School buses

[A.J. Bertin]

In addition to roads and radio, another thing that I've always had a particular fascination with (since I was very little) is school buses. I always pay attention to the overall look and design of school buses - as well as how long districts keep their buses around. (Some districts in Michigan specify the model year of the bus as part of the number.) If I won the lottery, I would love to quit my current job and work part-time as a school bus driver. LOL

Does anyone else have an interest in this? I remember meeting a road geek a while back who was also into school buses.

[Molandfreak]

I like school buses, particularly the old ones or at least not the modern cabover ones... But it seems like some of the drivers (at least here) really suck at driving sometimes. But I guess that's what you get when you have 50 kids screaming in the back

[roadman]

Never been a school bus nut (for one thing, in elementary school we rode on regular commuter buses that the local transit agency provided to the City).  But I really hate the appearance of the newer bus designs some communities are now using - looks to me like something that Fisher Price built.

[vtk]

Just in the last year I've started seeing a lot of fugly trapezoidal school buses, apparently branded SAFE-T-LINER. Yuck.

[Alps]

Flat front school buses are Satan.

[Brandon]

Never much cared for school buses.  I needed them for the magnet school I went to for elementary school, but they were also used by the high school I went to.  I felt they were completely unnecessary as the bus only brought people one mile or less to the school from the neighborhood.  They could have and should have walked at that distance.

[Duke87]

All of the school buses in my city (Stamford, CT) growing up were flat fronted, except for the short buses.

I used to think this was freaky, because "hey, how do they fit the engine and stuff in there if there's no hood for it to be under?".
But at the same time other buses being flat fronted never struck me as odd.  Go figure.

A large part of that, though, may simply have been that I never rode a school bus until I was in 4th grade because I lived right around the corner from my school prior to that and so I just walked (by myself, mind you, and no one saw anything wrong with it!). As such, I wasn't really paying much attention to the school buses and my expectation of what one should look like came more from my Matchbox cars - and my Matchbox school bus had a hood.

The problem with flat fronted school buses, of course, is that when kids walk right in front of them the bus driver cannot see them. To combat this, the school buses in Stamford had gates fitted to the front of them that would extend forward when the bus had its stop sign going.

As a kid I used to think this gate was to stop traffic on the cross street if the bus stopped right before an intersection.

[andrewkbrown]

I was interested in school buses as a child in rural Ohio. In kindergarten, my school district had a short bus for the kids living in the country, and a regular sized bus for the city kids. My elementary school had AM and PM kindergarten. I was AM, and my school only had 2 kindergarten classes, so only about 20-25 kids total. Living in the country, I rode the short bus as there were only around 8-10 country kids.

Being that the bus was short, it enabled the driver to drive down each child's driveway, especially long farm driveways, and less walking for 5-6 year-olds.

In elementary school, I could recall the bus number of every bus my school district had, about 30 buses. It was the early 1990s, and most of the buses were 1980s Ford B-Series and International truck chassis from Wayne Corporation and Ward Body Works. They did have one oddball  1980s Blue Bird bus that I remember because the motor was in the rear, so rather than a rear emergency exit door, it had a rear emergency exit window, and was the only bus in the fleet with a side exit.

It was on a family trip to Florida in the mid 1990s that I first saw school buses with two stop signs, front and rear. Now all new school buses of the last 5 years at my former school district have them as well.

[leroys73]

In addition to roads and radio, another thing that I've always had a particular fascination with (since I was very little) is school buses. I always pay attention to the overall look and design of school buses - as well as how long districts keep their buses around. (Some districts in Michigan specify the model year of the bus as part of the number.) If I won the lottery, I would love to quit my current job and work part-time as a school bus driver. LOL

Does anyone else have an interest in this? I remember meeting a road geek a while back who was also into school buses.

LOL is right.  After teaching 30 years I would pick up AL cans along I-35 before I drove a school bus.  In my area the pay is not much better than minumin wage.  My Uncle and several aunts liked it.  In Sarasota County, FL the pay was pretty good.  Any old vehicle is of interest to me.

[Molandfreak]

I was interested in school buses as a child in rural Ohio. In kindergarten, my school district had a short bus for the kids living in the country, and a regular sized bus for the city kids. My elementary school had AM and PM kindergarten. I was AM, and my school only had 2 kindergarten classes, so only about 20-25 kids total. Living in the country, I rode the short bus as there were only around 8-10 country kids.

Being that the bus was short, it enabled the driver to drive down each child's driveway, especially long farm driveways, and less walking for 5-6 year-olds.

In Kindergarten, I had a mini bus take me home. Apparently you can drive them without a CDL, in MN at least. Ten kids would be easier to manage than 50 kids, that's for sure

[kphoger]

When I lived in Chicago's west suburbs, I frequently took public buses that were contracted-out school buses (Laidlaw or whatever company actually drove the buses as a contractor for Pace Bus).  The drivers all said they'd rather drive the old yellow school buses than the newer white "real" public buses.  They have a better ride, and will last forever.  It wasn't unheard of to see more than 500k miles on the odometer.  Bad thing was, they didn't have bike racks, fare card machines, or pull cords.

[cpzilliacus]

Flat front school buses are Satan.

For a long time, such buses were out of favor in the countywide school districts around the Capital Beltway in favor of buses using extended medium-duty truck chassis. 

But in recent years, buses with the engine in the rear (like most urban transit buses) have made a come-back, and "pushers" (as they are called by school bus drivers) are now pretty common, though there are still some school buses with the engine up front.

When  I went to school, the only time I rode a school bus was for field trips, so it was an adventure.  Back then, all school buses had standard transmissions and clutches, and were geared low enough that they really would not operate at much above 55 MPH.

[1995hoo]

I grew up seeing (and riding, until after fourth grade when we moved and I walked to school) the non-flat-front buses. I thought the flat-front style was weird when I first saw it. At the time, Fairfax County said the change was motivated by safety–the bus driver can more easily see kids ahead of the flat-front bus because the hood doesn't obstruct the view. There had been a few instances of little kids dropping stuff while crossing in front of the bus on windy days, the item then blowing close to the front of the bus and the kid running after it without paying attention to anything else, and e bus driver not seeing the kid.

Regarding cp's comment, I recall riding a manual-transmission school bus (the only one I've ever seen) on Prince Edward Island at the 1989 Canadian Scout Jamboree. The woman driving the bus was quite obviously not skilled with a manual shift, which made for a lot of fun when she had to cross an at-grade railroad crossing going up a hill (I have no recollection of where it was, and I believe railroad service on PEI was abandoned fairly soon thereafter, but at the time the tracks were apparently operational so she had to stop). It was pretty funny, I was one of the few Scouts on the bus with a driver's license, so you had the various Scoutmasters and me all yelling out advice to the poor woman while she kept stalling the bus and the rest of the kids (except my brother) were wondering why it was such a hassle.

[agentsteel53]

Never much cared for school buses.  I needed them for the magnet school I went to for elementary school, but they were also used by the high school I went to.  I felt they were completely unnecessary as the bus only brought people one mile or less to the school from the neighborhood.  They could have and should have walked at that distance.

you mean to say that people who lived more than one mile from the school were not served??  then what is the point of having a school bus?

I only rode the bus in middle school because that was ~4.5 miles from my house.  they certainly provided service for that!  when I was in elementary school, I walked ~0.5 miles, and in high school about 1 mile.  I do not recall if I could have had the option of a bus for high school - it was pretty close to the threshold.

[Brandon]

Never much cared for school buses.  I needed them for the magnet school I went to for elementary school, but they were also used by the high school I went to.  I felt they were completely unnecessary as the bus only brought people one mile or less to the school from the neighborhood.  They could have and should have walked at that distance.

you mean to say that people who lived more than one mile from the school were not served??  then what is the point of having a school bus?

I only rode the bus in middle school because that was ~4.5 miles from my house.  they certainly provided service for that!  when I was in elementary school, I walked ~0.5 miles, and in high school about 1 mile.  I do not recall if I could have had the option of a bus for high school - it was pretty close to the threshold.

No, that this particular route started only about one mile from the school with two stops.  The junior high school I went to did not have bus services unless the students were coming from a distance of 1-1/2 to 2 miles away.  I lived about 1-1/4 miles, hence I walked or rode a bicycle.

[A.J. Bertin]

Just in the last year I've started seeing a lot of fugly trapezoidal school buses, apparently branded SAFE-T-LINER. Yuck.

Every now and then I do image searches on Google or Bing to look for school bus photos. Back in the mid '00s (around the time those SAFE-T-LINERs debuted), I was fascinated by them. They had (and still have) a very futuristic look about them. I didn't start to see them in the Grand Rapids MI area (where I live) until '06 or so. Actually, I think the first one I saw was in the summer of '06 in Vermont when I was on a road trip out there with a friend. I was excited when I finally saw one of those in person.

In 2007, I had the opportunity to meet a guy who was (maybe still is - don't know as I've lost touch with him) the director of transportation for one of the school districts in the Grand Rapids area. He took me to the lot where all the buses are parked, and I got to see a whole bunch of them. At the time, that district had lots of the newer Thomas SAFE-T-LINERs, some older Thomases, and some newer Blue Birds. I was excited to be able to step inside some of these buses and take a look.

He told me that the SAFE-T-LINERs are not very popular with some of the bus drivers because their design makes it difficult to see out the driver-side window. It's probably the case that the driver either loves them or hates them.

[leroys73]

In Kindergarten, I had a mini bus take me home. Apparently you can drive them without a CDL, in MN at least. Ten kids would be easier to manage than 50 kids, that's for sure
[/quote]

When I was in school in Oklahoma  a high school kid 16 could drive a school bus if they could pass the special school bus test.  Usually they were a little older and came from a farm.  They'd park the bus and go to class.  I think it changed in Oklahoma when CDLs were instituted for commercial trucks. 

I am old enough that it was unheard of to have an automatic in something as large as a school bus.  In HS only a few girls couldn't us a clutch.  This was in the 60's.  Now few people even know what one is.   

[1995hoo]

Never much cared for school buses.  I needed them for the magnet school I went to for elementary school, but they were also used by the high school I went to.  I felt they were completely unnecessary as the bus only brought people one mile or less to the school from the neighborhood.  They could have and should have walked at that distance.

you mean to say that people who lived more than one mile from the school were not served??  then what is the point of having a school bus?

....

When I was growing up, the policy in Fairfax County was that for elementary schools, kids within a one-mile radius were to walk to school unless special circumstances dictated a bus (one example I know of involved a busy road where the sole crosswalk was in a location with poor visibility); for junior high and high school, the radius expanded to 1.5 miles. Funny, as I look back, when we moved to where my parents still live now, we were in the "walking zone" for elementary school and we did walk, but now they have a bus for that community even though for some of the kids the walk to the bus stop would be about the same distance as the walk to school. The reason is that apparently they decided it wasn't safe for the kids to use the path through the woods that we all used when I was a kid. (For junior high and high school I was in the "bus zone" but I usually walked.)

[A.J. Bertin]

I grew up in Metro Detroit. As a child, I rode a school bus every year from kindergarten through my senior year. From grades K through 5, we lived in one school district (Warren Consolidated Schools). Then, at the beginning of my 6th-grade year, we moved and I started attending Utica Community Schools.

In Warren, all of the buses were transit-style (flat fronts). They were all Blue Birds. Even as a little child, I could somehow tell which buses were newer just based on the color of the seats. The green-seated buses were older, and the brown-seated buses were newer. When I was in kindergarten, the bus I rode in the morning was a brand-new 1984. The number on the bus said 84-1 or something like that. I'm pretty sure the bus I rode home at noon (I was in A.M. kindergarten) was also pretty new because it had brown seats. Inside each bus along the front and passenger-side windows was a laminated piece of paper that had the number of the bus that the kids new. The full-length buses were numbered A-1 through A-9, B-1 through B-9, C-1 through C-9, and D-1 through D-9, and E-1 through E-9. The short buses went from G-1 through G-9, H-1 through H-9, and I-1 through I-9 or something like that. I never knew why the letter F was skipped. The bus I rode every year in that district was A-2 (except for A-4 riding home from school when I was in kindergarten).

When we moved to Utica Schools, I got used to conventional-style (the traditional, non-flat-front) buses that most districts use. Up until then, I had always considered those buses to be "old-fashioned" compared to the transit-style buses I was used to in Warren. Utica Schools was (probably still is) the third-largest school district in Michigan and has a large fleet of buses. Every year the buses (based on the drivers) were re-assigned among the different schools, so that meant that the kids rode a different bus every school year. I'm pretty sure that the drivers with the highest seniority got to drive a brand-new bus every year.

Each year the district bought a whole new set of buses and got rid of the oldest ones. The buses were typically kept for seven years - with a constant rotation of new buses coming in and old buses leaving. For me, every summer I was always excited to find out what my new bus would be for the year. For instance, would I get to ride a brand-new one or an older one? I also got super excited the first time I got to see what the new year's buses would look like. Some years the bus I rode was brand new, but other years it was one of the older ones. Every summer I would ride my bike up to the garage to see if I could get a peek at the new buses. The other geeky thing about all of that was that I got to a point where I had learned the model year of every bus number: 1-92, 2-88 (then 2-95), 3-87 (then 3-94), and so on. I still remember all those number/year combinations. They are ingrained in my brain and I will probably always know them. Nowadays, the district is no longer on the seven-year pattern; they are keeping their buses a lot longer than seven years now.

Even now, living in Grand Rapids, I always pay attention to the buses of all the districts around here. It's interesting to see how they are numbered and whether they include the year or not. There are lots of numbering patterns that I've learned, which is pretty cool.

I have no idea why I still get excited about all of this, but I just do. LOL

[getemngo]

This is a bit of an interest of mine, though not to the extent of A.J.

It fascinates me that some districts have a very consistent plan about which buses to purchase and when. My school district was not one of them. Growing up in the '90s, there was a big mishmash of '80s Thomas buses, Carpenters (with International and GMC chassis), Blue Birds, and later, Crown by Carpenter. Out of 30 or so buses (small district), not more than 2 or 3 of any kind matched, except for the Blue Birds. Now their fleet is almost all Blue Bird... but that's kind of boring.

School buses in general are less exciting now, when there's only 3 manufacturers, and most have only one model of "conventional" style bus, and one or two flat-nosed models. All the buses everywhere look the same now. 

[A.J. Bertin]

School buses in general are less exciting now, when there's only 3 manufacturers, and most have only one model of "conventional" style bus, and one or two flat-nosed models. All the buses everywhere look the same now. 

Exactly. I hate the fact that we only have the "big three": Thomas, International, and Blue Bird. There used to be so much more variety than there is now!

[Stephane Dumas]

Exactly. I hate the fact that we only have the "big three": Thomas, International, and Blue Bird. There used to be so much more variety than there is now!

+1, I agree and let's remember Superior.

This French PSA about school bus safety rules broadcasted in Quebec in the mid-1970s showed a Blue Bird using a Dodge conventionnal. Blue Bird, Thomas, Wayne, Superior using Dodge are a very rare bread.

[vtk]

All the buses everywhere look the same now. 

Not in Ohio. The Safe-T-Liners stand out. But maybe soon that'll be the only model in use. (I hope not.)

[kphoger]

All the buses everywhere look the same now. 

Not in Ohio. The Safe-T-Liners stand out. But maybe soon that'll be the only model in use. (I hope not.)

Some Saf-T-Liners are flat-faced, and others are not.  Am I right?

[vtk]

All the buses everywhere look the same now. 

Not in Ohio. The Safe-T-Liners stand out. But maybe soon that'll be the only model in use. (I hope not.)

Some Saf-T-Liners are flat-faced, and others are not.  Am I right?

Honestly I can't say I've noticed that.  I'm too distracted by the fugly trapezoidal tapering of everything above the bottom of the windows.