Should Your Kids Take the School Bus?

Although the popularity of the school bus as a viable transport option for students has waned in recent years, the iconic yellow bus still offers several benefits over other options like light rail, skateboards, bikes, and private cars. If your home is not within walking distance of your children’s school, a bus is probably your best and safest bet for ensuring they attend classes safely and on time.

It’s a Money Saver

Although it’s natural for parents to feel protective of their children, wanting to drive them themselves to school, many parents and legal guardians don’t have a clear picture of just how much gas and money they burn driving to and back from school twice a day.

Going with the school bus option allows you to free up money spent on transport, using it instead on other things needed by your family. Taking the bus is also one way of helping your children’s school, as it allows them to recoup the cost of maintaining and contracting buses. When school buses only transport children in low numbers, the school is often left with no choice but to terminate their commissioning of the buses and lay off the drivers.

It’s Great for the Environment

In a time when the effects of air pollution on climate change are becoming more and more obvious, you can do your part by minimizing your car usage to reduce your carbon footprint. And although school buses also cause pollution, one bus carrying 40 children is better than 40 children being driven to school in 40 different cars.

Consolidating transport keeps the road less congested and helps keep your city’s air cleaner.

They’re Safer

Between a bus driven by a driver that had to be vetted by the school board and your teenager, whom do you think will drive more safely on the road? Whether it’s you or your teenage child behind the wheel, school buses are almost always safer, especially in short distances.

And forget about skateboards, bicycles, and scooters. Buses are downright safer.