The Pittsburgh Press from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania • Page 27

Pittsburgh Press, May 9, 1979 B-3 Transbus: Too Many Design Handicaps, Builders Say By WILLIAM RASPBERRY WASHINGTON Transportation Secretary Brock Adams is "deeply disappointed" that U.S. and foreign bus manufacturers have "acted against the needs The Pittsburgh Press AddOp Corner (Additional Opinion) accurate. "You're trying to make me say whether they are wrong or we are wrong," he said. Well, yes, I suppose I was. It had seemed to me a question of whether DOT wanted to provide transportion service for the aged and handicapped or merely to salvage something out of its costly Transbus program.

Brock Adams says he is "deeply disappointed." "Deeply embarrassed" might be a better way to put it. Transbus program, laid ont some $27 million in research-and-development money. It is a major embarrassment that they now wind up with nothing for that outlay. The manufacturers take the position that DOT, which has never built a bus, might usefully defer to the companies, which have. A spokesman for DOT rather testily declined to say whether the manufacturers' claims of design inconsistencies are of ail Americans, particularly the elderly and the handicapped." A free translation of that wonderfully provocative statement might read: We tried to design a new breed of workhorse and wound nn tirifh am-iaI Architect Prize To CMU Coed As a matter of fact, the two U.S.

firms Grumman Flxible (sic) and General Motors had indicated their inability to bid on Transbus long before the secretary's statement of last week. DOT had hoped that at least one foreign manufacturer might be interested. But when bid-opening time came, last Wednesday, there was nothing to open. Secretary Adams sees the absence of bids as an act of malevolence against the elderly and the handicapped. The reluctant manufacturers see the problem as unrealistic design requirements.

They say, for instance, that the requirement for an 85-inch-high door is incompatible with the overall height requirements for the bus, without bulges in the roof. They say they can't build a bus from which the driver could see the curb when the bus is six inches away (which the specifications dictate) while at the same time using a 14-inch first step, also required by the specs. They also claim difficulty with coming up with a design that would incorporate the required second rear axle, a wheel-chair lift and a minimum of 46 seats, all of them adjustable, while keep- DOT's Transbus. They also say they would cost less. The congressional Office of Technology Assessment estimates the DOT-de-signed vehicle would cost (250,000 per copy, as contrasted with production buses, complete with wheelchair lift, that go for about $120,000.

The Advanced Design buses already built by Grumman Flxible and GM would cost about $170,000. DOT officials are furious with the U.S. manufacturers who, they say, were "consulted" on all the specifications and, earlier, had said they could produce a low-floor, accessible bus. The officials hint that the manufacturers chose not to submit bids in the hope that DOT would have to resort to going along with the manufacturers' own designs. But where's the tragedy in that? If the idea is to come up with a bus that makes public transportation accessible to the aged and the handicapped, why not leave it to the manufacturers to produce the appropriate design, so long as it meets DOT'S access requirements? One reason may be that the department has, during the nine-year life of the ing overall weight to a maximum of 26,000 pounds.

Mr. Adams says they simply don't want to build his bus, and some handicapped groups have demanded a Justice Department inquiry into a possible collusion. They don indicate whether they think the equally reluctant foreign manufacturers are a part of that collusion. GM and Grumman Flxible, for their part, say they not only want to build buses to meet DOT'S objectives (if not its specifications), but that they already have designed them. But Flxible's bus, for instance, has only a 17-inch street-to-floor height, while DOT specs call for a 22-inch with a kneeling feature and ramp.

Both domestic manufacturers say their verions would be at least as accessible to handicapped riders as would The Stewart Brown scholarship award has been presented to Hattie Russell by the Pittsburgh chapter of the American Institute of Architects. She was one of three Carnegie-Mellon University students from the Department of Architecture honored yesterday at the local chapter's dinner. The Institute gave the AIA National Award, called the Henry Adams Fund for Excellence in the Study of Architecture, to Rico Anthony Cedro. This goes to the student with the highest marks in the department. Suzan Lami received a certificate of merit from the Adams Fund for second place.

Guest speaker at the dinner was Robert L. Geddes, whose firm, Geddes, Brecher, Quails, Cunningham Architects of Princeton, N.J., and Philadelphia, will be honored at the AIA national convention for "Excellence In Design." The convention will be held June 3 to 7 in Kansas City. MR. RASPBERRY that nobody wants to build. The two American firms DOT had hoped would bid on the manufacture of the federally mandated low-floor, easy-access Transbus insist they can't build it, that the DOT specifications are unrealistic in some cases, contradictory in 10.99 Sale.

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