Panel Adds Its Static to OCTA Lines

After eight years, $12.7 million and three project managers, the Orange County Transportation Authority’s state-of-the-art communications system is still fraught with problems and remains unreliable, according to a grand jury report released Thursday.

The grand jury found that the bus locator gives erroneous locations, silent bus alarms sometimes don’t work or get tripped by accident, voice communication is spotty, and the computer system and its backup crash periodically.

And in a series of recommendations outlined in the report, the grand jury suggested that OCTA must eradicate the perception among bus drivers that if they complain, it could hurt their careers.

OCTA Board Chairman Bill Campbell said Thursday that he would ask for a full report on the system from the agency’s chief executive, and that at the next board meeting he would request the agency’s board of directors to address the communications issue.

“Either we fix it, or dump this system and go get another one,” Campbell said.

Campbell said that losing $12 million would be cheaper for taxpayers in the long run than maintaining an unreliable system.

But agency officials said steps had been taken to improve the bus communications system, including replacing the original project team and making sure the firm hired for the project, Orbital Sciences Corp., was held accountable.

“The system is up and running; it is meeting and exceeding expectations,” said Tom Franklin, OCTA manager of operations. “I’ve been riding buses, and I haven’t heard of any new complaints about the system.”

Franklin and other agency officials acknowledged the system had severe problems before 2002 but that tests in November found the communications system reliable, agency spokesman Ted Nguyen said.

“The industry standard for reliable is that the system works 95% of the time, and we found that with radio communications it’s working reliably -- not 100%, but reliably,” Nguyen said.

The agency, which could have claimed a portion of a $10-million performance bond guaranteeing Orbital’s system, waived any claims and released the bond after the November tests, Franklin said.

The grand jury report, however, determined that the radio communications between drivers and dispatchers failed 15% to 24% of the time, leading to frustration and miscommunication among employees.

The grand jury also found:

* When more than one dispatcher picks up a call at the same time, the call is dropped.

* In March, the transit police, field supervisors and mobile maintenance units shifted to another communications system.

* A text message sent to all bus drivers cannot be acknowledged by all drivers without overloading the system.

Last year, a coach operator who was beaten and choked by a passenger had trouble calling for help on the bus radio. Dispatchers told him to call back with a cellphone because they could not hear him.

During a bomb scare in July, a dispatcher tried three times to reach the driver, repeating instructions to stop and evacuate the bus. About 40 seconds elapsed before the driver acknowledged the message.

After eight years of problems, “the communication system has not been fixed or replaced, leading to such frustration that many users no longer bother to report problems with the system,” the report said.

The grand jury said that during its investigation it also discovered a “feeling of frustration” and “perceived intimidation” among OCTA employees and system users.

The report cited intimidation as a factor in not reporting radio problems. It noted that the system’s quality-control engineers were fired, the dispatch manager reassigned and a dispatcher reprimanded after voicing concerns about the system.

What the grand jury didn’t take into account, Nguyen said, was that Orbital’s product was the first digital communications system for a large public bus agency in the country.

But Campbell, who was not on the board in 1997 when Orbital sold the system to the agency, said the purchase was not considered prudently.

“Unfortunately, they made a decision to buy leading-edge technology rather than proven technology,” Campbell said. “So we are limping along with something that has never worked well.”

In August, OCTA’s contract with Cinergy Innovations, whose job was to ensure the system’s quality, was terminated. An OCTA employee now oversees that job, agency officials said.

“At one point was project management lacking? Yes,” Franklin said. “Was the system having problems? Yes. But as of November, all that has been resolved, and we are in a maintenance mode at this time.”

In February, the agency hired a consultant to evaluate the communications system. That report is due at the end of the month, Nguyen said.