Archives for School Transportation News

Several articles ago (“The Steel Wave” in the May, 2008 of STN), I argued for the first of four crossing-related equipment changes that I feel strongly are needed to complete school bus conspicuity. These changes involve efforts to eliminate the ambiguity and temptations many motorists feel when confronting a loading or unloading school bus with its crossing devices engaged, and will clarify crossing procedures for school bus drivers, students and their parents. This second improvement is a twelve-way flasher system. Evolution of the Eight-Way Flasher System Nearly two decades ago, the pupil transportation community acknowledged that red flashers alone provided

The November, 2006 issue of STN will launch a series of articles about the most essential and unique feature of our community and our service: The operation of crossing buses. These articles will certainly acknowledge that a vehicle carrying its own traffic signal is something very unusual and very special. But coming installments will also explore approaches, practices and procedures for designing and operating crossing bus systems at a level-of-detail rarely presented. We will explore these systems not only in terms of safety, but also in terms of liability. We will also explore these systems in terms of their efficiency,

As our economy has continued to shrink, my admiration for most pupil transportation Directors has grown immensely. In 1992, when I could no longer obtain the contract terms that allowed me to run a large paratransit operation at a level of efficiency and virtuosity frankly unthinkable of today, I walked away from a lucrative five-year contract renewal to do other things. But nearly 20 years later, few Transportation Directors in any mode, in either the public or private sector, have the choices to simply walk away that I did. Since then, working largely as a safety and efficiency expert, I

As it affects liability, an operating agency’s status as a “common carrier” has an enormous impact not only on determining liability itself, but depending on legal constructs in various states, can also affect considerations like immunity and/or the assessment of punitive damages – often barriers to the assessment of damages afforded to public agencies. So except for motorcoaches deployed in commuter/express service under contract to public transit agencies, these latter considerations rarely affect motorcoach operations in the courtroom. Why the status of common carrier is important is that it requires the “highest duty and standard of care.” Without this status,

Each school year starts with new or newly-tweaked routes, new students and new drivers. So too does every run assigned to a substitute. Or every after-school run attended by different students on different days. When drivers have too little information, bad things can happen: With no information about the number of students boarding (much less which ones needed to cross), a substitute driver picked up several students, waited for one whom fellow students advised her was on the route, and eventually pulled away – with the door still open and the red lights flashing. A kindergartner and his parent, arriving

For those of you who, unlike myself, spend 100% of your professional life in the school bus community, you may be unaware of the emergence of crossover mirrors and compartmentalized seating in the transit and motorcoach industries, respectively. But emerge they have. Frankly, more primitive versions of both technologies have been around for awhile. But the newest versions of both technologies are far superior, and their increased usage is likely to spread far more rapidly, particularly in our litigious society. Superior Innovation, Spreading Ideas Our community has known for decades of those features of our vehicles that are genuinely superior

Unlike those of many transit systems, school bus stops are not always identified with signage – at either the precise position of the stop or signage indicating that a school bus stop is approaching (the black glyph on yellow background). Rarely is the stop zone itself marked (for example, by red-lining the curb). In particular, the failure to mark the stop’s precise positioning can be problematic – and occasionally dangerous. Creating a bus stop zone of appropriate length, keeping it clear of unauthorized vehicles, and ensuring that school bus drivers pull their vehicles close to and parallel with the curb

If nothing else is clear from the exhaustive evidence presented in the six previous installments, it is that the state-to-state variation in crossing procedures represents a mind–boggling labyrinth of confusion to motorists. That this confusion leads to crossing mayhem should be understandable. Frankly, to expect motorists to absorb, much less respond to, the nuances of each state’s crossing policies and procedures is neither fair nor reasonable. In stating this, I am not remotely condoning or excusing pass bys. Yet the author of the study from which I obtained much of this information is far more sympathetic toward such motorists than