No to yellow school buses
Can our children be trusted on a Yellow Bus?
Transport & General Workers Union Section of Unite – the union
Passenger Services Trade Group Briefing
February 2008
We include as an archive a paper from the T&G, setting out its collective view on the proposal to move towards a US-style yellow school bus system. The basic position of the union is to argue for a regulated and public-owned network of local service bus operations and not a separate system.
The Yellow Bus Commission has been set up to convince Britain to import a risky experiment from America. This may be all well and good for private contracting companies looking for new sources of revenue but is this good for our kids? We consider here the safety and performance violations racked up by major school bus contractors in the US and the potential relevance of the Yellow School Bus system to Britain.
The Yellow Bus record in the USA
• Drivers hired without criminal background checks:
In Columbus, Ohio on January 2007, police stopped a Yellow Bus for making an illegal turn. Police discovered the driver had two syringes filled with cocaine – and three convictions for drunk driving. The company had failed to carry out criminal background checks for over three years on its drivers, and the entire school system was shut down for one day while the checks were carried out. Columbus recently ended their private school bus contract.
• Failed safety inspections:
In New Jersey, a majority of the leading contractor’s buses failed their initial safety inspection at 13 terminals between September and May 2006, including seven terminals where buses failed over 90 percent of initial inspections.
• Bus maintenance problems:
On two occasions in October 2007, Savannah school children and drivers were sprayed with hot antifreeze coolant after the engine cooling system on the buses erupted. In one instance four children were taken to hospital for treatment for burns and blisters.
• Late buses, missed trips:
In the Los Angeles school district, school bus contractors failed to run more than 800 routes, leaving thousands of students stranded. Private contractors had to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages for late buses, missed trips, and other contract failures.
• School districts firing private school bus operators:
In 2007 Dysart Unified School District in Arizona terminated their contract with a private operator citing multiplying problems about late buses, buses not showing up, students dropped at the wrong locations, poor communication and a general disorganization of the school bus system.
• Children’s’ behaviour on the school bus:
In 2004 national and local television and press reported news about the beating of a child by seven other students on a private contractor’s school bus in Jacksonville, Florida. On board CCTV recorded the incident while the bus continued on its way from school taking the children home. Similarly, in Yazoo County, Mississippi in 2007, CCTV again caught a 13-year old student beating a 7-year old on a school bus. Concerned parents were horrified after they said “students fled the bus bloody and shaken.”
What is the Yellow Bus Commission up to?
Yellow Buses were introduced in the USA to ensure fair distribution of ethnic minorities across the school system. What’s driving the notion here in Britain? US school buses are tank-like and expect every vehicle to move out of their way and all traffic to stop in their wake. Many school bus drivers working for private companies only receive part time pay and poor benefits and minimal use for the vehicles outside of their peak times is possible. Many drivers work on a split schedule, morning and afternoon and often the people who tend to be able to make that schedule work for them are retired people. There is no mandatory retirement age!
Is this really what we need? In London, massive strides forward have been made with opening up the existing local service routes to scholars and young people in general. A system of bus supply has transformed bus travel and people are coming back to the bus in droves.
With the exception of a few towns where special conditions apply, such as Brighton with its community support for a green agenda, and some districts where a company may have invested heavily in new vehicles, good labour standards and new technology marketing, people are still deserting the bus. How do they take their kids to school? In their car! We all know the syndrome of the clogged roads during the school run but will special buses for children be the answer?
Right now, Parliament is debating how to re-regulate our bus industry, to ensure that services are improved for the good of all by issuing powers to councils to contract networks to high standards. That means decent services at the right price where and when you need them. To hive off a section of services makes no sense to us.
Environmental Issues
Several US studies into the harmful effects of diesel exhaust fumes have raised concerns about the effects of these toxins on children riding school buses. In California (where diesel exhaust is recognised as a cancerous toxin and contributor to childhood asthma and other respiratory problems) a study by the California Air Resources Board found that riding on school buses raised exposure by 4 to 10 times higher levels of diesel exhaust than background levels. “The ventilation systems in school buses are just not the same as those used in commercial transit buses," says Todd Campbell, policy director for the Los Angeles-based Coalition for Clean Air. “Exhaust fumes get trapped inside school buses, especially on cold mornings when the windows are closed.”
In response to this a suit was filed against operators, requiring them to take remedial action to fix the situation. One firm, Laidlaw refused to comply or seek agreement s with the environmental groups and has even refused a grant of $1.7 million to retrofit 100 buses in the City of Richmond, CA. However, Durham School Services agreed in August 2007 to fully phase in clean school buses in all of its California operations by 2014. This commitment will require Durham to retrofit older school buses with diesel oxidation catalysts (or buy new buses with more efficient engines).
Differences between the USA and Great Britain
Many of Britain’s primary schools are situated in high density residential areas where roads are less suitable for large vehicles and subject to on-street parking by resident’s cars further restricting access by larger vehicles.
The introduction of a requirement for other road users to not overtake a school bus while students are boarding or alighting, as enforced in the USA, could indeed increase peak hour traffic congestion on Britain’s more limited road space.
Another major difference between Britain and the USA that seriously questions both the effectiveness and economics of attempting to transpose the Yellow School Bus model to Britain is the fact that Britain has a two-school system (primary and secondary schools) while in the USA there is a three school system (elementary, middle and high schools). With different starting and finish times for each school in the USA this allows suburban and city based school buses to operate three trips in both mornings and afternoons to fully utilize vehicles economically and these benefits would be difficult to replicate in Britain without major changes to the school system.
Of course this also means that high schools in the USA usually commence by 7.00 am which requires the first round of students to be picked up commencing at around 6.00 am, much earlier than the situation that British families expect. In effect the school bus operations determine the starting and finishing times of the school day.
Costs and service provision
The cost of providing home to school transport for 26 million US students totalled around $10.6 billion in 2006, with the average cost per student nearing $520 for around 180 school days.
To compare costs of providing school transportation, Bristol in the south west of England has an urban population of 550,000 and has a dominant bus operator in the city.
Across the other side of the Atlantic, in Maryland, USA, Baltimore has a slightly larger city population of just over 640,000. In 2007 one of the largest school bus operators in the city having just won a 5 year contract, worth $30 million to operate over 300 school buses abruptly announced its intention to terminate the contract leaving the City scrambling to re-tender the work with very little time before the start of a new school year.
This example highlights the severe reduction in options left open to USA school districts once they opt to outsource their student bus operations and dispose of their current bus fleet. Faced with a failing operator and unable to finance the cost of purchasing a replacement fleet of vehicles the school district may face disruptions in service where buses do not turn up, or children are left waiting for long periods at the side of the road or delivered late to school and home.
In fact more recently in Montana, the Bozeman School Board only received two bids from private operators to operate its school bus system. One of the bids relied on the School Board buying a fleet of school buses for the operator to use – an option that was judged as just too costly and effectively removed competition in the bidding process.
However, sometimes the situation becomes so intolerable that school districts feel compelled to take back control of their school buses. In 2007 Dysart Unified School District in Arizona terminated their four year contract with a private operator citing multiplying problems as the district continued to grow. Parents, teachers, students and administrators constantly complained about late buses, buses not showing up, students dropped at the wrong locations, poor communication and a general disorganization of the school bus system. School board members felt that owning the bus fleet had given control back to the school district.
Yellow Bus claims
The Yellow Bus experience in the USA is described as school buses picking up children from directly outside their homes, and while this may be true in a few cases, especially on rural routes, in practice there are generally allocated bus stops that children have to walk some distance to.
Likewise the claim that drivers are allocated to specific routes may be true in theory but is often impacted by the high turnover of drivers common in the outsourced sector ( a staff turnover rate of nearly 30% has been reported for some private contractors) requiring the use of substitute drivers less familiar with both the children and routes.
It is claimed that student behaviour on British yellow school buses is improved by having the elements of a regular driver, allocated seating and so on. However in the USA, in the much more widely used yellow bus system, surveys conducted by School Bus Fleet (SBF) regularly indicate that the biggest on bus problem encountered by drivers is the behaviour and discipline of students. In the 2007 SBF survey 61% of respondents identified student misbehaviour as their biggest challenge.
In a media report (January 8, 2008) concerning the use of videos cameras on USA school buses, a private school bus company manager commented ““We review (footage) every day….We (can) see kids out of their seats, throwing things, starting fights, maybe bullying.”
In July 2006 the BBC highlighted the results of Operation Coachman where the police had carried out checks to monitor the safety of school buses in Britain. Commenting on the fact that 25% of vehicles had some sort of fault, one managing director said that there was no excuse for using vehicles that are not road-worthy. “Poor school transport can kill kids at the end of the day” she said.
2007 saw one of the worst examples of a private school bus contractor’s operational failures, this time in Columbus, Ohio. On January 23, 2007 a school bus driver was stopped by police for making an illegal turn while driving his school bus. Police then found two syringes of cocaine on the driver and he was arrested.
Further inquiries revealed that the driver had three convictions for driving under the influence of alcohol which should have disqualified him from driving a bus. Two days after the arrest school district officials discovered that Bus Company had not conducted any background criminal checks on its Columbus drivers as required by state law causing the whole Columbus school system to be shut down for the day on January 25th while background checks were carried out.
While the driver was sent to prison for 11 months the Ohio State Highway Patrol continues to review the bus company’s failure to screen drivers which could ultimately affect its licence to operate in Ohio.
An “independent” Yellow School Bus Commission?
Since the announcement of the establishment of a Yellow School Bus Commission, and the appointment of a Chairman, membership of the commission and the terms of reference for its investigation, it is not surprising that concerns have been raised as to whether the commission is truly independent.
Indeed, Pat Harris, Director of the school transport safety body, BUSK, contacted David Blunkett (the Commission’s Chairman) expressing concerns over the Commission’s independence, and the use of an American School Bus in the accompanying road show. Mrs Harris wrote, ‘I am extremely concerned that Mr. Blunkett may be supporting a move for First to import this inferior and less safe vehicle into the UK, to replace transport already in use for our school children which meets much higher safety standards. I am equally worried that if First get a foothold… the UK could end up like America and be dominated by the American Yellow Bus. This indeed would put children at risk.’
Commentators have questioned why other bus operators appear not to be involved with the work of the Commission. Perhaps the following comment in The Coach Operator (December 4, 2007) best sums up the validity of the exercise: “A Royal Commission is a powerful and highly respected body. A privately commissioned Commission is only as good as its terms of reference. Who you put in the chair and the number of column inches you generate are more a reflection of your PR machine than an indication of the value or integrity of the commission’s findings. It is being paid for by FirstGroup. FirstGroup want to introduce a yellow bus scheme into this country. The scheme has had several faltering starts. But how much value is this commission really going to have? “
Worryingly, it appears that Chairman Blunkett (in a comment to the Western Mail, January 7, 2008) may have already pre-empted the outcome of the Commission’s investigation when he said “Yellow school buses offer a range of valuable benefits, providing a safe and high quality means of carrying children to and from school, relieving congestion from our increasingly crowded towns and cities and consequently making a real contribution to reducing our impact on the environment and climate change.”
We suggest that before coming to any decision on the work of the Yellow Bus Commission that elected officials, transport officers, parents and other stakeholders carefully scrutinise private operator’s service record and the difficulties in introducing all the benefits of a system designed for circumstances in another country.
