Student transport is the transporting of children and teenagers to and from schools and school events. School transport can be undertaken by school students themselves (on foot, bicycle or perhaps horseback; or for older students, by car), they may be accompanied by family members or caregivers, or the transport may be organised collectively, using school buses or taxis.
Using the general-purpose public transport is the most common means of student transport, in some countries. Some countries such as Australia [1] have special routes and timetables exclusively used by students, but still run by public transportation services. Sometimes the parents or the students get reimbursed when they buy public transport tickets.
Student transport can use specially designed school buses. Many districts in Canada and the United States use specially built and equipped school buses, painted school bus yellow and equipped with various forms of warning and safety devices specific to them. In other parts of the world, buses used for transporting students tend to be more general-purpose type buses than their North American counterparts.
Parental transport of students in the family automobile, sometimes termed the "school run", is increasing due to perceived hazards to unaccompanied children. Older students in some countries are able to drive themselves to school. However, most countries minimum age for driving is 17 or 18, only Kosovo has a minimum driving age below 14.
The Walk to School campaign and 'walking buses' promote the benefits of walking to school. In the latter, student groups are escorted supervised by adults to travel to or from school on foot.
Cycling to school is popular among students and bike sheds a common feature of schools. Bike buses are supervised bicycle rides for students to travel to or from school in large groups by bicycle or other pedal or human powered vehicles such as scooters.
A 1994 report based on Australian road safety statistics [2] found that traveling to school by bus is:
Officials of the National Transportation Safety Board (in the U.S.) say school buses are safer than cars, even if they are not fitted with seat belts. [3]
In Argentina, although most students either walk, are driven by parents, or take regular public transit to school, many of them use private buses carrying an identification and authorization [4] of government in each city. They are usually white and orange and are mostly vans, [5] a change from the times when bigger transit-style buses were used. Parents pay the van owner a monthly fee to carry their children back and forth from school. These vans are not affiliated to the school and usually transport children from different schools in the same route. [ clarification needed ]
In Australia, students who live in outer suburban or rural areas often travel on public buses and trains or on special routes provided by private bus companies. The school services cross-subsidise the regular bus routes. In inner city areas, school students travel on government-owned route service buses. Students travel on either a public route bus, or a "school special" service. Some private schools have their own buses which are often provided by a school where a private company is unwilling or unable to provide the service.
In New South Wales, school bus transport is listed as one of the safest forms of land transport, other than train (current figures are represented without seatbelts installed). [6] Students in years K-2 get free travel regardless of where they live, students in years 3-6 get free travel if they live further than 1.6 kilometres (0.99 mi) radial distance or 2.3 kilometres (1.4 mi) by the most direct practical walking distance from the school, and high school students get free travel only if they live more than 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) radial distance or 2.9 kilometres (1.8 mi) by the most direct practical walking distance from school. [7]
The concept of the walking bus was first invented in Australia 1992 by David Engwicht. [8]
In Canada, student transport is generally handled in much the same way as it is in the United States: the yellow school bus. Canadian school districts usually engage school bus contractors for student transport services, almost always provided without charge to families. Outside of the metrification of the dashboard instruments and the French-language signage on school buses in the province of Quebec, Canadian and U.S. school buses are largely identical (and are produced by the same manufacturers).
Due to its many remote and historically isolated communities, Canada had some of the only examples of a railway school car, which brought travelling teachers to these communities on a temporary basis, as it was often easier than transporting students to schools or building local schools in these areas. This system, which was operated by both the Canadian National Railway and the Canadian Pacific Railway, ran for decades until it ended in the 1960s. [9] This system is commemorated at the School on Wheels Museum in Clinton, Ontario.
In Southern Ontario, some students in the early 20th century commuted to and from school using the interurban electric railways and street railway systems that existed at the time, which were largely shut down around the time of the Great Depression and Second World War. [10] During the 1950s, some high school students in rural Northern Ontario commuted to school on Greyhound motor coaches. [11]
In 2007, it was reported students at a school in Los Pinos, a town near Bogota, travel to school by zip line across the Rio Negro. [12] [13]
In Finland, students who live more than 5 kilometers away from the nearest school, or have other significant impediments to going to the school, are eligible to either bus or taxi rides. [14] The buses and taxis that are used are normal vehicles, typically operated by local companies. Buses that are reserved solely for school busing have "Koulukyyti/Skolskjuts" markings on front and back. Taxis engaged in student transport have a triangular sign on the roof. Buses engaged in student transport are limited to driving at 80 km/h maximum speed.
There are no special school buses in Germany with a few exceptions. Public transport timetables are often adapted to the needs of secondary schools. Some German states offer a reimbursement for public transport tickets.
In Hong Kong, younger students are transported between their homes and schools by "nanny vans". These vehicles are typically van-based and are smaller than a typical Hong Kong public light bus. When nanny vans originated, they were regulated primarily by the schools and the van drivers. Today, in the interest of safety, nanny vans are government-regulated vehicles that run on fixed routes. Another Way Students Are transported are by School Buses which can fit 15 students a bus mother and a driver. The Bus Mother takes care of the children while they are on the bus and help the bus driver while he is driving. Some school buses fit up to 27 Students but are mostly 16 students per bus.
In the Netherlands, there is not an organized form of student transport on a large scale.
Children who attend kindergarten are usually brought by their parents.
Almost all students at elementary school go to school by foot, as they live close by the school. Students who live further away, go by bike.
When the students go to high school, they usually go by bike. When the student has a handicap (or goes to a special education school) and is therefore not able to go to school by a regular bike, he or she gets a budget from the municipality to pay for a taxi to go to school with (with a normal taxi, there are not different taxis for student who go to school) or for an annual season ticket so the students can use public transport.
When the students go to college, they get an annual season ticket from the government, so they can use the public transport 'for free' ('For free', because when the government introduced this scheme in the 1990s, students yearly budgets were cut as a result, without a choice for students to opt in or out).
In New Zealand, student transport is sometimes provided by the New Zealand Ministry of Education through school bus contractors or general bus companies. Bus companies generally have a fleet of older transit buses or coaches, different from the newer public service fleet vehicles, to cater for school services. While carrying students, buses are marked by either "SCHOOL", "SCHOOL BUS", "KURA" (Maori for "school"), or pictograms of children in black on a fluorescent chartreuse background, and are limited on the open road to 80 km/h (50 mph). These signs all indicate that a motorist must slow to 20 km/h (12 mph) when passing a stationary bus in either direction. [15] [16]
A student is entitled to free school bus transport if they attend the closest state or state integrated school appropriate for the student's year level and gender, and in the case of a state integrated school, the special character the student or parents identifies with. However, students are not entitled to transport if they live within 3.2 km (2.0 mi) of the school for primary school students (ages 5–12) or within 4.8 km (3.0 mi) of the school for secondary school students (ages 13–18). Students are also not eligible if there are suitable public transport services between the school and the student's residence, ruling out free transport in most cities. [17] School buses generally operate where there are 4 or more pupils entitled to transport support. [18]
Free school busing is a fast-diminishing phenomenon in New Zealand. It has historically favored rural students. As population migration trends internal to New Zealand have favored the growth of cities, it is an increasingly smaller minority of students who are served by school buses. Parents, acting as chauffeurs, are filling this gap, with multiple negative consequences (e.g. productivity losses for the New Zealand workforce, increased vehicular traffic interfering with commercial or industrial traffic well into the work-day, increased carbon footprint, diminished development of transport self-management skills in early teenagers, dangerous concentrations of hectic motoring near congested school entrances at school start-times, etc). The matter occasionally surfaces in the New Zealand media, but making free school busing the norm is usually dismissed as another example of American-style thinking.
In Auckland, New Zealand, as at November 2007, one hundred schools were running 230 walking buses with over 4,000 children and 1,500 adults participating. [19]
Before school buses were introduced, from 1924 onwards, [20] rural children rode to school and left their horses in the school paddock, [21] known as a glebe in some areas. [22] The Education Department paid about 4d a day towards the upkeep of each horse. [23] The first buses allowed five rural schools to be merged into one, a pattern which continued as school buses spread (e.g. Raupo Consolidated High School in 1929 [24] ), so that, by 1940, the five had increased to 650, [25] but wartime rationing slowed the pace of consolidation. [26] Tendering for services began in 1987. Prior to that loans were available to buy buses. [27] As of 2022, Go Bus has 679 [28] of about 2,150 routes. [29]
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In the United Kingdom, most student transport is performed by ordinary transit buses. These buses can be used for other purposes when not in use for school journeys. Most children use local scheduled public transport bus services. In almost all cases, dedicated school transport bus services in the UK are contracted out to local bus companies.
In Greater London, many school children travel to school using the ordinary bus service, with travel being free using the Oyster card system.
In the United Kingdom, there are concerns about children's safety after they have alighted from conventional buses used for student transport. [30] [31] There are also more general worries about safety, such as lack of seatbelts, crowded buses, and in Northern Ireland especially, the use of "three for two" seating, where three children are expected to sit on a bench seat intended for two passengers. [32]
Other concerns include poorly maintained buses, drivers' backgrounds, children travelling on public buses and school children's behaviour. In one case in 2009, two boys aged 14 and 15 fell out of a bus window, after they leaned on the side of the Premiere Travel bus they were travelling on. [33]
As a result of this, over the past decade, starting in around 2000, [34] the talk of and introduction of dedicated, yellow student-specific school buses has been widespread. In 2005, it was reported that the introduction of such buses would "save pupils". As well as safety benefits, [35] it would also be better to the environment, though this is partly due to a resulting decrease in driving. [36]
North American-style 'yellow' school buses (built by European manufacturers) are being introduced by First Student UK and My bus.
The Walk to school campaign is a British campaign promoting the benefits of walking to school. It is run by the charities Living Streets and Travelwise. It receives funding from the Department for Transport and Transport for London.
Walking buses have remained popular. The first walking bus in the United Kingdom was introduced in 1998 by Hertfordshire County Council and used by students of Wheatfields Junior School in St Albans in 1998 [37]
In the United States, purpose-built school buses are the primary means of student transport, almost always provided without charge to families. In the US, the term, "busing" is also used to refer to desegregation busing , the transport of students to schools other than the closest local school for increased racial integration.
Each year, school buses provide an estimated 10 billion student trips in the United States. Every school day, 475,000 school buses transport 25 million children to and from schools and school-related activities. [38] School buses are purchased or leased by some school districts, while other school districts engage the service of school bus contractors to perform this function. Approximately 40% of school districts in the United States use contractors to handle the function of student transport.
However, the use of standard public transit buses is increasingly common in urban areas. For example, New York City provides yellow school bus service to select students based on grade level and their distance from the school, but relies on the public New York City Transit bus system to transport students in grades 7-12 and younger students where dedicated school bus service is unavailable. Free or half-price transit passes are provided by the school system for this purpose. [39] Some public transit services may provide "tripper service" with routes designed to serve local schools. Such routes are regularly scheduled transit routes that are open to the public and, by law, cannot be used exclusively for school transportation, but are drawn to connect local schools to nearby communities and transit centers. Most kids over the age of 16 drive to school. [40]
Transport in Thailand is varied, with no one dominant means of transport. For long-distance travel, bus transport dominates. Low-speed rail travel has long been a rural long-distance transport mechanism, though plans are underway to expand services with high-speed rail lines extending to several major regions of Thailand. Road transportation is the primary form of freight transport across the country.
Transportation in Israel is based mainly on private motor vehicles and bus service and an expanding railway network. A lack of inland waterways and the small size of the country make air and water transport of only minor importance in domestic transportation, but they are vitally important for Israel's international transport links. Demands of population growth, political factors, the Israel Defense Forces, tourism and increased traffic set the pace for all sectors, being a major driver in the mobility transition towards railways and public transit while moving away from motorized road transport. All facets of transportation in Israel are under the supervision of the Ministry of Transport and Road Safety.
The Maryland Transit Administration (MTA) is a state-operated mass transit administration in Maryland, and is part of the Maryland Department of Transportation. The MTA operates a comprehensive transit system throughout the Washington-Baltimore metropolitan area. There are 80 bus lines serving the Baltimore Metropolitan Area, along with rail services that include the Light Rail, Metro Subway, and MARC Train. In 2023, the system had a ridership of 52,922,000, or about 219,600 per weekday as of the second quarter of 2024.
A share taxi, shared taxi, taxibus, or jitney or dollar van in the US, or marshrutka in former Soviet countries, is a mode of transport which falls between a taxicab and a bus. Share taxis are a form of paratransit; they are vehicles for hire are typically smaller than buses and usually take passengers on a fixed or semi-fixed route without timetables, sometimes only departing when all seats are filled. They may stop anywhere to pick up or drop off their passengers. They are most common in developing countries or inner cities.
A school bus is any type of bus owned, leased, contracted to, or operated by a school or school district. It is regularly used to transport students to and from school or school-related activities, but not including a charter bus or transit bus. Various configurations of school buses are used worldwide; the most iconic examples are the yellow school buses of the United States which are also found in other parts of the world.
Transport in Melbourne, the state capital of Victoria, Australia, consists of several interlinking modes. Melbourne is a hub for intercity, intracity and regional travel. Road-based transport accounts for most trips across many parts of the city, facilitated by Australia's largest freeway network. Public transport, including the world's largest tram network, trains and buses, also forms a key part of the transport system. Other dominant modes include walking, cycling and commercial-passenger vehicle services such as taxis.
NZ Bus was a New Zealand bus company, operating in Auckland, Tauranga and Wellington. Originally a subsidiary of Stagecoach Group, and formerly Infratil and Next Capital, as of 2022 it is owned and operated by Kinetic Group. It was merged with Kinetic's other NZ subsidiary, Go Bus Transport, in 2023 to create Kinetic Urban NZ.
A walking bus is a form of student transport for young schoolchildren who, chaperoned typically by two adults, walk in a train-like procession. The children may walk to school along a set route, with some similarities to a school bus route, with designated "bus stops" and "pick up times" at which they pick up and "drop off" schoolmates.
Translink is the public transport agency in the State of Queensland, Australia, and is a division of the Department of Transport and Main Roads. Translink was first introduced by the Queensland Government in June 2003 to orchestrate bus, ferry, rail and light rail services. They work with Brisbane Airtrain, Transport for Brisbane, RiverCity Ferries, Queensland Rail and other operators to provide services. Translink operates an integrated ticketing system across Queensland and the go card system to allow the use of one ticket on multiple services in South East Queensland.
Transport in Winnipeg involves various transportation systems, including both private and public services, and modes of transport in the capital city of Manitoba.
Free public transport, often called fare-free public transit or zero-fare public transport, is public transport which is fully funded by means other than collecting fares from passengers. It may be funded by national, regional or local government through taxation, and/or by commercial sponsorship by businesses. Alternatively, the concept of "free-ness" may take other forms, such as no-fare access via a card which may or may not be paid for in its entirety by the user.
A free travel pass is the privilege of a certain class of passengers to use a public transport service without paying a fare or presenting a ticket. They may need to present an identification card produced by their employer or other sponsoring organization, or by the transit provider.
Guernsey is the second largest of the Channel Islands. It is part of the Common Travel Area, allowing passport-free travel to and from the United Kingdom, Jersey, the Isle of Man or Ireland. Travel to the Schengen Area of Europe requires a passport or an EU national identity document and from 2025 entry to the Schengen Area will require compliance with the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS) and non EU citizens may need a visa. Entry from the Schengen Area requires a passport, except when a concession is in place for short trips to Guernsey, when an EU ID card is acceptable.
Demand-responsive transport (DRT), also known as demand-responsive transit, demand-responsive service, Dial-a-Ride transit, flexible transport services, Microtransit, Non-Emergency Medical Transport (NEMT), Carpool or On-demand bus service is a form of shared private or quasi-public transport for groups traveling where vehicles alter their routes each journey based on particular transport demand without using a fixed route or timetabled journeys. These vehicles typically pick-up and drop-off passengers in locations according to passengers needs and can include taxis, buses or other vehicles. Passengers can typically summon the service with a mobile phone app or by telephone; telephone is particularly relevant to older users who may not be conversant with technology.
Public transport bus services are generally based on regular operation of transit buses along a route calling at agreed bus stops according to a published public transport timetable.
Public transport is a system of transport for passengers by group travel systems available for use by the general public unlike private transport, typically managed on a schedule, operated on established routes, and that may charge a posted fee for each trip. There is no rigid definition of which kinds of transport are included, and air travel is often not thought of when discussing public transport—dictionaries use wording like "buses, trains, etc." Examples of public transport include city buses, trolleybuses, trams and passenger trains, rapid transit and ferries. Public transport between cities is dominated by airlines, coaches, and intercity rail. High-speed rail networks are being developed in many parts of the world.
Public transport in Lima consists of buses, minibuses, taxis, and mototaxis. Micros are the most common means of public transportation in Lima and many other cities in Peru. There are also more than 100 kilometres (62 mi) of cycle paths in the city.
A reduced fare program refers to special programs providing particular passengers with a discounted fare option for travel on a public transport system. In the United States, public transportation systems that receive federal funding are required to offer, at minimum, half fares to the elderly and handicapped persons during off peak travel. Some transportation systems also extend reduced fare options to youth, students, military personnel, and low-income passengers.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to public transport:
Buses play a key role in student transport by transporting students to and from school. They often have a high seating capacity and a high degree of safety compared to other modes of transportation. The use of buses in student transport varies worldwide, and may take the form of
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