Engine problem caused bus fire, T official reports
Calls incident on Pike isolated
The fire that destroyed an MBTA bus and snarled rush-hour traffic Thursday afternoon on the Massachusetts Turnpike was sparked by an electrical problem in the engine, officials said yesterday.
MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo said that while inspectors will thoroughly go over the charred wreckage, there's no plan to check the agency's other 391 similar buses for engine troubles because the problem appears to be specific to the burnt bus, a 1995 Rapid Transit Service model manufactured by Nova Bus of Quebec.
''There is nothing to indicate it was anything more than an isolated incident," Pesaturo said. ''These buses have a proven track record. They have been in service 10 or 11 years, depending on the model."
In July, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority yanked more than 150 of its newest buses off the streets for emergency inspections after two crashes involving steering problems occurred with the same model vehicle on the same day.
Inspections revealed the wrecked buses and more than 20 others had scrapes on or cracks in their radius rods, which connect the axles to the body of the bus and are crucial in steering. The rods were replaced on 12 of those buses, made by Neoplan USA Corp. of Denver, and metal plates were installed on the undercarriage of others to protect the key parts from being scraped or split by rough roads.
Pesaturo said there's no reason to react to Thursday's fire with another emergency recall.
''That was a completely different set of circumstances. In the span of one day, we had two accidents in which both operators reported steering difficulties," he said. There's never been such a severe fire on one of the Nova buses before, he added.
The bus that burned about 4:55 p.m. Thursday while ferrying two riders from Riverside Station in Newton to downtown Boston was among a group of 170 Nova buses scheduled to be retired in the next year or two as the T receives new buses it has on order from Neoplan. The Nova buses, made in 1994 or 1995, are the oldest in the T's fleet of about 1,000.
The transportation authority has been aggressively replacing its older buses in recent years. The average age of the bus fleet is now down to four years.
Nobody was injured in Thursday's fire, but thousands of turnpike commuters were delayed as the eastbound lanes were closed for more than an hour to extinguish the blaze and remove the charred bus. Pesaturo said it's fortunate the Route 500 bus was on an inbound run when the fire occurred.
''It would have been a much heavier volume going the other way at that time of day," he said.
Lucas Wall can be reached at lwall@globe.com. 