Do normal people use 'Open' school buses?

[GusB]

As a legitimate user of school buses (sixth form etc.) my regular bus driver does not like allowing the general public board, stating ‘he has the responsibility of us as school children’ and doesn’t want the risk of “potentially dangerous” members of the public - which he’d have to keep an eye out for. He even stated he’d cover the cost of the ticket for refusing the general public!

This seems a little bit silly. When I was travelling to secondary school I went on a standard service bus. The school paid for season tickets for those who were eligible for free transport and the rest had to pay as normal passengers.

I really don't see the need to split school services from ordinary service work. If there is a perceived safeguarding issue, then the school/parents should get together to provide an escort.

 

[Leedsbusman]

By definition an open bus cannot be a school bus. If it is restricted to school children then it’s closed. There are many school day only services which are mainly used by children but are normal service buses - including all those funded by TfGM. Generally they should appear in journey planners, have destinations (rather than school bus) etc.

There is arguably also no such thing as ‘normal people’ but perhaps let’s not go there!

 

[Adtrainsam]

This seems a little bit silly. When I was travelling to secondary school I went on a standard service bus. The school paid for season tickets for those who were eligible for free transport and the rest had to pay as normal passengers.

I really don't see the need to split school services from ordinary service work. If there is a perceived safeguarding issue, then the school/parents should get together to provide an escort.

Personally, I don’t see the problem with (the very few) members of public wanting to travel on such a school service. Indeed, many of the schools kids use public buses, trains etc. However, it is the bus drivers choice whether to let them on or not at the end of the day...

If the operator advertise the service as being publicly available, then it should be.

Funny you mention that, when this specific route was changed/merged with others after the first lockdown - the timetables suggested by traveline, google maps, open data still show the old times & route with no mention of the new routes/times.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Personally, I don’t see the problem with (the very few) members of public wanting to travel on such a school service. Indeed, many of the schools kids use public buses, trains etc. However, it is the bus drivers choice whether to let them on or not at the end of the day...

The driver must follow company policy. And if company policy is to permit drivers to refuse non school passengers on such services, any BSOG claim for them is fraudulent.

This seems a little bit silly. When I was travelling to secondary school I went on a standard service bus. The school paid for season tickets for those who were eligible for free transport and the rest had to pay as normal passengers.

I agree. Schoolkids use service trains and buses all over the country. They are typically in groups, so the chance of anything untoward happening is tiny - indeed, a lot of the time, for right or wrong, other passengers fear kids more than kids need fear other passengers, and any issues are typically kid-on-kid (the classic on the trains was holding them on so they missed their stop or pushing them off at an earlier one) and don't involve any third party.

Kids are much more likely to be at risk walking to/from the bus stop or from someone they know well e.g. family.

 

[markymark2000]

We have services round here which are subsidised for school use, run on schooldays only, but are also open to the public and marketed as part of the regular route. I've used them a couple of times and haven't been the only "normal" to do so.

Without going into too much detail, why did you pick the school bus over the normal one? Did it just come slightly before the normal regular routes, did it fill a big gap in the normal service or did it go a different way and as such it was more convenient for your journey saving you time and money?




I think there are some great points being raised here that in some instances, they are more useful and provide enhanced links but in other instances, they are simply extracting revenue off 'core' routes (the former good, the latter bad). It also reaffirms my belief that many 'open' school buses, are having drivers refusing travel which is worrying when people and and do rely upon seeing a timetable online and want to get that bus service and then the bus drives past or refuses travel.

 

[Eyersey468]

We have some school runs that are open to the public though it is rare for the general public to use them.

 

[gingerheid]

A decade or so ago I accidentally journey-planned a morning connection from Aylesbury onto the X5 using a school bus to Buckingham. It was an experience I take care not to repeat.

(The late transportdirect.info had just lulled me into a false sense of security by suggesting a run of interesting connection opportunities that I'd not considered when I moved to Aylesbury, like taking the bus from Stoke Mandeville to Princes Risborough instead of doubling back into Aylesbury, and heading north by train from Haddenham & Thame or Tring instead of Oxford of Milton Keynes...)

 

[PeterC]

We only have one "open" service in our town. It regularly runs through the town centre early. A comment to the local authority as part of a larger query had the reply that it was full (it wasn't). The main schooldays run back to my village is part of the regular timetable. Sounds like travelling in a cage full of magpies but the kids are actually very well behaved and normally give up seats to any pensioners who board the service.

Our local independents are pretty free with routings anyway. The regular town to village routes will skip timetabled deviations on the outbound run if there are no passengers for the location. Catching the bus from an intermediate stop on a quiet day to have lunch at the rather nice pub by the terminus could be problematic.

 

[Mikey C]

London’s 600 series school buses are available for anyone to use. I used to drive the 664 every other week as part of my rota, and less frequently the 638, when I worked at Stagecoach London’s Bromley depot. Although quite few in number, there were some regular ‘normal’ passengers who would use them, although in general people would prefer not to have to endure rowdy children on their journeys even when the school service runs in part along the same route as a normal service they would let the school service go by. Of course this could also be a case of them not knowing that it was open to the general public or that it went the same way.

The 626 bus is the only TfL bus between Potters Bar and Barnet/Finchley, indeed when the 84 stops running, it will be the only bus between Potters Bar and Barnet!

 

[Doctor Fegg]

Without going into too much detail, why did you pick the school bus over the normal one? Did it just come slightly before the normal regular routes, did it fill a big gap in the normal service or did it go a different way and as such it was more convenient for your journey saving you time and money?

It filled a gap - the buses are at 07.25 (standard service bus), 08.00 (school bus), 09.08 (service bus) for a journey of just under half an hour. So if I need to be in town for an 08.30 dental appointment then the 08.00 is the one to catch.

I once lived in the village of Bisbrooke, Rutland. It had a daily school bus and a monthly service bus (third Thursday of the month, I think). Fortunately it was only a mile's walk to the next town/village with a better service (Uppingham or Glaston) so I'd usually do that. These days Bisbrooke doesn't even have a monthly bus and Glaston's service has been decimated...

 

[Class800]

I would prefer school buses to be separate - in recent times there has been an effort to separate school and non-school services in some areas - and this may be preferable. On normal buses, I have witnessed some very unpleasant incidents of adult passengers leering at some of the girls. It is not the majority, but it is still very unpleasant. In terms of my use of 'school buses', I would avoid unless absolutely essential. The only one I have used is the school service on route X1 in Orkney from Stromness to Kirkwall, which (at least as per 2019) operates on a closed basis from Stromness Academy but switches to open service as soon as it leaves the school grounds. It runs in a normal timetabled slot.

 

[Typhoon]

By definition an open bus cannot be a school bus. If it is restricted to school children then it’s closed.

In East Kent most 'school buses' are numbered in the 900 series, they often terminate at a school, most of the passengers are going to school. At times some feature in timetables where, as in the situation described by @Doctor Fegg they fill a gap. When I was taking a weekly course. I used one because there was a gap of over two hours between journeys on the regular route - the gap being filled by two school buses. It was a bit noisy but certainly not intolerable, the only drama we had was once when the bus and a delivery lorry tried passing on a narrow stretch of road; the bus stopped as the lorry tried to squeeze by but pulled some of the rubber beading round a window away.

I suppose it would depend on the School whether or not they get used as some School Services can be well known for the bad behavior of the kids on board and also I'm sure most kids seem to think that School Services are just that services just for them and not for normal passengers and wouldn't think twice of having a go at any normal passengers that would get on.

A lot depends on the school and whether it takes any measures - I can think of several in Kent where staff will be there when the bus arrives and I have certainly seen a member of staff speaking to the driver before the pupils got off; also controlled entry to the bus on the way from school. Some others (and I can think of some grammar schools) where no-one is there and it is mayhem. I also know of a local bus company that used the same drivers regularly - they were the right types, one was youngish, fairly easy going. would talk to the pupils; and another older, again quick with a joke but imposing to look at. By using the same drivers, they get to know the pupils. Previously a different company had run the journey which I traveled on a couple of times, I had seen pupils in Tesco. when on the bus some broke some biscuits and were throwing them at others. I had a near miss. Some of the pupils noticed that I was watching what was going on and quietened down. As we got towards the end, I went round the bus picking up some of the rubbish left behind; some of those left on the bus did likewise. I dumped it in a litter bin but wished I'd kept it and taken to the school and, maybe, dumped it on a senior stamp members desk (still bagged). Instead, I wrote to the head advising him of what had happened, offering to go in to identify the offenders (as ever, it was a minority), and informing him that if it was repeated I would be informing the governors (one was my councillor, who knew me by sight), the local media. the Education authority, and if still nothing, Ofsted and the Schools Minister at the DfE. I see no reason why bus drivers should put up with rank bad behaviour when they should be concentrating on driving the bus.
I should also add that on a few occasions when drivers have stopped to let people off, they have asked me where I was going, and, if it was on their route invited me to get on rather than stand in the cold - I hadn't flagged them down because I was never clear which were open and which closed (I have a pass which I swiped).

This seems a little bit silly. When I was travelling to secondary school I went on a standard service bus. The school paid for season tickets for those who were eligible for free transport and the rest had to pay as normal passengers.

I really don't see the need to split school services from ordinary service work. If there is a perceived safeguarding issue, then the school/parents should get together to provide an escort.

Good point but what about an escort for the adult passengers?

 

[Martin1988]

In the past I have regularly used Service 680 between Yate and Filton which is primarily for students of UWE and SGS College but is available for use by members of the public and apart from a couple of occasions drivers have always stopped to pick me up. There have been a few periods where other members of the public have used it including an elderly couple who used to board on a Friday evening in Yate to go to Chipping Sodbury.

When using this service my stop has been the route terminus at Brimsham Park in North Yate (from Yate Bus Station the route is via South Yate and the edge of Chipping Sodbury) and on a good number of occasions I have encountered drivers who on the evening journeys who have not run the full route in the Yate area and just fast tracked to stops where passengers were getting off. I also remember one friday evening where I got left stranded at a stop in the Filton area after the driver, having not picked up anyone at the college, decided nobody would be getting on and diverted off route.

I last used the route a few weeks back on a Friday evening. I was the only passenger onboard and the driver claimed he'd done the route every evening for a fortnight and I was the first passenger he'd had.

Other than that the only time I've used a school bus was an SGBC route from Bristol Grammar returning to a Bristol City Council office after a site visit . The driver told his passengers I was an inspector so they had to behave!

 

[Andyh82]

I’m sure all of you who are urging to use your legal right to travel on open door school services will quickly lose your feeling of satisfaction once on board when you end up getting abused by the kids, and probably called all kinds of names.

Unless you are talking about a rural area where the school bus basically replaces the public bus and there is a massive gap in the timetable, I can’t imagine how many would find useful a trip from Suburb A to School B not serving any town centre in the process.

 

[peterblue]

I think generally, it depends on how rural the area is & how well the area is served by standard buses. In somewhere like Manchester or Birmingham, it would be a lot rarer for someone to intentionally choose to travel on a school contract. In a rural area, it may well be one of only 3 or 4 departures in a day.

 

[ABB125]

Where I went to school (in the countryside), most children (who didn't walk or get dropped off by parents) went on dedicated school buses. By which I mean vehicles contracted by the county council specifically for the school, once in the morning and in the other direction in the afternoon (and they were generally coaches, not buses!). There were also a number of public bus routes which served the school. On most of these, all that happened was the most appropriately-timed bus in the timetable took a small diversion to the school; one one route, an additional bus was put on (marked in the timetable as school days only) at the relevant time, as otherwise the volume of children would overwhelm* the "standard hour" bus; this additional bus was, however, open to the public.

*The extra bus put on ran about 20 minutes after the "standard" one, and had a different route. Normally, when in the sixth form, I took the earlier bus. One day, this had some sort of mechanical failure, which I noticed* at the start of the last village; the driver ignored it, until everyone had been picked up from the various stops, and continued until reaching a suitable layby on the main road, whereupon he promptly pulled in, shut down, and said "it's broken". Cue excited chatter on board, "how many lessons will we miss" etc. As I expected, following a few phone calls, the extra bus pulled into the layby once it had picked up everyone as normal, and we all piled onto it. The broken down bus was an Enviro 300, the new one was an Enviro 200 MMC (apologies if this isn't the correct terminology, buses aren't my speciality!). I deliberately made sure I was the last person to board; this was almost impossible, as there physically wasn't room for anyone else. All seats filled, the aisles and luggage area full and standing (and squashed), right up to me being pressed up against the doors. I think I counted about 65 people in total; I can't remember exactly what the rating of the bus was, but it was definitely less than that! Fortunately, there were few "normals" on board. (This is because this bus service is almost exclusively used by pensioners on their free passes, and any regular passengers know that it's best to avoid the school time buses. I don't think I've ever seen more than about 5 passengers on board at any one time anyway!) For context, this is an hourly service between two towns, calling at lots of villages in between (but not always the same ones) operated by a local bus company using (unless one's out of action for maintenance) the same three vehicles and a pool of 4 or 5 regular drivers who know many of the passengers by name.

*I say noticed, I heard a beeping start in the cab, and thought "that doesn't sound good"!

 

[Bletchleyite]

I would prefer school buses to be separate - in recent times there has been an effort to separate school and non-school services in some areas - and this may be preferable. On normal buses, I have witnessed some very unpleasant incidents of adult passengers leering at some of the girls.

It needs to be safe for kids to use buses and trains at all times. This is not a reason to go for dedicated school buses, it is a reason for people to call out this behaviour, and for such individuals to be banned from the bus operator's services entirely and if there is a suitable offence prosecuted.

If not prosecutable in itself, I wonder what the Police might find on the hard drive of men who go round leering at schoolgirls?

 

[Martin1988]

I’m sure all of you who are urging to use your legal right to travel on open door school services will quickly lose your feeling of satisfaction once on board when you end up getting abused by the kids, and probably called all kinds of names.

Unless you are talking about a rural area where the school bus basically replaces the public bus and there is a massive gap in the timetable, I can’t imagine how many would find useful a trip from Suburb A to School B not serving any town centre in the process.

Last week I ended up riding on a service in the Cheshire East area which during the journey became rammed with school passengers and to be honest I felt very uncomfortable being on board with them and wanted to get off.

 

[Mikey C]

Recent Covid times are another reason to not want to be on buses full of school children, especially if you don't have young children yourself...

 

[Deerfold]

I would prefer school buses to be separate - in recent times there has been an effort to separate school and non-school services in some areas - and this may be preferable. On normal buses, I have witnessed some very unpleasant incidents of adult passengers leering at some of the girls. It is not the majority, but it is still very unpleasant.

Clearly this is very unpleasant, but can presumably happen if they travel on a bus in the evening or a weekend, even if you put them on separate buses to and from school.

 

[philthetube]

The risk to children from adults on a bus loaded with school children is virtually nil, much higher risk the other way round with a couple of children on a normal service

 

[Geordie driver]

The risk to children from adults on a bus loaded with school children is virtually nil, much higher risk the other way round with a couple of children on a normal service

Spot on.

I did 12 years on a rota with at least 2 schools per day, sometimes 5, I used to tell people I worked in education.

It was rare for a normal person to board, and if they did I would check that they knew it was a school service and where it went, many people just assume it's their service if it's the right time and the right coloured bus, they don't check the screen.

Those that did board would normally get off, ashen faced, shaking their head and vowing " never again".

I never had a member of staff board, I think there is a good reason many teachers arrive an hour before the kids and leave an hour after, and it's not just due to dedication.

Having said that, most of the kids were great, just lively and they are only kids once.

 

[TXMISTA]

Where I went to school in SW London, we had a few '6xx' TfL routes that were designated as school services - i think some have been axed in the past few years. I used the 681 a few times when my timings coincided with its timetable. I remember plenty of general public members using it and after a certain point along the route, it was mostly members of the public using it.

 

[Blindtraveler]

I have used dedicated open school bus routes in the past and will gladly do so again. They quite often provide a valuable if poorly advertised journey opportunity through areas that either are not well served or that use a shortcut or faster route that again is not normally serviced. Particular examples might be if a service once finished it's selection of pickups battens down a dual carriageway for 20-minutes rather than crawling along the usual route via high street or something similar. Or perhaps if if I can save myself 40 minutes because they've got a single deck bus winding down a selection of Rhodes or streets that the standard double decks on the normal service route would never get through.


Another example is quite a few of the school or college buses in rural or semi rural areas, have used a number of these over the years particularly in Cumbria to do fairly long-distance journeys or legs of long-distance journeys that possibly connect into or out of another bus or coach route or train service


I will confess to a personal preference for older secondary school pupils or college kids though rather than primary ones Bert beggars really cannot be choosers when riding such a service

 

[Busaholic]

There used to be a school route numbered in the 600 series in London that ran on non-schooldays too, so it obviously was intended to carry non-schoolchildren. Can't remember the number, it was in the Highgate area iirc.

 

[TXMISTA]

There used to be a school route numbered in the 600 series in London that ran on non-schooldays too, so it obviously was intended to carry non-schoolchildren. Can't remember the number, it was in the Highgate area iirc.

You’re right, it’s the 603. I believe it’s still running

 

[Deerfold]

You’re right, it’s the 603. I believe it’s still running

It also runs trips in both directions, morning and afternoon.

It no longer runs Christmas and Summer holidays, but doesn't give up at Easter or half terms.

London Bus Routes – 603 timetable

 

[-Colly405-]

In the past I have regularly used Service 680 between Yate and Filton which is primarily for students of UWE and SGS College but is available for use by members of the public and apart from a couple of occasions drivers have always stopped to pick me up. There have been a few periods where other members of the public have used it including an elderly couple who used to board on a Friday evening in Yate to go to Chipping Sodbury.

When using this service my stop has been the route terminus at Brimsham Park in North Yate (from Yate Bus Station the route is via South Yate and the edge of Chipping Sodbury) and on a good number of occasions I have encountered drivers who on the evening journeys who have not run the full route in the Yate area and just fast tracked to stops where passengers were getting off. I also remember one friday evening where I got left stranded at a stop in the Filton area after the driver, having not picked up anyone at the college, decided nobody would be getting on and diverted off route.

I last used the route a few weeks back on a Friday evening. I was the only passenger onboard and the driver claimed he'd done the route every evening for a fortnight and I was the first passenger he'd had.

Other than that the only time I've used a school bus was an SGBC route from Bristol Grammar returning to a Bristol City Council office after a site visit . The driver told his passengers I was an inspector so they had to behave!

What I find strange about that route is that it is the remnant of the once hourly 680/681, and for a while (even when only once daily) ran all year rather than term time only.

The odd routes in the area are the 5 routes to Winterbourne Academy, where 4 are open and commercial, and 1 is open but subsidised. The subsidised one does have a family get on occasionally, heading to a primary school.