Re. School buses.

[ramblinrose]

From April of this year,our County Council (Derbyshire) will remove funding for most of the school bus services.

These buses are not provided free of charge.My son pays 50p per journey to his local catchment area senior school.So £20 per month goes on school bus fares.
My neighbour has 3 dds at this school,so already pays a fair amount to get her children to and from school.

From April they will either have to catch the service bus or,if enough people are willing,carry on with the school bus at a cost of £1 per journey.
Either way,it will cost twice as much to send our children to school as it does now.
It seems incredible that it will cost my neighbour £120 per month on school bus fares.
The school is just over 2.5 miles away.I suppose it could be argued that this is within walking or cycling distance,but it is not the most pleasant of routes with at least two terrible roads to cross during rush hour traffic.
Neither of us drive btw.

So,AIBU please.
I know councils have to save money,and we're all in this together,but it seems a bit extreme to me.

Learn to drive and car pool.

Move.

Will there be bus passes available?

If you are hard up, a grant towards bus passes?

What's a service bus?

YANBU but really £2/day on busfare isnt too much - would prob cost you that in petrol alone if you drove! Obv it's more expensive for your neighbour but hey, if you have 3 kids nothing is gonna be cheap.

Think you are just gonna have to suck it up and once kids are older and its still an issue then just walk.

One that runs a special service, like this school bus.

Sorry

Bus
Or
Bike.

It's not far.

An increase from 50p to £1 sounds like a dream to me.
Ours will go up from £1 a day to £3.40 a day. No idea how we're going to find that :(

Sorry I think YABU. It is below the legal distance when schools have to provide transport. Yes bus fares are expensive, but the charge of £1 seems reasonable and in line with other areas - if not a bit cheaper.

I would prefer limited money is spent on essential services and this is not essential, but instead a nice to have service.

For perspective, I got a bus to the nearest town to my town, about 6 miles ish, cost £4.70 return. Thats MANY pounds.

My school bus used to cost the same as getting a normal bus - concessionary fare mind.

He is at seniour school so 2.5 miles is nothing. Get him a bike, keep him fit and save money

Sorry, didn't see it was 2.5 miles away.
That's an easily walked distance surely?

Ours will be 10 miles away, so no option to walk or bike.

I was paying £1.60 a day to get to college and back in 1986.

Our council cut out buses that took children with quite severe special needs to school and back.

They now have to struggle on public transport like everyone else.

I'd say your kids have the better end of the deal to be honest.

Could you and your fellow parents lobby your local council for better crossings for the bad roads? We had a new crossing put in, and it really made life so much easier at rush hour.

Ok everyone.
Thank you for your replies.I have taken on board all your comments and perhaps on the face of it I am being unreasonable.
I do realize that public transport is expensive,we use it all the time.My husband catches the bus to work every day and eldest son travels to college by bus.I walk everywhere and it stops me piling on the pounds.

The only comment I have a bit of an issue with is the one about learning to drive.Not sure if that would be financially possible at the moment.

As I say,thanks again everyone.

I get annoyed with the 'learn to drive' comments.

Firstly, as a society we should be encouraging alternative forms of transport which are not polluting.

Secondly, and VERY importantly, some people just CAN'T!!!! Whether due to finance, confidence, medical reasons, any of it, they just can't!!!

Bus service round here is rubbish. DD2's school has started up it's own minibus service to the local towns. I'd die laughing if it was £1 a day, it currently costs me £2.00 and that's loads cheaper than the ordinary bus.

I agree with Grendels, contact the local council asap if the route to school could be improved from a safety aspect.

But I do understand that it is always upsetting when a service you have relied on goes up in price.

But surely when you moved there (if you had kids) or when you has children if you were there already, then you thought about this and how far you were from schools. I dont drive either and therefore I wouldn't move into a house that is 2+ miles from a school!

Service bus is a bus that's not a school bus, one that runs on a timetable and is open to any fare paying passengers.

My primary school kids walk two miles to school, they quite like it. Will admit we take the bus in bad weather or when they are very tired. It is £1.35 each way though, so soon adds up!

There are nearer schools, before people comment, but they either have no places or are private schools.

*I get annoyed with the 'learn to drive' comments.

Firstly, as a society we should be encouraging alternative forms of transport which are not polluting.

Secondly, and VERY importantly, some people just CAN'T!!!! Whether due to finance, confidence, medical reasons, any of it, they just can't!!!*

Well, the OP didn't say, "I don't drive because of x,y & z," so it's a reasonable solution to offer. If you can't drive, why move somewhere out of the way of public transport/far away from where you need to be so it costs a lot to travel?

Bring down the cost, up the regularity and amount of stops on public transport outside of bloody London and I'll think about giving up my car.

Introduce a decent network of safe to use cycle lanes and I'll take my bicycle. My issue with a bike is the same as the OP - large dangerous roads.