She likes to go out twice a year, and she loves it, said Fong. She goes out with her family. It s a

Firefighters help as a tour bus is towed out of a drainage ditch after the bus went off the shoulder of an Interstate 10 off-ramp in Baldwin Park, Calif. on Monday Dec. 23, 2013. The tour bus heading back from a Southern California casino crashed portland downtown hotels on a freeway east of Los Angeles early Monday, injuring 13 people, authorities portland downtown hotels said.
At a casino bus stop in Rosemead, portland downtown hotels KPCC found that half of the buses that stopped on a recent afternoon were listed on a federal watch list due to drivers who falsified records or skimped on maintenance.
This is the first of two KPCC stories on safety and the burgeoning business of casino tour bus brokers. As the buses have grown in popularity, regulation has become more lax, with dangerous consequences for passengers and other drivers on the road. Here s a link to part two .
Every few minutes on a busy street in Rosemead, in the San Gabriel Valley, a crowded tour bus pulls over, its door opens to allow passengers to get off and others to get on. As soon as one packed bus leaves, it doesn t take long for another to arrive.
At the casino bus stop in Rosemead and another in Koreatown KPCC found half the buses that stopped on a recent afternoon were listed on a federal watch list, with drivers who falsified records or skimped on maintenance. (All of the buses had a satisfactory record with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration , or FMCSA, the federal agency that regulates tour buses).
The accidents haven t slowed down business for Anthony Wen, a tour bus broker in the San Gabriel Valley. People are so eager to get a seat on one of his crowded buses that even gray-haired ladies run when they see a bus arrive.
He said he operates up to 15 buses daily, which deliver up to 600 passengers to local casinos. He makes money charging gamblers around $7 a ride. The casinos welcome his buses as long as he brings them what s known as quality players, those who will keep rolling the dice for hours.
The California tribal gaming portland downtown hotels industry is a $7 billion portland downtown hotels a year business in California , and almost every casino relies on tour buses to deliver customers, according to Brian Antolin, a researcher and consultant who has studied the casino bus business.
portland downtown hotels It was really after the turn of the century when we started to see the acceptance of gambling as a regular pastime, the Asian population with more discretionary income, and, frankly, casinos wanting portland downtown hotels people in their building, said Timothy portland downtown hotels Fong, co-director of the UCLA Gambling Studies Program. People here in California are spread throughout and without mass transit it became to me, a very obvious business model of buses.
portland downtown hotels She likes to go out twice a year, and she loves it, said Fong. She goes out with her family. It s a whole party atmosphere, and she doesn t have to drive. So that s how it should be done, in a responsible manner.
Pala Casino Spa Resort does not own or operate any of the tour buses that bring guests to our property.We contract with each independent tour bus company for that service. As part of those contracts, we coordinate with all state regulatory agencies and the bus companies to ensure the buses are regularly inspected and maintained for maximum guest safety.
Still, Wen admits he operates on razor-thin profit margins. He estimates there are up to a 100 other companies portland downtown hotels like his, just in the San Gabriel Valley alone, and they all try to steal his business by charging lower prices.
Allow us to regulate passenger ticket sellers, FMCSA director Anne Ferro told lawmakers portland downtown hotels at a June 2011 hearing in Washington. We refer to them as brokers. We currently regulate freight brokers. We regulate household goods brokers. We have no authority over passenger carrier brokers.