Mr. MINETA. Mr. Skaggs.

Mr. SKAGGS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I want to thank our witnesses for their time and interest this morning. I think we are all intending to be productive and not counterproductive in addressing this issue. One thing I would like to ask you, and I am not sure who among you would like to comment, it is whether we should attempt to make some distinction between essentially scheduled common carrier type operations and charter type operations and charter/tour operations.

Perhaps the gentleman from Peter Pan involved in both those kinds of activities on a medium-sized scale could speak to it, as well as Mr. Dipert, or if there is an industry position, I am interested in that.

Mr. PICKNELLY. Under the Massachusetts program, buses that we have in our fleet are restricted to service on a regular route and are only allowed to be used in charter service within the Commonwealth on weekends so that we really haven't had the experience, but again our experience basically has been very limited call for the wheelchair accessible vehicle.

Again, I think our main position is that the entire matter should be studied. I think that that should be part of the study; whether or not the accessible vehicle should be confined to regular route or charter.

I guess my first reaction is that the handicapped community would also want to participate in charter as well as tours, so I think the answer

Mr. SKAGGS. I am sure you are correct in that. It is just whether the cost/benefit considerations are different depending on the kind of service you are talking about in a compelling enough way to make that public policy distinction.

Mr. PICKNELLY. Yes, sir.

Mr. SKAGGS. Mr. Dipert?

Mr. DIPERT. I don't have a regular scheduled route, so to be selfish, certainly I would want you to do it for charters whether you do it for the regular routes or not, but from an industry standpoint and representing our industry, which mainly deals with charters, we feel the biggest problem would be the amount of cost that it would require the senior citizens who are on fixed income to have, and there is no question that would have to be passed on to the customer. And we have, as Mr. Currey mentioned, a 50-cent cost in ticket. You would not think that would make a difference, but there is a perceived benefit. On a charter operation you are dealing with people who want to go to another community and see the beauty, et cetera, of that other State or community, and there is a certain perceived benefit, and we feel that if it goes beyond the benefit to them, they will choose other means of recreation and eventually kill our business.

Mr. SKAGGS. Let me ask if the ABA, could provide some information for us or maybe you have it available. It seems to me if the demographics of your customer group have been correctly described, that one of the effects of this proposed legislation with the cost passthrough would be essentially a regressive tax. I would be interested in how we quantify that and the impacts by income group if that data could be developed and made available.

Mr. HAMMERSCHMIDT. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. SKAGGS. I would be pleased to yield.

Mr. HAMMERSCHMIDT. I wanted to mention as an aside, I was listening to Mr. Dipert's response to you, and just to say I can personally attest to Mr. Dipert's credibility as a witness. I have known him and his father since they started their business. I have been a great admirer of their initiatives and their service to the public. I just want to make that a part of the record.

Mr. DIPERT. Thank you, Mr. Hammerschmidt. I send my father's great regard for you, and mine as well, I might add.

Mr. SKAGGS. I better cut into this before we get carried away.

It occurs to me that the testimony we have heard about loss of revenue producing seats is relevant only if your collective experience is that you are having relatively fully loaded vehicles most of the time. So I am also interested in data being provided for the record, if you will, as to your average occupancy rates and, therefore, whether or not the loss of two seats, let's say, is going to have a real effect or only a hypothetical one.

Mr. BUSSKOHL. Could I just offer one comment? One of our motor coaches was in Washington yesterday. That very same coach two weeks ago was on our schedule. Therefore, the way we operate that piece of equipment is interchangeable, and if we are not allowed to make it interchangeable, then it makes our operation higher cost, less efficient.

Mr. SKAGGS. That is interchangeable between your scheduled and charter operations?

Mr. CURREY. Yes, and if I may, sir, comment upon that also, that is certainly the case with Greyhound Lines in that the charter fleet during the colder months between peak periods of demand is a charter fleet, but during peak periods of line demand, it is a line fleet. So there is a forced interchangeability of the fleet in order to accomplish the demand responsive service that we offer. Because, for instance, should the first bus be full, we, in general, offer to bring up another bus on the same schedule in order to accomplish the trip for the people.

Mr. SKAGGS. Well, even with that additional insight, perhaps the data could be organized in a way that addresses that which would also deal with how many of your charter operations are fully booked. I am just looking at what percentage of marginal operations are really going to be impacted by this.

Mr. CURREY. Of course. And in conjunction with our regular line service, if you visualize, I can visualize pieces of the map, but if you visualize a route that begins in a major metropolitan area and traverses the country, often the average load on that route would be maybe 20 to 25 people out of 47. But the schedule might, nonetheless, with high frequency, depart the original location with a full bus load. So one has to be careful looking at average load figures. Mr. SKAGGS. Well, I will count on you to point out those discrete considerations for us.

Mr. CURREY. Indeed.

Mr. SKAGGS. Finally, let me just make an observation. Many of you have referred to the low frequency of requests for service. I, for one, question how much relevance that carries with it in that the habits and expectations of the disabled community, in taking the

initiative to make a request, are probably conditioned to some degree by the lack of availability of service. So it tends to be a selffulfilling kind of thing. And I don't think requests necessarily are the best indicator of need.

Finally, Mr. Chairman, if I may, since I have to leave, if I can welcome in advance, Mr. George Herman, from the Regional Transportation District in Denver, who will be testifying in the next panel, and invite you gentlemen perhaps to stand by to listen to his testimony. I think we have some very hopeful experience coming out of the Denver Bus System as to both cost and frequency of use and other indicators that perhaps we can address these problems at lower costs and with greater impact than may have otherwise been suggested.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. MINETA. Thank you, Mr. Skaggs. Mr. Hancock?

Mr. HANCOCK. As we all know, bus transportation has been in decline for probably 40 years, a very rapid decline, in fact. I am just curious, with this type of an increase in overhead, which would definitely indicate an increase in prices, you indicated that-in fact the entire panel has indicated that this would cause a further decline probably or possibly in bus ridership. Can public bus transportation exist for another 10 years with this type of increased overhead? I am not talking about the tour buses. I am talking about the public buses, the Greyhounds.

It would appear that even though we are definitely concerned about giving people access and mobility of people that suffer handicaps, but is it possible that what we have had for years will go out of existence in a comparatively few years with this type of an increase?

Mr. CURREY. It is certainly possible. For instance, to put it in perspective for our company, the airline industry for the last 12 months reported profits of $611 million, for the last reported 12month period, $611 million. DOT studies indicate that the cost to the airline industry of the implementation of the accessibility standards is between $5.4 million and $18.7 million, depending upon definitions, et cetera. Our company lost $17 million last year, is expected to earn $10 million this year on a comparable basis to the airlines' $611 million. Our company is approximately the size of the eighth largest airline, that is Swiss Airlines. Our company earns two cents on every dollar this year hopefully. Swiss, the eighth largest airline, earns 10 cents on every dollar.

So we have $611 million profit, cost to implement industrywide of $5.4 million to $18 million as a range. The cost to implement alone to our company is between $40 and $80 million, and I frankly believe the $80 million is more realistic, but no need to argue the cost issue. Even at the lowest possible costs, it is a bolt to the heart. That bolt to the heart will cause the kind of restructuring we attempted to present with the maps.

Mr. HENRY. Thank you.

Mr. MINETA. Mr. Packard.

Mr. PACKARD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Į served on a transit district board for some time, and during the period of time when we were not only anxious but required to implement accessibility on public transportation systems across the

country, and I recognize the dilemmas and the costs and the problems.

Here we are talking about private companies, though, not public companies, and there is a little bit of a difference, I suspect. I would like to inquire as to your perceptions of how far reaching this piece of legislation would be. Would it require access, for example, on old-fashioned San Francisco-style trolleys? Would it require lifts on D.C. tourmobiles or on London-style double-decker buses or on Disneyland horse-drawn carriages? How far reaching is the bill?

Now, I assume from you, as representatives of small companies that may only operate a few buses, that you are assuming that this piece of legislation will impact your buses, your units. To your understanding, how far reaching will it go? Will it get down into these unique kinds of vehicles that would have to meet the same requirements?

Mr. CURREY. Yes, we believe it will. We believe that the definition of accessibility as applied to private carriers, Mr. Packard, is a wheelchair lift on each bus, and what you hear us all saying is, that accessibility we are for. You hear us testifying not only on our current process of managing transportation for Americans with disabilities, be they in wheelchairs or the blind or the deaf, but you hear us saying that we have every intent to continue that. But we wish accessibility to be defined for us in the same fashion that it is for the airlines with their $611 million of profit and for private school bus companies. We wish a commonality of that definition. Mr. PACKARD. Is the regulation in existing law and the proposed regulation in this proposed bill the same for public as it is for private carriers?

Mr. CURREY. That is the heart of the difficulty, in that there are two sections to this bill. One section applies the private-sector standards of accessibility to us common with the sorts of definitions used for school bus companies and bus companies that transport people from airports to hotels, for instance, airline companies, twostory office buildings, et cetera, et cetera. But then there is another section of the bill that treats us exactly like public transit companies, that is to say it mandates the definition of accessibility to be a wheelchair lift on each vehicle, and it is that second definition to which we are opposed. We are obviously concerned.

I, myself, served, as you did, as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Dallas Transit System at the period of time when there was implementation of wheelchair lifts on our DTS system, and what we are dealing with there were 80 percent Federal tax dollars so that the burden was spread not upon the poor who ride inner city buses but across the entire tax base, 80 percent Federal dollars, 15 percent State, in our case, and five percent local. That is the way we did our access at DTS, probably the same way you did yours.

Mr. PACKARD. I don't think there is any question about our commitment to try to solve the problem for our handicapped people. The question is how we do it.

Mr. CURREY. Of course.

Mr. PACKARD. I think that is the discussion of this hearing. I would like to ask Mr. Henry or Mr. Busskohl, and perhaps Mr.

Dipert, because you represent associations, maybe your information would be helpful in this question. How much of your capital and rolling stock are government subsidized? Being private companies, how much are you receiving and other companies that your association represents?

Mr. HENRY. I represent seven companies, and we receive no assistance.

Mr. PACKARD. No government assistance.

Mr. HENRY. The only assistance we receive would be in the tax on fuel. But we receive no capital assistance and no other assist

ance.

Mr. PACKARD. Is that true of other companies?

Mr. BUSSKOHL. Individually our company is running a pilot project for rural transportation in the State of Nebraska, so at this point in time we are receiving about $200,000 per year for operation only.

Mr. PACKARD. That is in your company?

Mr. BUSSKOHL. Yes.

Mr. PACKARD. Is that true of other companies that your association represents?

Mr. BUSSKOнL. As far as I know, we are the only pilot project for rural transportation in the country.

Mr. PACKARD. And that $200,000 represents about what percentage of your total operational cost?

Mr. BUSSкOHL. You are talking about the total company?

Mr. PACKARD. Yes.

Mr. BUSSKOHL. I didn't calculate the percentage, but $200,000 out of a $7 million operation isn't much.

Mr. PACKARD. Okay. Now, the question was regarding capital and rolling stock, and apparently there has been no subsidization for your companies in that area. And Mr. Busskohl addressed operating costs. Is there no subsidization generally throughout the industry? That is true of Greyhound also?

Mr. CURREY. That is true of Greyhound.

Mr. PACKARD. Well, then my next question, of course, doesn't apply. My next question is, could you survive without a government support? But if you receive none, you have survived apparently.

Mr. CURREY. I wish to correct myself. We have a number of buses, less than 10, that received some capital subsidy, that is to say we leased these buses from the State of Michigan under a capital subsidy program of the State of Michigan DOT, and that just hit me as I was answering. I wish to correct myself. That is less than 10 out of 4,000 pieces.

Mr. PACKARD. On public equipment, as we know, it is taxpayers' money that is implementing the accessibility requirements, and a significant amount of money is used for that purpose, as some of us know, and it takes a lot of dollars to retrofit 120 buses in a community, public buses.

Your concern and your desire for the study is to determine if, in fact, private companies would be able to survive without some government assistance in retrofitting. What would be your response if there were a proposal that the government would assist private industry in meeting this requirement if, in fact, it became law?