Federal officials just executed a mighty coup against 26 bus operations that transported more than 1,800 passengers a day between New York and Florida, closing them down for safety violations. The government says this is the largest single safety crackdown of the motor coach industry in at least a decade.

The companies shuttled customers along Interstate 95 on a daily basis, says the Associated Press, and were shut down for posing imminent hazards to public safety by teams of officials from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

While the companies were based in six states: Georgia, Indiana, Maryland, New York, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, most of the 233 bus routes originated or terminated in NYC’s Chinatown neighborhood.

The crackdown was the end result of a yearlong investigation by the safety administration that focused mainly on three companies. Each of those then oversaw a broad network of other bus businesses.

Every year, the motor coach industry transports more than 700 million passengers in the U.S., almost equal to domestic airlines. Investigators found that those carriers that were shut down had multiple safety violations, including the bad habit of using drivers who didn’t have valid commercial driver’s licenses and operating buses that hadn’t been subjected to regular inspections and repairs.

Gov’t cracking down on unsafe bus companies [Associated Press]

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