Question re school bus services

[Martin1988]

If anyone is able to answer I would be interested to find out, what is the idea behind registering some school bus services as public services which are available for anybody to use whilst making others closed services which only pupils who are eligible can use?

Here in the South Gloucestershire area, a number of school bus services are changing from being public routes to non public routes at the start of the new term in September whilst other school services are remaining as registered public services. Does anyone have any suggestions as to why this might be getting done for some school bus services and not others?

Also, when a school bus service is registered public, is the idea that it is available to members of the public in general or is the idea simply that it is available to any pupils from that school who wish to travel on the route but don't hold passes?

Any information on this would be greatly appreciated.


Also, for anyone interested, details of the service changes in South Gloucestershire are here:
http://www.southglos.gov.uk/transport-and-streets/public-transport/buses/changes-to-bus-services/

 

[RT4038]

The reasons for registering school bus services are (a) in order to charge fares and (b) to claim BSOG (Fuel Tax Rebate). However, in exchange for that the service must be open to the general public, although it could be restricted to 'schoolchildren only'. Most school bus services are provided for 'entitled' (i.e. Transport paid by local authority for children living over 3 miles from school) and are on a contract basis with a bus company. If the contract bus is full with 'entitled' children, then the local authority will not want it picking up 'non-entitled' children, so will not register the service (so called 'closed door'). If the contract bus has seats available, the local authority may choose to allow 'non-entitled' children to travel on payment of fare (often by purchasing a pass from the local authority so numbers are strictly controlled and 'entitled' children are not left behind). In this case it would have to be registered as individual fares were being collected. With numbers changing each year, contract buses could easily move from one category to the other, hence the registration changes I expect.

 

[CatfordCat]

As regards the basic question, it also can depend which operator it is.

In the shire county where I used to work for the council's passenger transport unit, some of our operators preferred to keep all their operations on the basis of registered local bus service. some of our operators did not want to get in to the realms service registration, ticketing, accounting for cash and so on. This meant some routes changed from contract to registered or vice versa each time they changed operator (we did not have a policy of re-tendering every year, but we were in a phase where the council's own inflation figures didn't match what the industry thought, so there was quite a spiral of operators handing contracts back.)

The guidance at that time from traffic commissioners was a bit vague around the 'open to the general public' rule for registered services. The theory was that if a service was registered, then any member of the general public ought to be able to get on and pay a fare and that the service ought to be made public via council timetable leaflets and later traveline.

In reality (apart from the question of whether any member of the general public would want to travel on a bus with 50+ school kids, and whether the journey went anywhere useful at a useful time) any such member of the general public would often be faced with a driver who did not know what the cash fare was, or have any means of accounting for it. and may well be viewed with a certain suspicion by all concerned.

There is also the question of whether a member of the general public would be allowed on to school premises to board a bus starting its journey on a school site rather than the public highway.

At that time, there was the concept of a registered school / works service - but I think the fuel duty rebate (as then was) rules were different for these, so most operators just registered them as local services open to the general public that were principally there for school purposes.

Nobody official could quite decide whether schoolchildren not entitled to free transport (e.g. those living either too close to the school to qualify, those living closer to another school, those making one-off journeys to visit friends / relatives) counted as 'the general public' in this context (and again, in my experience, some companies' drivers would make an effort to check passes and take fares from such children, others would not)

I've since moved away from work involving much to do with school transport (and I really don't miss the silly hours involved round this time of year) and I'm not sure if this has been tidied up a bit with the general trend towards resolving some of the anomalies between what used to be allowed by one traffic commissioner but not another.

 

[Robertj21a]

.
Also, a closed contract will still be able to use non-DDA buses when the regulations otherwise take effect.

 

[Busaholic]

All Transport for London school bus routes are available for the general public: in fact, one of them operates on non-schooldays too!

 

[Y961 XBU]

when Arriva did the 745 from Platt Bridge to Carmell College there used to be a lady that got on from Ashton to Billinge every morning, was never to sure if it was allowed but she paid the fare so no one ever refused her custom!

 

[Liam]

In reality (apart from the question of whether any member of the general public would want to travel on a bus with 50+ school kids, and whether the journey went anywhere useful at a useful time) any such member of the general public would often be faced with a driver who did not know what the cash fare was, or have any means of accounting for it. and may well be viewed with a certain suspicion by all concerned.

There are some services, like Stagecoach Fife's 23 (St Andrews-Stirling) which is also the school bus from Gateside and Burnside to Bell Baxter High in Cupar. Moffat and Williamson gained this contract in the most recent tender.

I have been on the 201 (Kinross-Glenrothes) on a Fife schoolday, but Perth and Kinross holiday, the bus still waited 10 minutes at the school to keep to timetable.

 

[Martin1988]

Thanks to those who took the time to respond and to provide me with this information.

Something I was wondering was does making a school bus service with a fixed passenger list non public allow for more economical operation of the route? As an example, if there are 35 entitled children with passes using the route would it mean that the operator would be able to reduce their costs by running a 35 seater vehicle, as opposed to having to use a larger vehicle which would cost more to run, in order to take into account any extra passengers who might board?

The route I used to travel to and from college on was provided in order to transport students and ran during term time only, although it was available for members of the public to use. The drivers would run the full route in the morning but there were a good number of instances in the evening where drivers missed out certain sections of the route due to there be no passengers wanting to get off there, and only served the stops where there were passengers wanting to get off.

Is this sort of thing common on school bus services?

 

[CatfordCat]

Thanks to those who took the time to respond and to provide me with this information.

Something I was wondering was does making a school bus service with a fixed passenger list non public allow for more economical operation of the route? As an example, if there are 35 entitled children with passes using the route would it mean that the operator would be able to reduce their costs by running a 35 seater vehicle, as opposed to having to use a larger vehicle which would cost more to run, in order to take into account any extra passengers who might board?

The route I used to travel to and from college on was provided in order to transport students and ran during term time only, although it was available for members of the public to use. The drivers would run the full route in the morning but there were a good number of instances in the evening where drivers missed out certain sections of the route due to there be no passengers wanting to get off there, and only served the stops where there were passengers wanting to get off.

Is this sort of thing common on school bus services?

To answer the two halves separately -

It's a balance.

A 35 seater will cost a bit less to run than (say) a 49 seater, but the cost isn't directly proportional to the number of seats. It may not be worth running a non-standard vehicle in the fleet, and if the vehicle inter-works with other things, the size of vehicle on that duty will be constrained by the peak journey. As an extreme, the county I used to work for had one primary school journey with about 6 'entitled' children on it, that got a 53 seater, because the coach in question did a secondary school journey as well, and the primary school journey worked as a slight diversion on the depot journey.

An operator will weigh up whether running a closed contract 35 seater will have the same net effect on their finances as running a 53 seater, claiming BSOG and getting some fares revenue.

While there will be some day to day variations, once a school year has started, the number of fare-payers will be fairly constant, so capacity can be provided accordingly. Although there can be some surprises at the start of a school year if a particular school suddenly becomes more popular. (one reason why many operators of registered school services preferring parents to buy season tickets rather than pay daily.)

As for varying the route -

A contract service can have its route varied at short notice, by agreement between whoever's made the contract and the operator. And usually, nobody is going to be too upset if a few stops are missed on the 'homeward' journey if there's no demand for them on that day.

It's also usually easier to vary the route at short notice if (for example) a new family move in to a house off the current line or route (extending a contract bus a mile or two may still work out cheaper than getting a taxi out to a deep rural area during the peak to do a connecting run.) Such things are possible with registered services, but require a variation through the traffic commissioner, and approval for a 'short notice' change (which the commissioners are getting less tolerant of.)

A registered service can be registered with some points shown as 'continues to this point to set down only if required by passengers already on the vehicle' (or words to that effect) - I had one council supported service where the last journey of the day was on this basis after the first two stops in the town centre - so if nobody at all got on in this town, the bus would go back to depot at that point. If anyone did, the driver would work out the quickest route to the destinations of those passengers boarding.

At that time, this meant that the operator would get less fuel duty rebate (I am not sure exactly how this got calculated - this was the operators' problem not the county council's)

In theory, if a registered service doesn't have this, then the operator could get in to trouble for not serving the full timetabled route.

 

[northwichcat]

Back when I was at school the service I caught was a council contracted service that only allowed people to travel with bus passes. Bus passes were free for those who hadn't done their GCSEs but there was a charge for bus passes for sixth formers. The operator was not permitted to carry people without bus passes even if there were spare seats available and the operator was required to provide a vehicle large enough for everyone with a pass to have a seat. Everyone on the bus lived over 3 miles from the school.

On another school bus route of a similar distance it included stops in a village 2 miles from the school and the people who boarded there had to pay a cash fare but the people living further out got bus passes. The bus used was a double decker bus and the bus left school with people standing.

My old school bus service still sort of exists. However, it's now a commercial public bus service (the council subsided bus pass scheme having been withdrawn.) The bus stops at more stops than before, including some stops under 3 miles from the school. It also partly duplicates another school route operated by the same operator. Probably the idea is to split the schoolchildren between those two buses so they've not got one leaving behind passengers while another's running with spare capacity.

 

[WatcherZero]

Another advantage of closed services is you can do assigned seating and the school gets a rollcall of who was on the bus. The buses are also then available for school trips during the day like swimming lessons or day trips.

 

[northwichcat]

Another advantage of closed services is you can do assigned seating and the school gets a rollcall of who was on the bus. The buses are also then available for school trips during the day like swimming lessons or day trips.

Local councils started trialling new yellow Bluebird school buses about 15 years ago for that purpose. In the case of Cheshire County Council they purchased 3 buses and based them in Northwich and had 3 designated yellow school bus routes and a similar number in Macclesfield. However, the issues were:
1. While they tried to schedule in maintenance on non-school days they needed to have a local coach operator who could provide back-up vehicles in an emergency given they had no spares.
2. Trips to the swimming baths and short school trips were fine. However, numerous school trips used a local coach hire firm even when the yellow buses weren't being used because the yellow buses needed to be the correct school for the end of the day and they needed to source a driver for a one-off job.
3. The idea of assigned seating and a register was that there wouldn't be damage to the vehicles as they'd know who was responsible e.g. seat 4 is damaged which is James' seat and he was on the bus that morning. However, that meant they had to be inspected between any school trip and being used on their normal route.

I think most local councils sold their yellow buses and didn't replace them or expand the scheme. Some larger coach operators like Holmeswood Coaches converted some older coaches to have yellow bus style interiors and designated them as school buses, while other operators like First have purchased new buses specifically to use as school buses (and have also painted old existing buses in a yellow school bus livery without any modifications.)

 

[Martin1988]

Once again, thanks to those who have responded since my last post and provided me with information on this subject. I'm sorry I didn't acknowledge this earlier.

 

[MK Tom]

In Milton Keynes we have a strange situation where Buckinghamshire Council Council lay on large number of private school buses to Aylesbury for the grammar schools (one of which I used for seven years), but Red Kite operate nearly identical routes commercially. I know there have been capacity issues on the private routes, and perhaps Red Kite are picking up some of the people rejected off the private services, but I never understood why Red Kite ran their services publicly or how they got any return from them.

An example of this is Red Kite's public 750 from Two Mile Ash to Aylesbury, which takes the exact same route as Heyfordian's private 841 from Old Stratford to Aylesbury.

 

[WatcherZero]

I think most local councils sold their yellow buses and didn't replace them or expand the scheme. Some larger coach operators like Holmeswood Coaches converted some older coaches to have yellow bus style interiors and designated them as school buses, while other operators like First have purchased new buses specifically to use as school buses (and have also painted old existing buses in a yellow school bus livery without any modifications.)

Its worked better in Greater Manchester, though I think that may well be due to critical mass with over 30 routes and well over a 100 buses. They are continuing to be bought (13 hybrid yellow buses bought last year) but they are being squeezed operationally by the government funding cuts for bus services.

They all have CCTV here, vandalism isnt an issue the roll call is mainly to monitor truancy, i.e. people who arrived on the school bus but didnt turn up for morning register.

 

[BurtonM]

TfGM have a weird one where they'll only provide a subsidised school bus service within a set distance of the school the bus is intended to serve - any further and it has to be registered as a public service.
Within GM, the numbers 700-899 and Yxx are reserved for school buses.
The big bus companies don't usually touch the registered services, and stick to the subsidised ones, the smaller companies have to take up any slack.
Registered services just have any old number, often overlapping existing services.
For example, the private schools in south Manchester: most of the pupils come in from areas outside the M60. The old Finglands garage, now First on Wilmslow Road, operate the services with numbers from 141 to 146 and 158. It's clear they're done to a price: the route out to where I live was run by two deckers up to about six years ago, where it was cut to one, and now it's usually just a single Wright Streetlite. Another service was cut for no obvious reason, which was odd as it usually had at least one full decker of people on it, if not two.
The services used to just charge the old GMPTE flat fare of 80p/journey, but when this was abolished they further increased the penny-pinching by charging whatever they liked (easy to combat with System One tickets). Problem is, despite the services being technically public, they don't show up on any timetables, TfGM don't seem to acknowledge them and the drivers don't let anyone on that they don't think should be there. So the best way to describe them is 'public' services.

 

[Martin1988]

The bus route I used to travel to college on(route 680 between North Yate and Filton) recently switched operators from South Gloucestershire Bus and Coach to Eurotaxis.

The service is still available for public use but several of the timetables along the route still indicate that SGBC run the service. The start/end of the route also appears to have been altered so the route now finishes in Yate and not North Corner but whilst the timetable is absent from at least one stop along the route which is still served, it is still present at stops which no longer appear to be served by the route.

Would I be right in thinking that this sort of thing is one of the problems for operators/local authorities which can occur if this type of service is made public? Ie that they are liable to change at short notice and it is a pain to keep updating the timetable information at bus stops?

When SGBC worked the service they almost exclusively used minibuses on the route. The drivers seemed to be required to return to the depot and swap vehicles if they'd been using a double decker bus or a coach on their previous job. However, Eurotaxis mainly run the route with a full size coach, despite the fact on some occasion this has aparrantley involved the driver running light from the depot in Yate out to Filton.

Is there any reason why this might have differed between the two companies despite the fact both operators would have had a similar amount of dead mileage at either the start or end of the route? On the one hand it got suggested to me that SGBC preferred to run a smaller vehicle as it made economic sense(particularly in terms of fuel) but it also got suggested that it was done so that larger vehicles which might be needed on NX or rail replacement work weren't tied up elsewhere. Does anyone have any idea which reason is likely to be more correct?

 

[Qwerty133]

They may not have enough suitably sized minibuses, so have no other choice than to use a full sized coach.
I think in some firms each driver is allocated a bus, so it may be that he/she just uses their normal one, which happens to be a coach.

 

[CatfordCat]

There are also practical considerations involved in using two vehicles in one day instead of one - two 'start of day' checks, two vehicles to clean / wash, two defect sheets to process, and the staff time involved in these.

This needs to be balanced against the cost saving in better fuel economy with a smaller vehicle.

 

[Martin1988]

Thanks to those who took the time to respond.

A number of the SGBC drivers who turned up on this route mentioned having had another vehicle(usually a coach) for the rest of the day but being required to return to the depot and switch vehicles. I got the impression that not all the drivers were happy about having to do this and I know that as a passenger I would have much preferred a coach over a minibus. I think the minibuses had been used on other school routes earlier in the afternoon and were already back in the depot ready to go out again.

SGBC did run coaches on the route in the morning for a time and this included brand new National Express vehicles. I think at this point the minibuses were unavailable to work the route as one morning when SGBC were hard up for coaches, a Wessex Connect vehicle was borrowed to work the route.

I think the evening journey wasn't that well used meaning a full size vehicle wasn't needed. Also, for a time the company had another school service which finished in the same area around the time the evening journey left so they were able to operate both services with the same vehicle.

Would the company's NX involvement have had anything to do with minibuses rather than coaches being used on the route? Am asking because they seemed to hardly ever run coaches on the route after 2010 when they took on more NX work I saw the evening journey being worked by coaches on a number of occasions between May and July of this year. I think the older coaches had just been taken off of NX work by this point.

 

[neilmc]

The TfGM website not only lists school services but makes it plain that these are available for ordinary passengers to use - unless of course they're operated by the yellow buses in which case it makes it clear that these are for designated schoolchildren only.

I don't know how feasible it would actually be to attempt to use most of these services, particularly in the journeys from the school as I reckon most of the drivers simply wouldn't stop for anyone at intermediate stops. When I was a conductor in Leeds in the 1970s most of the buses serving secondary schools were run on a commercial basis and technically stopped at all intermediate stops, if you knew the route of course. I was once working on a school bus, I think it was from St. John Bosco to York Road and an inspector flagged the bus down in Chapeltown and explained to the passengers waiting for a late-running service 44 that this would take them all the way to York Road, which was true but I wonder if this would have worked without the inspector ordering proceedings! Later when I had left Metro employment and lived on the route I sometimes caught this bus just for the fun of it, especially if a single-door Atlantean was used since if the bus was stopping to disgorge schoolkids the driver couldn't very well refuse to let me on, though he could frown and glare a bit!

 

[Martin1988]

Am guessing that it is not possible for concessionary passholders to travel on most school buses? I remember a few years ago reading the timetable for a local school bus service(I think it was a Westward Travel service) and there was a note at the bottom stating concessionary passes weren't accepted on the service.

Faresaver have recently taken on a school bus service which operates in the area where I live but the Avon Rider/Bath Rider leaflet specifically states that this ticket isn't valid on this service.