The bus left Philadelphia at 10 p.m. Friday and was scheduled to stop in Syracuse and Buffalo before reaching Toronto at 7:15 a.m., said Dale Moser, chief operating officer of Coach USA, the parent company of Megabus.
But driver John Tomaszewski, of Burlington County, got lost in the suburbs of Syracuse. He missed the turn for the bus depot after exiting Interstate 81 North. Looking for a way back to the depot, Tomaszewski drove down Onondaga Lake Parkway checking his personal GPS unit for directions.
The GPS unit didn't tell him the CSX bridge crossing the Parkway had a clearance of only 10-feet nine-inches. The double-decker was 13-feet 9-inches tall. The crash sheared off the roof.
Wayward Megabuses are not uncommon on the Toronto-Philadelphia route, passengers said. On July 29, a southbound Megabus bound for Philadelphia went to Harrisburg instead.
On Aug. 2, a 10-hour trip stretched to 14 when the driver got lost twice. "At least he stopped in front of a low bridge," said passenger Dwayne Neal, a postal worker from Abington. "He called his dispatcher to see how low it was and then got the OK."
On Aug. 13, a northbound bus driver became disoriented north of Syracuse. The driver reoriented himself at a gas station, but not before falling about 90 minutes behind schedule, passengers said.
On northbound trip on Sept. 3, a driver got lost for 30 minutes at the Buffalo airport, said Joe Alberti, a teacher in West Philadelphia. "[It] was not even on the itinerary," Alberti said.
Moser, the Megabus executive, said he was unaware of those incidents. He said the company did not know how Tomaszewski got off route.
"It has nothing to do with the GPS system," he said.
