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First Group claims American-style school bus an answer to congestion

THE iconic yellow American school bus is poised to become Britain’s pupil transport system of the future, the head of the transport giant First Group claimed yesterday.

Moir Lockhead, the chief executive of the UK’s largest transport provider, revealed the company had appointed David Blunkett, the former home secretary, to head an independent commission to examine the case for rolling out US-style buses across Britain.

Mr Lockhead, speaking after First Group’s annual general meeting in Aberdeen, said the use of yellow school buses, operating a virtual door-to-door service, would result in improved safety for pupils and cut traffic congestion by taking up to 50 school-run cars off the road at peak times for every yellow bus on the road.

The Aberdeen-based transport giant was the first company in Britain to pilot the use of the yellow school bus in Britain in 2002 with the introduction of three pilot schemes in England and at Aberdeen’s Robert Gordon College.

First Group now has fleet of 180 buses taking 8,000 pupils to school each day. In the United States, through its subsidiary FirstStudent, the company has fleet of 23,000 yellow buses taking more than two million pupils to school on a daily basis.

Mr Lockhead said: “I am personally convinced that yellow buses are the future of school transport in this country. But we would have to get the economics right.”

He revealed that research commissioned by First Group, had shown 86 per cent of British parents would like to send their children to school in dedicated school buses. But the research also showed almost 40 per cent of primary pupils now get to school by car - almost four times more than their parents’ generation, while 21 per cent of secondary school children are driven to school - over three times the number driven among their parents’ generation.

Mr Lockhead: “Our own experience of operating yellow school bus schemes both in the UK and in North America shows that this is a tried and tested way of delivering a high quality, safe and reliable home to school transport system.

“The schemes deliver benefits to a wide range of groups and offer a win-win situation for everyone involved.

“The feedback from the trials is excellent.

“The kids think the buses are cool because they are an icon. They recognise them from American films and TV and enjoy travelling in them.

“We are told by research that the bus becomes an extension the classroom. They get rid of all the gossip on the bus so that by the time they get to the classroom they are ready to work. And truancy levels have been reduced dramatically.”

But Mr Lockhead stressed: “The most important benefit is the security with this door-to- door service we run.”

The major question mark was how the service could be funded, he said. The pilot projects have been funded by a mixture of local authority and business support, and a parental charge.

Iain Coupar, the director of marketing for Lothian Buses, said : “If what is proposed is to replace the current motley collection of lowest priced school contract buses with high-quality, American-style, yellow school buses then that’s a positive step which I would have thought everybody would welcome.

“It wouldn’t affect a company like Lothian because in a city like Edinburgh over 90 per cent of the schoolchildren live less than three miles from school and therefore use the ordinary service bus or walk. They are not entitled to free school travel.”

Mr Blunkett said: “With such powerful features in their favour we owe it to society to evaluate the best ways of delivering this sort of service and making recommendations on how we provide incentives to schools and local authorities to do so.”

Yesterday’s AGM was lobbied by American trade unionists accusing First Group’s American subsidiary of anti-union bias - claims denied by the board.