School services

Jo Keehan said her daughter, a student at Fortitude Valley State Secondary College for the past three years, had often been dropped off late by her school bus.

The mum-of-two believed the bus, route 931, had never arrived.

But Translink told her it had instead arrived about 13 minutes early. The entire route through New Farm, Teneriffe and Bowen Hills is timetabled to take 30 minutes.

Last week, this masthead reported that another dedicated school route, the S785 to Mt St Michael’s College, had also left students believing their ride would not show up, with some waiting for up to 30 minutes.

Keehan said she wanted the option to track school buses restored after it had been wiped when the new app rolled out last year.

“There’s no way to alert if the bus has come early, if it’s not coming at all, or if it’s late,” she said.

Transport chair Andrew Wines said student safety was a “fundamental priority” for the council.

“I know how concerning these disruptions can be, and I want to assure families we are always monitoring our bus network and making changes where needed,” he said.

Wines said families’ concerns with the 931 service were being addressed. The council has also launched a review of the S785 service.

I wasn’t aware before that the services don’t have live data feed?

Also not sure how much priority it seems TfB gives these services. They’ve long avoided things like the school bus flashing lights.

(And speaking of…17 Feb - District (School) Services BCC Meeting Minutes and Presentations - #36 by Pionsix - even the labelling of them as District services sends a negative signal about their importance to provide school transport.)

Time for a new operator for the brisbane school services to run them clearly as such?

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This does seem odd. I know that school buses in Logan, for example, do, because I see them on AnyTrip sometimes. Maybe the Translink app filters them out for some reason?

They aren’t in the general feed so you won’t see them in Google Maps for instance - unlike TfNSW practice.

Anytrip also produces some weird artefacts, like 7## school runs showing up as wildly out of position Gold Coast buses.

My view is all subsidised school routes statewide - by public bus operators or not - should be 4 digit numbers and numbered to prevent clashes. The number actually shown on a school bus might only be a 1, 2 or 3 digit number (just omitting the first or first few) depending on how big the local system is. For a state like Queensland there should also be no reason to duplicate normal route numbers anywhere - just apply prefixes for the regional systems. Same with railbus numbers - there shouldn’t be a 348 and R348.

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