advent of curbside bus operations, that could be pertinent to future research on driver compensation and working conditions. There is nothing in this chapter, however, that would suggest that data collection and research along these lines should be prioritized.

OVERVIEW OF INTERCITY BUS INDUSTRY

The intercity bus industry is much smaller than the long-distance trucking industry, both in terms of the number of vehicles and vehicle-miles traveled. In 2021, combination trucks alone traveled more than ten times the vehicle-miles traveled by motorcoaches.⁴ Still, the intercity bus industry is large and diverse. It includes several types of service, the major ones being scheduled, charter, and tour/sightseeing, as described next:

• Scheduled. A specified ticketed, predetermined, regular-route service between cities or terminals. Another form of scheduled service, referred to as curbside service, consists of providing scheduled service between cities or from a city to a popular destination, picking up and discharging passengers at places other than traditional terminals and charging lower fares. These differences among the forms of scheduled operators complicate characterizations of scheduled operations. This segment consists of a large and diverse group of bus operators, especially when including curbside operators whose schedules are often fluid and posted only on the Internet. In such cases, even the accurate measurement of the level of service can be difficult.
• Charter. A motorcoach hired by an existing group, such as an organization, association, tour company, shuttle service, church, or school, for exclusive use under a fixed contract. According to estimates by the American Bus Association (ABA), the for-hire charter bus industry is larger than the scheduled bus industry, employing about 31,000 people in 2009, compared with about 15,000 in the intercity and rural bus transportation sector.⁵ Total miles traveled by charter buses are about 50 percent greater than miles traveled by scheduled carriers. Total charter activity is probably even greater than is implied in the ABA estimates, because smaller

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⁴ Bureau of Transportation Statistics, U.S. Department of Transportation, Table 1-35. See www.bts.gov/content/us-vehicle-miles.

⁵ American Bus Association, presentation to the study committee, May 2023.

charter operators are less likely to be members of the ABA. How much of the reported charter bus mileage involves itineraries of 100 miles or more (making them long-distance) is difficult to ascertain because of the diverse range of services provided by these for-hire operators.

• Tour/Sightseeing. A planned or prearranged trip offered for sale by a motorcoach transportation company (including a tour company that leases/owns and operates motorcoaches) to leisure travelers at a fixed price. When a service offering by motorcoach or tour company includes visiting specific sites, the price may include lodging, meals, guide services, and transportation. The same issues that arise when trying to characterize the charter segment also apply to this segment.

Scheduled bus operations appear to be more common in the Northeast of the United States, as the long distances between cities in western states like Texas and California may favor flying; the generally shorter distances between cities in the Northeast may favor buses and trains (NASEM 2016). Because many travelers using buses and trains depend on public transit or walk to access stations, the generally more compact and transit-oriented Northeastern cities may be more conducive to the use of these surface modes (NASEM 2016). It merits noting that ridership on scheduled buses skews young, with almost three quarters of passengers being between the ages 18 to 35. The rise of scheduled curbside buses, as discussed later in this chapter, was a phenomenon that began in the Northeast and among younger travelers but has since expanded to other regions and demographics.

Figure 6-1 shows trends in motorcoach miles from 2007 to 2021 based on Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) statistics for motorbuses.⁶ The data are for all types of long-distance operations, including scheduled services, charter services, and sightseeing/tour operations, and they may include local motorcoach operations. In addition to showing the negative effect of the 2020 pandemic on ridership,⁷ the figure shows that the industry had been growing in the years before the pandemic as passenger-miles increased steadily between 2011 and 2018. It is notable that by 2021, passenger-miles had returned to their 2017 level. However, the data that are used to generate these trends can be difficult to sort out and may include local travel on motorcoaches. The combination of charter and scheduled

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⁶ Bureau of Transportation Statistics, National Transportation Statistics, Table 1-40. See www.bts.gov/content/us-passenger-miles.

⁷ According to the American Bus Association, the drop in ridership associated with the pandemic itself was dramatic, as the number of motorcoach carriers declined almost 19 percent and the number of motorcoaches operated declined more than 14 percent between 2019 and 2020. American Bus Association, presentation to the study committee, May 2023.

(including curbside) motorcoach operations can complicate the gathering of consistent time-series data on intercity bus activity, and it is not clear whether all services relevant to this study are captured in the federal government figures.

Another challenge in focusing on intercity buses is that data on school and transit buses are often combined with data for intercity buses. However, these three major segments of the bus industry are very different in their operations and the environment in which they operate. With transit and school buses, the service is predominantly local, in urban or suburban areas, and the operating speeds are typically much lower than for intercity buses, meaning that crashes involving occupant fatalities are less likely for the former. At the same time, school and transit buses operate in environments with more pedestrians, meaning pedestrians are more likely to be struck by school or transit buses than by buses in intercity bus operations. Drivers of school and transit buses also have much different working conditions than drivers of long-distance buses, as drivers have much more regular work

schedules. The study charge did not call for an assessment of these other large locally oriented segments of the bus industry, which differ so fundamentally from the intercity segment, and therefore the frequent practice of combining data proved to be problematic at times.

Bus deregulation in 1982 was intended to help intercity bus carriers achieve and maintain financial stability by allowing them to abandon unprofitable routes and services and start new services easily. However, transportation deregulation also exposed the intercity bus industry to increasing competition from other deregulated transportation carriers, such as passenger airlines, trucks, and air package express services that competed with the bus industry’s own pre-deregulation offerings of package express service.

INFORMATION ON BUS DRIVER COMPENSATION

There appears to be no systematic evidence of the forms of driver compensation or the extent to which they are used in the different segments of the intercity bus industry. There are anecdotal statements that compensation is mostly paid-by-the-hour and can also be paid-by-the-mile, but there are no references to actual data. When compensation data are available, they are usually expressed on an hourly and annual basis.

Table 6-1 shows employment and wage data for some segments of the bus industry collected and published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.⁸ Interurban and rural bus transportation (both of which may be viewed as intercity bus service for the purposes of this study) have higher hourly and annual average wages than the charter or scenic and sightseeing (tour) transportation portion of the industry. However, for many of the trips provided by charter and tour bus operators, passenger gratuities can be a meaningful portion of the driver’s compensation and not likely to be reflected in compensation databases. As a point of reference, average compensation for heavy and tractor trailer truck drivers is reported in the bottom line of the table and is higher than any of the bus industry segments.

OVERVIEW OF INTERCITY BUS SAFETY PERFORMANCE

Although fewer in number, intercity buses are historically involved in far fewer crashes that result in fatalities than large trucks. Table 6-2 compares fatal crashes and total fatalities by vehicle type for combination trucks, other large trucks, and intercity motorcoach buses for the period 2000–2021. For every fatal crash involving an intercity bus, there were 99 fatal crashes involving a combination truck and 40 fatal crashes involving

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⁸ Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wages, May 2023. See www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes533052.htm and www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes533032.htm.

another type of large truck. For every fatality in a crash involving an intercity bus, there were 79 fatalities in crashes involving combination trucks and 30 fatalities in crashes involving another type of large truck. Figure 6-2 shows fatal crashes per 100 million vehicle-miles for combination trucks, other large trucks, and intercity buses for the period 2007–2021. Intercity buses had by far the lowest fatal crash rate and that rate has tended to decline.

Table 6-3 shows the average annual occupant and non-occupant fatalities in fatal crashes for intercity buses and for combination trucks. As points of comparison, statistics are also provided for school and transit buses, although they operate locally in much different environments than intercity buses as discussed above. Occupants of passenger vehicles involved in collisions with intercity buses have a higher risk of death and injury than do the occupants of the bus involved in the crash, due to the disparity in vehicle size and weight between intercity buses and passenger vehicles (NTSB 2011). The same is true for occupants of passenger vehicles involved in collisions with combination trucks. The higher ratio of non-occupant to

occupant fatalities shows the impact of school and transit buses operating in an environment in which more pedestrian fatalities are possible. The low number of average occupant fatalities reflect the slower speeds at which these local buses typically travel.

NTSB has found travel speed to be a significant factor in the severity of a motorcoach crash, as is true for crashes involving other types of vehicles (NTSB 2011). It is not clear, however, the extent to which speeding by drivers of motorcoaches was a significant cause of these crashes. Installed devices (speed governors) that reduce the maximum speed of the motorcoach have been installed by all major bus lines. Major bus lines, such as Academy, Coach USA, Greyhound, and Peter Pan, have reportedly set maximum speeds, which in the past have often been in the 65–71 mph range, although practices may by region and change over time.⁹

It is also not clear whether, or how, the characteristics of intercity bus drivers contribute to crashes. One study of all segments of the U.S. bus industry, including local bus operations, found that crash severity increases: (a) for bus drivers under the age of 25; (b) for drivers over the age of 55, and, most prominently, for drivers over age 65; (c) for female drivers; (d) at very high (over 65 mph) and very low (under 20 mph) speeds; (e) at intersections; and (f) because of inattentive and risky driving (Kaplan and Prato 2012). However, as noted above different segments of the bus industry have markedly different crash rates and safety records, so these results may not be indicative of circumstances specific to intercity bus operations. Compensation was not considered in this study, nor could the committee find any empirical work that addresses this matter.

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⁹ Safety Issues Related to the Speed of Travel on Scheduled Intercity Bus Service, Joseph Schwieterman, DePaul University, presentation to the study committee, May 2023.

BUS DRIVER FATIGUE AND DISTRACTION

NTSB researchers consulted bus drivers in focus groups and most agreed that getting adequate rest was important and reported difficulties getting sufficient sleep during off-duty time as well as sometimes working longer hours than those allowed by hours-of-service (HOS) rules (Braver et al 2012). However, study of data from 1995–1999, indicated that only 1.2 percent of fatal crashes involving long-distance (over-the-road) buses involved driver fatigue.¹⁰ More recent analyses could not be found.

Drowsiness was observed more frequently among truck drivers than among drivers of motorcoaches (Hammond et al. 2021). This may be due to several factors. Notably, the driving schedule for motorcoach operations is likely more consistent with the typical sleep/wake schedule because of the interest of passengers in obtaining rest, and so they reach their destination earlier rather than later. Trucking driving is more likely to occur during the late-night and early-morning hours. In having passengers in their vehicle, the bus driver may also have interactions that counter drowsiness. As described in earlier chapters, long-haul truck drivers are sometimes detained at shipper and consignee facilities for loading and unloading, whereas scheduled intercity bus passengers and baggage typically load and unload with limited delay.

One hindrance to getting rest frequently cited by charter bus drivers in focus group research is the difficulty in locating legal bus parking, particularly in large cities (Braver et al. 2012). Bus parking is sometimes located far from where passengers are dropped off and, in some cases, drivers must navigate dense traffic to get to these areas. Many of the legal parking locations have no indoor areas or nearby restaurants, forcing the driver to remain in the bus. Remaining in the bus also poses challenges to rest because motorcoaches do not have sleeper berths like those often found in long-haul trucks. Furthermore, some cities do not permit drivers to idle the bus, which leaves the motorcoach without air-conditioning or heat.

Charter and tour bus operators also encounter problems with meeting HOS regulations because their passengers sometimes expect to be entertained upon reaching their destinations. Drivers said they were particularly vulnerable to pressures from passengers because tips are a substantial part of their compensation.

When an overnight operation is planned, relief drivers may be used. With a relief driver, two drivers operate in shifts, theoretically allowing one driver to rest while the other one drives. Because there are no sleeper berths on buses, drivers explained that sitting upright does not provide

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¹⁰ Bus Accidents in the United States, 1995–1999, UMTRI-2001-17.

high-quality rest and the relief driver may be unable to sleep because of ambient noise.

Drivers in focus groups voiced concerns that not accepting jobs due to fatigue or being over legal driving hour limits might negatively affect their work status (Braver et al. 2012). The drivers said they are not fired for turning down driving assignments, but they may be hired less often. One driver also pointed out that those drivers who are willing to exceed work hour limits may be rewarded with more jobs, including more desirable trips. (Braver et al. 2012). According to federal law, enroute inspections of buses carrying passengers are prohibited unless federal or state officials suspect an imminent hazard or observe a moving traffic violation. Drivers can be inspected only after they have discharged passengers or at a planned stop (NTSB 2011). As a result, drowsy drivers may not be identified by enforcement personnel. Another challenge for oversight is that inspections of curbside carriers, which do not use traditional terminals, must take place on the side of the road, which poses logistical problems. Drivers in focus groups mentioned instances of companies avoiding inspections by warning each other of the locations of inspectors (Braver et al. 2012).

Another question is the extent to which there are elements of passenger service that can create stress and fatigue for drivers beyond the method in which they are compensated. In both traditional and curbside scheduled service, passengers have expected departure and arrival times. Passengers are unlikely to be upset at arriving early, but some passengers may be upset if the bus arrives after the scheduled arrival time, which may reflect badly on the driver with company management. If a driver is scheduled for several back-to-back scheduled trips, a late arrival on one trip could result in a late departure and subsequent late arrival during the next trip. A question then is whether drivers might be more likely to engage in less safe driving practices to avoid late arrivals.

Even with no published schedule to follow, drivers of charter and sightseeing buses may also face pressure to operate at the times that passengers expect. Late departures and/or late arrivals could make some passengers unhappy. Such unhappiness could affect the tips the driver receives and management’s willingness to assign the driver to future trips. Bus drivers are also responsible for loading and unloading passenger luggage, taking passenger tickets, and making sure passengers sit in their assigned seats. All these activities can contribute to driver fatigue.

NTSB does not investigate all transportation crashes, focusing instead on those which may surface important safety lessons. Between 2008 and 2020, they conducted detailed investigations of four intercity bus crashes, each of which involved the bus leaving the road, rolling over, and passenger fatalities:

• NTSB. 2021. Medium-Size Bus Roadway Departure, Return, and Rollover, Bryce Canyon City, Utah, September 20, 2019. Highway Accident Report, NTSB/HAR-21/01. Washington, DC: NTSB
• Bus Roadway Departure and Rollover, Pala Mesa, California, February 22, 2020, NTSB/HIR-22/02
• Motorcoach Run‐Off‐the‐Road and Rollover, U.S. Route 163, Mexican Hat, Utah, January 6, 2008, NTSB/HAR-09/01, PB2009916201
• Motorcoach Run-Off-the-Bridge and Rollover, Sherman, Texas, August 8, 2008, NTSB/HAR-09/02, PB2009-916202

In only one of the crashes (in 2008 in Utah) was driver fatigue found to have contributed to the crash. In that case, HOS violations were also found to be a contributing factor. These investigations did not inquire into bus driver compensation or examine working conditions per se.

A factor believed to contribute to highway crashes is distracted driving: a specific type of driver inattention that occurs when drivers divert their attention from the driving task to some other activity. There has been very strong growth in use of cell phones over the past two decades, raising concerns about whether they are contributing to distracted driving. The primary source of truck and bus crash data does not provide a reliable picture of distracted driving from cell phone use by drivers involved in crashes, including bus drivers. One analysis of naturalistic driving data used cameras to monitor the driver and surrounding events to gather data on truck and bus crashes for a limited number of trucks and intercity buses (Hammond et al. 2021). That study found that cell phone use was lower for intercity bus drivers than for truck drivers. Intercity bus carriers may restrict cell phone use by drivers when operating the bus and drivers may also be less likely to use the device while driving so as not to risk criticism from observant passengers. Here again, the available data do not exist to investigate this possible contributor to intercity bus crashes.

ISSUES RELATED TO EARLY CURBSIDE SERVICE

In the intercity bus industry before the 1990s, most passengers on scheduled bus services began their trip at a bus terminal, often near the center of a city, and they traveled to another bus terminal in a different city or town enroute. Multiple bus companies typically served these terminals, allowing passengers to make an online connection to another bus from the same company or an interline connection to a bus from a different company. The stations included indoor passenger waiting areas. However, the intercity bus industry at that time was in decline. Restructuring of the intercity bus transportation industry following its deregulation during the 1980s, combined

with reductions in air fares and declining populations in many rural areas, had led to marked reductions in demand, especially for rural service.

The curbside intercity buses that began operating during the 1990s attracted passengers with lower fares than traditional bus service that had to cover the overhead of enclosed terminals. Most of these operations picked up or discharged passengers, as the name implies, at one or more curbside locations and schedules are listed online. With curbside operations, customers generally must wait outdoors with no facilities or shelter, but the lower fare proved attractive to travelers, and especially younger people. First offered by small operators serving immigrant communities, curbside operations gained popularity during the early 2000s causing large established motorcoach companies to enter the business and reduce their reliance on terminals. The service is marketed as express city-to-city service, as the buses will typically operate from one downtown to another downtown with limited additional stops enroute (Klein 2009).

During the initial boom in curbside service, and when the service was dominated by low-cost smaller operators and characterized by high rates of operator entry and withdrawal from the business, the safety of these services received a significant amount of attention. In a safety study released in 2011, NTSB found that although crashes among all types of interstate motorcoach carriers (including those using the curbside business model) are infrequent, curbside carriers were found to have higher fatal crash and death rates and more time out-of-service resulting from driver violations (particularly fatigued driving and driver fitness violations) than was observed for conventional carriers. Curbside carriers were also found to be overrepresented in driver logbook violations. NTSB questioned the degree of oversight of the curbside operators, raising concern, for instance that FMCSA does not oversee leasing agreements among motorcoach carriers. NTSB expressed concern that the absence of such oversight could hinder FMCSA’s ability to detect and unsafe activities (NTSB 2011). In this safety study, however, it is notable that NTSB did not examine issues related to drivers of curbside buses and their compensation methods and levels.

Curbside bus service, as noted above, has changed significantly since its inception more than two decades ago, as more large operators have entered the market. Hence, the concerns associated with the segment’s safety during a time of rapid new entry into the intercity bus business may no longer be applicable. Importantly, for the purposes of this study the committee sought but did not find any information about how driver compensation and working conditions may have factored into the safety performance of curbside buses in the past or today.

SUMMARY POINTS

• The intercity bus industry in the United States is much smaller than the long-haul trucking industry in terms of both the number of vehicles and the vehicle-miles traveled. However, the intercity bus industry is diverse in terms of the types of services offered, including scheduled (both conventional and curbside), charter, and tour services. These services differ markedly and the data specific to them are at best incomplete and often not available
• Intercity buses have a strong safety record, as they have historically experienced much lower fatal crash rates than long-distance trucking. Safety concerns related to intercity bus drivers center on concerns about fatigue, as is true for long-distance truck drivers. However, drowsiness is observed more frequently among truck drivers than among motorcoach drivers. It is notable that cell phone use that can cause distracted driving is observed to be lower for intercity bus drivers than for truck drivers and that speed governors have been installed in coaches at all major bus lines.
• Driver compensation data for the intercity bus industry are limited and do not contain details about pay methods or working conditions sufficient for empirical analyses. Furthermore, there is no extant body of empirical research that can be consulted for the purpose of assessing the effects of driver compensation on safety performance and driver retention. The limited compensation data that are available suggest that hourly pay prevails in the industry.
• This study’s consultations of the research literature, bus transportation and highway safety experts, and NTSB safety studies and crash investigations did not surface any concerns about the effects of bus driver compensation and working conditions on driver safety performance or retention.

REFERENCES

Klein, N. J. (2009). Emergent curbside intercity bus industry: Chinatown and beyond. Transportation Research Record, 2111, 83–89. https://doi.org/10.3141/2111-11.

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM). (2016). Interregional travel: A new perspective for policy making. The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/21887.

National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). (2011). Report on curbside motorcoach safety: Special report. NTSB/SR-11/01, PB2011-917002. Washington, DC.

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