Off-duty DWI not always end of bus job

Metro Transit said the DWI arrest last month of a driver in his bus was a first in its history and quickly fired him for "gross misconduct."

Yet it's not nearly so rare that Metro Transit drivers are arrested for off-duty drunken driving. Nor does it automatically mean the end of their bus-driving careers.

Since July 2006, 14 off-duty drivers have been charged with DWI, said Bob Gibbons, Metro Transit customer services director. Of those, nine lost their jobs after the state suspended their driver's licenses. Three others were transferred to non-driving jobs within the agency. Two drivers were able to get their licenses reinstated within about 30 days and quickly took the wheel of a bus once again.

Metro Transit puts the burden on drivers to maintain valid commercial driver's licenses and pass regular drug and alcohol tests, rather than taking disciplinary action for any traffic violation. But the March 21 arrest of Alonzo V. Martin in his Route 5 bus has jolted the transit agency into reevaluating its hiring and alcohol-testing practices, including whether it should look back further than three years for traffic violations and DWIs before hiring a driver.

The agency is also planning to get "more involved, more engaged" when drivers commit traffic violations in their buses, Gibbons said.

"A bus operator arrested while in service has not happened in our history," he said. "It's clearly a major safety violation."

But Michelle Sommers, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1005, said federal laws already dictate extensive policies of alcohol and drug testing and tougher penalties for traffic violations by commercial drivers. A recent change in federal rules mandates a one-year suspension of a commercial driver's license for a DWI conviction, so she expects few bus drivers in the future will be able to keep their jobs if convicted of drunken driving.

Sommers said Metro Transit should be wary of going too far in its background checks, so that good drivers who perhaps got a DWI as a teenager are disqualified.

"You don't make a policy because you have one guy who does something absolutely insane," Sommers said.

A Star Tribune review of agency records shows that as many as nine drivers convicted of DWI within the past decade are still on the job. It's a small group for an agency with 1,460 drivers. Drivers can face disciplinary action and additional training if a passenger or Metro Transit employee witnesses unsafe behavior, Gibbons said. But as long as the traffic violations, on or off the job, don't cause a driver to lose his or her license, Metro Transit hasn't gotten involved.

"The goal here isn't to fire somebody," he said. "The goal here is to have the safest driver possible."

On Friday, Gibbons said the agency will likely change its policy and take action when drivers break traffic laws in their buses.

To make sure it knows about any change in driving status, the agency sends its driver list every day to the Department of Public Safety to see whether a driver's license has been suspended. The agency also does regular drug and alcohol tests of drivers, in accordance with federal law.

The violation of an alcohol policy, not the DWI per se, was one reason for the firing of Martin, who had been hired in January 2008.

On March 21, passengers on a Route 5 bus got so alarmed by the driver's running into curbs and swerving that they called the police. Martin, 46, of St. Paul, was arrested by Brooklyn Center police at the Transit Station across from Brookdale Mall. Martin dropped a beer can he tried to tuck into the back of his pants, the charges said. His blood-alcohol content allegedly was 0.24 -- six times the legal limit for commercial drivers.

Records showed Martin has a history of traffic tickets, two of which fell within the one-year period before his hiring. Metro Transit policy disqualifies applicants with two or more moving violations in the previous year. The agency is investigating how Martin got hired.

Metro Transit looks back three years for any DWI conviction. By comparison, the transit systems in Milwaukee and Seattle requires a five-year record free of DWIs, while Denver looks back 24 months.

But one Twin Cities transit system, SouthWest Transit, has a much stricter standard. The bus line serving Chanhassen, Chaska and Eden Prairie gets its 70-some drivers from a private contractor called First Transit, said Len Simich, CEO of SouthWest Transit. The agency's contract with First Transit specifies a significantly more stringent standard than Metro Transit -- a DWI conviction in the prior 15 years disqualifies an applicant.

In his dozen years at SouthWest Transit, Simich said, no driver has ever gotten an off-duty DWI, although two were stopped from taking the wheel of a bus on suspicion of drug or alcohol use. When they refused the tests, they were fired on the spot, he said.

"With 70 drivers versus having a thousand drivers, it's easier to control what we do," Simich said. Yet the arrest of the Metro Transit driver "is one of those things we all feel in the transit community," because all transit managers fear such a thing happening to them.

Metro Transit is looking at whether it should toughen its standards for drug and alcohol testing. It follows the federal guidelines, which specify at least 10 percent of the workforce has to be tested every year for alcohol, and at least 25 percent of the workforce must be tested every year for drugs.

Gibbons said the task force examining the hiring and employment policies will offer recommendations to the agency's manager within several weeks.

The message is already well understood without any additional tightening of policies, in the view of Sommers, the union local president. At one time, drivers could more easily get their licenses reinstated within a month or so. With the changes in federal rules, an off-duty DWI means "you're pretty well done" as a Metro Transit driver, she said.

"We're trying to get the word out, don't do it, it will cost you your job," she said. "The union does not support drinking and driving."

Star Tribune data projects editor John Stefany and news librarian John Wareham contributed to this report.