Archives for School Transportation News

The pupil transportation community is, far and away, the most isolated among America’s public transportation sectors – which include motorcoach, transit, paratransit, non-emergency medical, taxi, shuttle and limousine services. In general, this isolation has hurt the pupil transportation community, and is partly responsible for its lack of Federal funding (compared to the $9 billion the transit industry receives despite deploying a fraction as many vehicles). I myself have participated in at least half a dozen coordination-related projects involving pupil transportation services – most of which failed because of our community’s isolation and recalcitrance. However, there are some strongholds of separation

As this column has often discussed, the principal justification for school bus service is the fact that children below age 13, and particularly below age 10, do not possess the skills to cross streets or negotiate intersections as a matter of their physical, perceptual, mental and emotional development. These deficiencies have been thoroughly documented, particularly by a 1968 study conducted in Sweden, resulting in a report titled Children in Traffic. Interestingly, these benchmarks correspond to the structure of the modern American school system. Dividing students among elementary, middle and high schools, the first two of these divisions end largely with

Every responsible society has mechanisms to hold its citizens, and their organizations, accountable for their actions. With respect to safety, our society effects this goal through the enactment and enforcement of statutes and regulations, and through the process of civil litigation. As with most rules and most societies, many of our transportation organizations have discovered loopholes. Employing these loopholes, they have effectively reduced their liability exposure at the cost of compromising safety. Particularly in “one percent states” (see explanation below), selected school districts effect this trade-off by bastardizing school bus crossing procedures – requiring outbound students to cross to the

Except in rural areas with vast distances between intersections, a bus stop can reasonably be placed in one of three positions: Immediately before an intersection (referred to as a “near-side” stop) Immediately after the intersection (a “far-side” stop) Between intersections (a “mid-block” stop) Crossing Orientation There are several considerations for selecting the safest positioning for a schoolbus stop with respect to the nearest intersection. Because every selection involves some sightline blockages – among other differences – selecting the position for the stop necessarily involves some trade-offs. Among these trade-offs, one of the most important factors to consider is the “crossing

In this installment, we are going to discuss an important element of bus stop safety: The bus. Most members of the pupil transportation community know how vast our national school bus fleet is – close to half a million vehicles. Yet it is often hard to place such a fleet in perspective. One way is to recognize that while field trips represent only four percent of all school-related trips, these same trips comprise a whopping 30 percent of all motorcoach trips. Further, the home-to-school trips that schoolchildren take on fixed route bus and rail represent 15 percent of all transit

In a past lesson (“Who Picks the Stops,” February, 2007), we learned that the selection of a bus stop effectively defines the path the student will take to reach it. This path will generally lead to the closest stop, although the closest stop is not necessarily the safest. As pupil transportation officials, we know that students do not always follow the practices designed to optimize their safety – particularly older students “feeling their oats” and who seem to know everything. I am often mystified by how many school district officials scrutinize the paths taken by students walking to and from

In the last installment of this series (July 2007, STN), we began discussing a crossing accident whose central issue was the contractor’s decision to permit five children to cross the street to board their school bus 10 minutes before it would turn around and return to the same location on the same side of the street on which they lived, and from which point they would not have to cross. One side of the main road at the "T" intersection contained small houses, space relatively far apart and set-back from the roadway for enough to provide excellent visibility of activities

In the last installment (STN, Jun, 2007), I stressed the importance of distinguishing between an actual bus stop and the waiting area across the street from it in terms of safety. But the selection of the stop and waiting area also involves concerns for student security. Sometimes, there are trade-offs that must be made. These trade-off are often complex and subtle. But they must be made correctly. Safety versus Security Several years ago, as an expert witness, I helped defend a national school bus mega-contractor in a crossing case where a youngster prematurely stepped into the roadway and was struck

How many school districts instruct their students, as a formal policy, to, “Please arrive at the bus stop at least five minute before the bus arrives?” For those districts which do, no policy statement in the entire school transportation arena is responsible for as much carnage as this one. This is because most motorists, students and parents, and many drivers, management and school officials, think of the school bus stop as the strip of land where the bus stops to pick up or discharge its passengers. The problem with this interpretation is that it is correct. But what is so

The previous article in this series emphasized the importance of transportation professionals selecting bus stops instead of students or their parents doing so. Regardless, while plenty of tools are available to help, the critical tool for evaluating and approving safe bus stops is a live Earthling. With its wealth consolidated among a small handful of the Obscenely Rich, today’s America has starved its drivers into near poverty, and management has been thinned to a desperate dependence on digital paraphernalia. In terms of safety, this formula is lethal, and its success relies largely on a mix of mythology and luck. Worse,