Peak Oil Task Force Report - City of Bloomington - State of Indiana

10. Seek cooperation for “bus sharing.”
In effort to increase the efficiency of bus operations by increasing the number of riders per
bus, BT should build on the IU‐BT cooperative precedent and explore cooperation with
Monroe County School Corporation. School buses sit idle most of the day, at night, and
several months during the year. Therefore, opportunities to reduce the school bus fleet and
to increase the use of BT buses by having some children picked up and taken to school by
BT should be explored. During school pick‐up and drop‐off times, BT buses may be
scheduled to make more frequent stops in certain neighborhoods to pick up children. Also,
during off‐peak times BT buses could be used for school trips. During summers, there may
be opportunities to offer unused capacity for long‐distance bus trips to the public. Using
idle buses (during daily and seasonal off‐peak times) for transportation of goods, rather
than people, should be explored as well. The money saved from running and maintaining a
smaller fleet of buses, and from running busses more efficiently, could then be used to
further increase levels of service, or to be able to more quickly replace existing buses with
alternative fuel buses that are less vulnerable to fuel price spikes.
The Task Force recognizes that this proposal comes with constraints. First, the Federal
Transit Administration (FTA) prohibits federally‐funded transit systems from providing
exclusive school bus service and places constraints on competition with freight carriers.
Secondly, some parents may have concerns about mixing students with the general
population on public transit buses. However, the community can begin the process of
moving some public school students (middle and high school students) onto existing public
transit routes where existing routes provide good connections to/from schools. If this
incremental measure can be proven successful, it will help efforts to expand the use of
public transportation for school transportation.
Report of the Bloomington Peak Oil Task Force
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