5 yrs. later, city launches app to track school buses
The city’s public schools are launching a long-awaited app for parents to track their kids’ bus trips in real time, Mayor Adams announced Friday.
NYC School Bus App, a partnership with the transportation company Via first announced in 2019, is expected to increase communication with the families of up to 150,000 students who ride the bus every day. It’ll also hold school bus vendors accountable for quality service, according to a news release.
“From the start, our administration has set a new standard for how government uses technology to serve hardworking families,” Adams said in a statement. “New York families are busy all day long, and the NYC School Bus App will make their lives a little easier by helping them manage pick-ups and drop-offs right from their home computers or smartphones, while giving them additional comfort as they follow the bus route’s their young children take on their way to and from school.”
But for the application to be effective, the bus driver assigned their route must subscribe to the platform. Close to a quarter of drivers have yet to sign up, according to city officials, who encouraged parents to reach out to their one of more than 50 school bus companies across the city and ask drivers to subscribe.
Families will need to access their New York City Schools Account and student identification number, which has posed challenges to logging onto other school programs in the past. And despite the official launch, parents will have to wait for some features, including the expected arrival time of the school bus at the stop or curb and the school, and notifications about delays.
The average school bus delay was 41 minutes at the start of last school year, usually because of traffic, according to a City Council report.
The program itself has been plagued by delays in its rollout. The city paused the project in 2020 during the pandemic, until resuming with some system testing the next school year. A pilot program ran last school year in one school district in Queens.
“I’m thrilled to be launching this system for families across the city,” said Schools Chancellor David Banks, “and to provide peace of mind to parents as they send their babies off to school each day.”