Off the buses
New system forces parents to use cars to get pupils to class
Parents are pulling their children off buses and driving them to school after Auckland Transport’s latest attempt to axe dedicated school buses and make school children catch regular public transport.
The Epsom cluster of wealthy public and private schools are banding together to fight the loss of dedicated school buses, which are now part of a new central city bus network that came into effect on July 8.
It follows similar uproar in East
Auckland last year that forced AT to reinstate some school buses after more than 1400 parents signed a petition. AT admitted then it “could have done a better job” in engaging with parents earlier.
Diocesan School for Girls fears problems with the new bus regime will add more than 100 cars a day coming to the school, further clogging Epsom streets.
One Diocesan parent who has started driving her children to school, Penny Tucker, said the new bus system is diabolical.
She is printing car stickers which say “Auckland Transport killed our school bus” to raise the issue for motorists stuck in traffic.
Diocesan principal Heather McRae said AT’s plan was dumped on schools halfway through the year with little consultation.
Some buses were now arriving after school started and before school finished.
She believed AT was being unrealistic about practical and safety issues for young students forced on to regular public transport, who had to change buses with heavy bags and wait on the roadside while full buses drove past.
The school’s planning and business director, Paul McDowell-Hook, said the number of school buses from the eastern bays to the Epsom schools had been cut from 10 to two and the Mt Eden bus cancelled, with students pushed on to the Outer Link bus.
“The impact on our parents has
[It] is slightly counter-intuitive of AT’s main mission to get people out of cars and into buses. Paul McDowell-Hook
been essentially moving students from school buses back into cars and parents driving to school, which is slightly counter-intuitive of AT’s main mission to get people out of cars and into buses,” McDowell-Hook said.
McRae said the school was looking to set up shared bus routes with other schools at a cost of about $100,000. The school was also inviting other local schools to participate in a professional survey of parents to present to AT.
“I think it will show there are fewer students catching the bus or have significantly disrupted times because of their new regime,” she said.
Epsom Girls Grammar said it would take part in the survey.
St Cuthbert’s school principal Justine Mahon said the girls’ school was monitoring impacts of the new bus routes on students and parents, and working with other Epsom schools on the survey to have a “meaningful dialogue” with AT.
An AT spokesman said the council body was aware of concerns and worked with schools to make adjustments before the initial proposals were implemented, including an extra bus from the eastern bays to Epsom.
He said AT would welcome the survey results.
“Auckland Transport continues to monitor the patronage, capacity and reliability of bus services, including the school bus services between the eastern bays and Epsom schools,” said the spokesman, saying a number of schools had received extra school bus services as part of the new central city bus network.
School bus services were funded from the same pool as all public transport and it was important they complemented, not duplicated, the rest of the system, he said.
“If there was a public bus running along the same route as a school bus, it would not be a good use of resources to keep the school bus,” he said.
Ministry of Education infrastructure service head Kim Shannon said most school buses in Auckland were run by Auckland Transport, schools, or were commercial services.
“We are not currently planning to add Ministry-funded services there,” she said.