U.S.

Bus Crash Brings Extensive Disruptions

October 4, 2001 / 9:31 AM EDT / AP

Ordinarily, Alexis Alexander would have taken a plane from Salt Lake City home to Philadelphia. But these are not ordinary times.

So Alexander, too rattled to fly since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, boarded a bus for a 49-hour journey from Utah that was supposed to end in her aunt's arms.

Instead, an attack on a Greyhound driver in Tennessee on Wednesday left Alexander and thousands of other travelers stranded and even more unnerved.

"I'm going to just stay home from now on," said Alexander, slumped in a waiting area at New York's Port Authority Bus Terminal. "You can't take the bus. You can't take the plane. Pretty soon, you can't even go to the mall. It's not over."

Scores of travelers, stuck in bus terminals nationwide, voiced similar worries after Wednesday's attack in which a rider slashed the driver's throat. The Greyhound bus crashed about 60 miles southeast of Nashville. Six people died.

The company shut down bus service for more than five hours.

The crash forced the bus industry — which has tightened security since Sept. 11 — to reconsider the safety procedures in a system so open one official likened it to a traveling mall.

"Everyone in the country is looking differently at security than they were three weeks ago," said Peter Pantuso, president of the American Bus Association.

"We want to make sure people feel comfortable getting onto our motor coaches," said Gale Ellsworth, president of Trailways Transportation System of Fairfax, Va.

Wednesday's attack follows two attempts by passengers to hijack Greyhound buses over the last five years. But it wasn't until after Sept. 11 that bus companies began seriously reviewing security.

On Wednesday, Greyhound started conducting magnetic searches of passengers and baggage in San Francisco and Dallas, although there are no specific plans to broaden such screening, the company said.

The Dallas-based company has also begun requiring passengers to show a photo identification when purchasing a ticket, and listing that name on the ticket, said Gary Coles, Greyhound's district manager in New York.

Trailways is issuing photo identification badges to its 6,000 employees and its franchise operators — which carried 22 million passengers in 2000 — are asking passengers to present photo IDs when purchasing a ticket and again before boarding buses.

For now, companies plan their own security measures. But Pantuso said the industry is considering uniform procedures.

The airline industry has looked at ways to ensure the security of pilots, such as installing steel reinforcement bars on cockpit doors. Amtrak officials say their conductors have long worked inside reinforced cabins.

But there is little separating bus drivers from passengers, an issue companies said they would try quickly to address.

"I'm sure there'll be talks about some kind of a plexiglass cage" for the drivers, Ellsworth said.

Coles noted that the Tennessee crash appeared t be an isolated incident, "the act of a deranged individual."

Many travelers stranded Wednesday agreed, but some had reservations about returning to the road.

"It makes me feel nervous. Anybody getting on the bus, the person next to you can be a hijacker," said Candee Farris, who was en route from Utah home to Kansas City.