6 ms·

> plenty of downtime I don’t understand why the US still has dedicated school buses that isn’t used for anything else during the day.

• danans 2y ago
  School buses are used in areas with no good public transit options (most of suburban and rural US). In cities with transit, kids take buses and trains to school.
• foxglacier 2y ago
  Is there anything else busses can be used for during the day, which is off-peak?
  • actionfromafar 2y ago
    I suppose you mean they are great for V2X... :)
  • matthewmacleod 2y ago
    I would imagine something like the London's Dial-a-Ride service would be ideal – public provision of bookable door-to-door trips by minibus for people with long-term disabilities that make it impractical to use public transport.
    • bombcar 2y ago
      Those exist as separate services. US school buses are huge, and the limiting factor is drivers, not capital costs. The drivers end up only having a relatively short break (compared to the length of the school day) because of repositioning, etc. they also sometimes do field trips.
  • fifticon 2y ago
    Driving the rest of the non-schoolchildren population around? The driver, which instead gets an - at least in europe - somewhat awkward job, having to work two tiny shifts with a useless break in the middle. Source: Worked twenty years in public transport resource planning uptimization algorithms, and came to know how dearly the actual bus drivers hated those "work two times a day with a useless unpaid break in the middle". (Our algorithms would often generate them to e.g. arrive at fewer <something to optimise for>, but our clients would tell us "you can't make that many 2-part shifts, our bus drivers would kill us".
    • fomine3 2y ago
      I think public transportation is most used during commuting hours.
    • mapt 2y ago
      For the most part, if the system is working, you'd have to pay them a living daily wage regardless of what you're paying them hourly for 4 hours or 8 hours. (Which is such an obvious concern in the US that it's the first thing I thought of) But that doesn't address the inconvenience to their lives. Let's say schools are 7-14, 8-15, and 9-16 for high-middle-elementary. Routes start at 6, and end at 17, which is an 11 hour day with two shifts of 3 hours plus a 5 hour break in the middle.
• actionfromafar 2y ago
  It's at least less wear on the buses. The school buses seems to be one of the last things mostly working in America. (Don't tell doge and rfk.)
  • mapt 2y ago
    Maintaining an entirely separate mass transit system for the educational system is a relatively large chunk of property taxes, costing an average of ~$500/student.
    • sanj 2y ago
      $2.50 per school day? Sounds like a deal. I've looked over my town's numbers: the big payments are teacher salaries. I'm happy to pay them and have great teachers. YMMV.
      • mapt 2y ago
        The major alternative would be using a public mass transit system which just happens to hit the school as part of its routes. Which is culturally and ideologically unacceptable for most of the US.
        • sgerenser 2y ago
          In most suburban and rural parts of the US, there is no existing mass transit system.
        • supertrope 2y ago
          There's some logistical problems to absorbing school busing into public transit. https://humantransit.org/2017/08/the-problem-of-school-transportation.html https://humantransit.org/2017/08/the-problem-of-school-trans...
    • jyounker 2y ago
      What separate mass transit system are you talking about? In most places with school buses there is no mass transit of any sort.
• xattt 2y ago
  Where I am in Canada, school buses are driven by people in the community. During the day, buses stay with them and are on standby in case there is a need for an evacuation.
• infecto 2y ago
  Feels like it would be a hard optimization problem. Not sure what else they would be doing either?
• pjc50 2y ago
  Because people wouldn't dare let their kids go on public transport.
  • actionfromafar 2y ago
    I thought the suggestion was to use them for something else during otherwise downtime.
  • sanj 2y ago
    My town ditched almost all of the school buses and the kids ride public transit. I haven't lost one yet! As a bonus, they learn that they can take these buses everywhere else and gain access to the entire city.
  • graemep 2y ago
    So how do you solve that problem? If kids use public transport there is more demand for it which means there is a justification for increasing provision which will make more people use it. Kids on public transport is common in most of the world.
• sgerenser 2y ago
  In my school district, and I suspect many across the country, the same school buses are used for high school (pick up around 7am), middle school (7:45) and elementary (8:30). The drop off times are similarly staggered. Many buses also do two runs for a single school for dense communities, or do “late bus” runs for dropping off kids after sports or clubs. Point being, the buses get plenty of use even with 3-4 hours of downtime in the middle of the day.
  • Symbiote 2y ago
    6-ish hours of use isn't that much, compared to 15 or more for a normal city bus.
• jedimastert 2y ago
  This is probably non-obvious if you've never interacted with the system, but school buses are not public transit buses and would be ill-suited - They're much less accessible, as typically there's a separate route with a specifically accessible bus. - they need to be immediately available and in the right spot the instant school lets out, which means the downtime is typically a little bit shorter than you would even expect so they can all be in place. - they likely have MUCH lower milage-per-day specs, including things like general wear and tear and number of hours of continuous use. In reality, You would likely have to rebuild from the ground up and go the other way around, starting with a mass transit system and then dedicating certain buses and routes to pick up and drop off
  • stefan_ 2y ago
    This is just another weird US thing. It's fine, school buses don't need to look like those transporting WW2 conscripts forever, they can be upgraded!
    • shermantanktop 2y ago
      Every country has a set of “weird things” that seem inscrutable to outsiders. Presumably your country does as well. And good thing, life would be less interesting otherwise. But the US’s oddities seem to come in for lots of this type of “let me enlighten you” commentary.
      • Symbiote 2y ago
        The USA pushes its culture in movies etc. American school buses are sometimes featured. The only other school transport I've seen in a film is the Hogwarts Express.
    • jedimastert 2y ago
      > they can be upgraded To think about this from a school system perspective: why? They're expensive as it is, and they are already safe and functional. The reason most counties don't have a transit system isn't because of cost, but the cost to benefit ratio. There just isn't enough of an audience for one in the first place. Population density in the majority of the country just doesn't work like that.
• MisterTea 2y ago
  > isn’t used for anything else during the day. That is not true at all. Most school bus companies also provide charter services allowing anyone to book a bus for transportation, e.g. https://www.loganbus.com/book-a-bus https://www.loganbus.com/book-a-bus
• mapt 2y ago
  Because many adults are terrified enough of the poors/minorities that they won't ride a convenient bus themselves. They are not (generally) going to put their children into an unsupervised mass transit system. Until the 80's it was common to see young children in public in rural, suburban, and urban environments (in three quite distinct modalities), but a cultural shift precipitated by our media environment has made even the "safe" suburban exploration into a rarity. Occasionally, even parents of 10-year-olds are literally being arrested for leaving them at home unattended, much less riding their bike around the neighborhood (as was common in the 90's suburbs). Even running normal mass transit systems in "Children/chaperone only mode" would be a litigation risk because of the seating format.
• eitally 2y ago
  It would dramatically raise the cost of school buses. School buses, as they are, are not acceptably accessible for the general public. They have only 1 door on the side and the passenger seating requiring climbing a couple of steep steps. They also don't have a bike rack on the front, and they usually don't have route displays on the front/side, either. Also, school buses within a district are shared between elementary, middle and high schools, which is the reasons these schools have staggered starts. When California passed a law a couple of years ago that required high schools to start no earlier than 8:30am, that in turn forced elementary and many middle schools to start earlier. Buses are used for field trips, for athletic teams (and any other school group needing to travel for an event/competition in normal cases. Some schools get charters if distance >x, but most public schools don't.), and more. There's not really a huge amount of downtime for a lot of the fleet, except in the evenings. Finally, the reliance on bussing has been decreasing in many parts of the country over the past couple of decades. When I grew up (elementary & middle school in the 80s), everyone rode the bus unless they were close enough to walk or bike. Now, in many communities, the default is a parent/friend carpool. In denser cities, buses are barely required. The neighborhood elementary where my youngest attends in San Jose only has 2 short buses serving a school of >500 pupils because almost everyone lives within about a 1.5mi radius.
  • graemep 2y ago
    My daughter's school (in the UK, its a 6th Form College, and they are coaches rather than public transport type buses) pays third party to run transport to school. I assume they are free to use those vehicles elsewhere during the day and on non-school days. That said, only those coming from further away use these - my daughter and others reasonably near use public buses.
  • Symbiote 2y ago
    In most other countries, the accessibility and features is the other way around: the normal city bus can serve as a school bus if required. That also means the children don't need to clamber up steps etc. Though it's a long time since I lived somewhere with school bus services. Mostly the children use normal buses, and have a discounted or free ticket to do so.
  • 2y ago
• supertrope 2y ago
  School buses are operated by schools solely for students. There is no requirement nor motivation to allow anyone else to ride. Doing so would mean making students would wait longer as resources are deployed to the wider public. Or at the same service level another part of their budget would have to be cut to fund busing for the general public. There's already a shortage of bus drivers caused by school districts offering notoriously low pay, split shifts, and no benefits. City public transportation is operated by transit agencies who conversely do not have a mandate nor motivation to handle the morning rush to schools or the afternoon demand spike of schools letting out. US transit agencies have even tighter budgets compared with schools. Hence why riding a city bus could take you an hour to make a trip that takes 15 min by private car. That awful service level would never be accepted for student transportation.
• taeric 2y ago
  I'm amused that all of the responses focus on the differences; but none seem to cover why they have to be that way. In general, I don't think there is a hard reason for it? My argument would include many of the cities that have public transit will happily utilize the transit busses and trains for some of the same reasons. I think some of the more rural routes for schools will be a bit more than some transit authorities would want to cover? Though, that is probably a bit self fulfilling?
• atonse 2y ago
  My dad used to be a school bus driver (among many other things, typical immigrant story). One of the benefits of the down time is that since the hours are weird (2-3 hours in the morning, and then 2-3 hours again, 7-8 hours later in the day), means that if you didn't have downtime, you'd have to have two shifts of drivers, further increasing costs. Having this downtime also allows for the drivers to get breaks (my dad would just come home and nap since otherwise he'd be up at 5:30am to get ready for the high schools) and return, and do a full day in one shift. Just food for thought since this angle wasn't mentioned. But I absolutely LOVE the idea of buying electric buses and using them as battery storage.