Buses

The federal government has offered Los Angeles County $213 million to convert carpool lanes to special, congestion-pricing toll lanes on three freeways, according to county government documents. The freeways involved first would be short stretches of Interstates 10 and 210 in the San Gabriel Valley, and then, if any money remained, part of the 110 south of downtown Los Angeles. The federal funding, however, would come to L.A.

California Shuttle Bus, which runs express buses between the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas, began offering fares as low as $5 each way Monday. Previously, one-way tickets cost $45. The move came a day after competitor Megabus, which touted fares as low as $1, shut its Los Angeles hub because of low ridership. Only a few seats on each vehicle that California Shuttle Bus operates on the route will sell for $5; the highest price for a ticket will be $49.

Waiting for the bus at Normandie and Slauson avenues late one night, Betrona Casileo was getting nervous. Thirty minutes. Forty minutes. Still no bus. "At night, it's very dangerous," said Casileo, who is 52 and has been riding Metro buses for 15 years. "I was just hoping the bus would come." It did -- eventually. Casileo isn't the only frustrated passenger.

On a Southern California fall afternoon, with temperatures reaching into the 90s, dozens of travelers took refuge under the tall ceiling of the Santa Ana transit terminal. Maria Salazar, 29, rested on a concrete bench, waiting to go home. Earlier this month, her boss cut back her hours at the preschool where she works as an assistant, and she was forced to sell her car.

Sleep hasn't come easy to freelance music agent Joseph Egan since that Halloween bus ride on the lonely rural highways of western Canada. Three months after a sleeping passenger had been beheaded by his seatmate on the same prairies west of Winnipeg, Egan was confronted by a drunken woman behind him. He rose and started walking toward the driver. "I got three steps, and she goes, 'You go to the driver, I'm going to cut your . . . head off,' " he recalled. "I started wondering: copycat?

Five-year-old Khushi Kumari was heading home from school last week with her sister Radha when a speeding Blueline bus veered toward them at the side of the road. Witnesses said Radha was hit from behind and knocked into the air by the commuter bus. But Khushi was crushed under its giant tires. She died almost instantly. "That day it was the turn of my Khushi; tomorrow it could be anybody, it could be me, you or who knows who," said their mother, Suman Kumari, tears streaming down her cheeks.

Dreams of getting author Ken Kesey's original psychedelic bus back on the road again have hit a pothole. The Kesey family is looking for a new sponsor to finance restoration work and a TV documentary after breaking things off with Hollywood restaurant owner David Houston, who had hoped to raise $100,000 to restore the bus made famous in Tom Wolfe's 1968 book, "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test."

A 35-year-old bus driver died early Thursday after his vehicle crashed into a tree in Willowbrook, officials said. Steve Cook had just dropped off the last passenger on his overnight route between downtown Los Angeles and Willowbrook when the collision occurred about 12:45 a.m., said Helen Gilstrap, a Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokeswoman. The crash took place at Willowbrook Avenue and El Segundo Boulevard in the unincorporated neighborhood south of Watts.

The owner of a bus that exploded during the Hurricane Rita evacuation, killing 23 elderly evacuees, was sentenced in McAllen to five years of probation for mismanaging his fleet. As part of his probation, a judge ruled, Global Limo Inc. owner James Maples can no longer work for any bus company.

The two-block walk from the MTA bus stop to campus has often been a frightening ordeal for students at the Santee Education Complex just south of downtown Los Angeles. Some have complained of gang activity and being harassed or robbed -- including one student who was held up at gunpoint. The area was branded by Los Angeles Unified School District Supt. David L. Brewer as "one of the worst blocks" in the area.