Many school bus routes still cancelled in Quebec because of Lion inspections

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MONTREAL — Many Lion electric school buses remained off the road in Quebec on Monday after the company said over the weekend the vehicles needed more inspections and repairs.

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The 1,200 Lion buses operating in Quebec were pulled from service Thursday night as a precautionary measure after a bus caught fire in Montreal earlier in the week. Several children and a driver were inside the bus when it went up in flames, but no one was injured. It was the third fire involving a Lion school bus in the last year.

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Lion announced Friday that inspections would be carried out over the weekend to ensure the buses could gradually return to service by the start of the school week. But on Monday, the company said it had sent out “additional inspection measures” to bus operators “in light of the technical analysis that Lion conducted with Transport Canada.”

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“As the inspections are carried out and the vehicles’ compliance is confirmed, the buses will gradually and safely return to the road,” Lion said in a statement.

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First Student, the parent company of Transco, which owns the bus that caught fire last week, said Monday that Lion’s latest inspection bulletin “outlines a multi-step process focused on electrical safety and system integrity.”

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Maintenance teams are looking for wiring damage in the control panels of the heating, ventilation and air conditioning system, replacing fuses and upgrading connectors based on Lion’s guidance, First Student said in a statement.

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“To accelerate the inspection and repair process, we’ve mobilized additional technicians and engineers from across the company,” it said. “However, our progress remains dependent on the availability of replacement parts.”

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Andrew Jones, a Montreal-area school bus operator, said Lion sent out its latest inspection bulletin just before midnight on Sunday night. He said his mechanics did notice some “areas of concern” related to the wiring in some of his eight Lion buses during inspections on Friday, and made repairs.

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Jones said it was “a bit odd” to find that kind of damage on buses that are less than three years old, though he added that all vehicles have “their own quirks.”

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Several Montreal-area school boards and service centres announced Sunday evening that their Lion buses would not be back on the road Monday morning. However, some school service centres outside Montreal said their Lion buses had completed inspections and would be resuming their routes.

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Transport Canada says it’s aware of three Lion buses that have caught fire in the last year, including the bus in last week’s blaze in Montreal. Last November, a bus caught fire in Ascot Corner, in Quebec’s Eastern Townships region. A second bus caught fire in Huntsville, Ont., in January. Nobody was injured in any of the three cases, and the batteries were not involved.