School buses are probably the most visible part of the school district to the vast majority of the public. They are seen on our roads and highways by everyone while our schools are only seen by our parents or the public who happen to pass by them. It is our school buses that make the greatest impression on those tax payers who do not have children in our schools, so it is not unusual that the question of school bus efficiency often comes up. 

The State of Colorado does not require school districts to provide bus service. Federal law requires transportation of certain special needs students to assure their access to public education, but there is no requirement to provide transportation for the general student population. Bus service is provided by the school board as a safety measure for those children who live too far from their neighborhood school to safely walk or bike there on their own. This safe distance is set by school board policy and in BVSD that policy is EEAA . 

Nationally, taken together, yellow buses comprise the largest public transportation system in America. With about 500,000 buses transporting approximately 26 million K-12 students daily across our nation, the school bus industry has compiled a safety record second to none. School buses have proven to be the safest form of ground transportation in the country. Here in BVSD our fleet consists of 238 student transportation vehicles (yellow buses and small vehicles) and we provide approximately 15,000 student trips to and from school each day. In addition we provide bus service for almost 6,000 activity trips as well. In all, our buses travel about 2.4 million miles per year. 

But do we do all that as efficiently as we could? That’s a question we continually ask ourselves and why we re-evaluate all the bus routes every summer. BVSD Transportation constantly looks for ways in which to lower the number of miles we travel and to fill the buses with as many students as possible in the shortest time possible. We also need to keep the size of our fleet down as small as possible in order to reduce costs of purchasing and maintaining too many vehicles.

In order to most efficiently meet these multiple objectives, BVSD uses a three-tiered system of school scheduling. By starting schools at different times one bus can service up to three schools. If all the schools started at the same time it would take three buses to service what one bus can do now. Obviously, it is more efficient to use one bus instead of three but that approach to scheduling does result in some buses running at less than full capacity for some of the legs of their journeys. The more stops a bus makes the more time it takes to get to school, so some buses may not be completely full when they arrive at school, but that’s still more efficient than running two additional buses just to have full buses. Also, because BVSD must service any student who lives outside the walk distance and some areas are sparsely populated, a bus may not be loaded as full as a bus from a more populated neighborhood.   

We are sometimes asked why we don’t we use smaller buses for those areas where we don’t pick up so many kids. While it would seem more efficient to use a small bus where there are few kids and a larger bus where there are a lot of kids, when we look at the big picture it just doesn’t work. Because a bus services more than one school, that bus may have a full load at one school but not so full at another. In that case, it would take two buses if we assigned buses based strictly on capacity where we can do the job with one bus even if it isn’t always full. Having the driver switch to a different bus isn’t an option either because there simply isn’t enough time to take one bus back to the terminal and get another and you would lose efficiency in the travel to and from the terminal as well. When we look at one bus on one route, it may look like it could be done better, but it is the efficiency of the entire system, not just one bus, that has to be considered. That’s the only way to get the most for the tax payers’ money. 

Also, buses are very expensive. The most cost effective buses we can buy are those that can be used for many purposes. Versatility is the key to keeping the number of buses we need at a minimum. The way to hold down vehicle purchase costs and maintenance costs is to keep the number of vehicles needed low. So, while running a big bus for a few kids may seem inefficient, it is more efficient than keeping two vehicles on hand. The miles per gallon gained by using a smaller bus is not enough to make up for the cost of purchasing and maintaining that second bus.

School bus routing is a complicated interplay between time available, distance traveled, number of stops, location of stops, and traffic patterns, all with safety being the first priority. In most cases, the only way to improve the efficiency is to change one of those variables. Traffic patterns are the one thing we, as a school district, can’t change, but we can look at changing our schools’ start and dismissal times which would change the time available for each route. We can also change distance traveled by changing the number and location of bus stops. We are looking at consolidating bus stops to reduce the amount of time it takes to load and unload the bus as well as looking at moving stops from deep in neighborhoods to locations closer to through streets. In these tough economic times, we need to be even more diligent in assuring we give the best service for the least cost.

We, as a school district, are very cognizant of our responsibilities to the tax payers. By constantly evaluating and re-evaluating our service cost, of which transportation is only one, we are demonstrating our commitment to fiscal responsibility and the expectations of the public.