MARTA bus driver says she retired early because management wasn’t taking bad tires seriously

ATLANTA — Former MARTA bus driver Yolanda King-Adams says she entered into early retirement last year because concerns for her and other drivers’ safety were allegedly ignored by MARTA management.

“The ambivalence of management when it came to our safety issues,” King-Adams told Channel 2 Investigative Reporter Ashli Lincoln.

King-Adams, now an executive board member with the Amalgamated Transit Union #732, says they’re blowing the whistle on a big problem.

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She shared images of bald tires taken by employees.

“At my particular garage, we had only one good tire at the time, during my investigation for a fleet of over 100 buses,” she told Lincoln.

She says since 2022, the local union filed grievances and held several joint meetings with MARTA officials about the tires.

Channel 2 Action News showed you a video in February after a MARTA bus caught on fire from a blown-out tire. A few weeks ago, another bus caught fire from a faulty tire.

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A MARTA spokesperson sent Channel 2 Action News the following statement:

MARTA bus operators perform visual tire inspections twice daily, before heading out on their routes and when they return to the bus facility. MARTA’s tire vendor is required to inspect each tire in the fleet every 30 days and provide those inspection logs to MARTA Bus Operations. For reference, MARTA tire standards are based on Department of Transportation standards, and sidewalls are checked per the manufacturer’s indicator molded into the tire.

MARTA recently initiated a rigorous inspection of all tires in the bus fleet (over 3,200) and found approximately 7 percent had some level of defect, including minor wear or low pressure. Where possible, issues were remediated, and others logged by maintenance management for tracking and repair. MARTA continues to work closely with the tire vendor to ensure timely and safe repair of any tire issue.

Any bus with a tire deemed unsafe is immediately taken out of service.

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