toto wrote:
More densely populated counties have more schools, so bus
routes generally are shorter. But some rides are getting longer
there, too. Johnny Forte, a Fairfax County assistant school
superintendent who oversees transportation, said he has
fielded calls from parents who wonder why their children are
on the bus more than 30 minutes even though they live less
than 10 miles from school.

(Here I notice that short trips often take longer than you would
think due to having to go around the canals, so the trip by car
is longer and a trip by school bus with lots of stops is longer
still and this area is pretty densely populated)

In Fairfax County, it is lots of stops and the economic necessity to
design routes so as to fill every bus to capacity, because of a bus
driver shortage (bus driver pay is actually quite high, but the cost
of living is higher).

The high school regular-ed buses have routes that take 30-60 minutes
to drive. The kids at the beginning of the route get picked up an
hour before school starts; the ones at the end perhaps only 10-15
minutes.

If a kid doesn't take the bus every single day, he is dropped from the
route, which might change the route and the schedule; likewise, new
kids in midyear can change the routes and schedules, often by as much
as a half hour change over the course of a year.

When I was a kid, they set the bus routes at the beginning of the
year, and ridership, especially at the high school level, was variable
with the seasons; the route did not change with ridership changes.
Late buses ran every day, traveled the same routes as the regular
routes, and sometimes had only 10-12 students. Now late buses run
only 2 days a week, have different routes so as to cover the kids of
multiple regular routes, and if too many kids show up, they have to
wait while they order up an extra bus. (Special ed late buses have to
be signed up for at the beginning of the day, or they won't take you.)

My son is in a special high school magnet program - a daily 2 hour
culinary academy at a different school followed by a travel period to
his regular school. Unfortunately, the way things work, kids ride
30-60 minutes on the regular bus to their base school, then board
another bus to the magnet school, only 5-6 miles but another half hour
ride since this is the peak of rush hour and the bus serves two base
high schools; they can't leave until all the buses have arrived at the
first base school, so they typically arrive at the magnet class 30-40
minutes into the class.

I drive my kid directly to the academy. An hour and a half on the bus
to get to a school 6 miles away so as to miss a quarter of the class
was simply too much. He does take the bus back to his base school,
sometimes missing a few minutes of his next class, but the school
conveniently has a 20 minute student-aid period stuck in at that point
where kids in grade trouble go to the classes they are having trouble
in - my son doesn't get that.

lojbab
--
lojbab
Bob LeChevalier, Founder, The Logical Language Group
(Opinions are my own; I do not speak for the organization.)
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org