THUNDER BAY — The consortium that coordinates school bus service for three area school boards is optimistic all routes will be in service for the start of the school year next week.
"Fingers crossed, we are going to have a much better year this year," said Craig Murphy, manager of Student Transportation Services of Thunder Bay.
A Canada-wide shortage of school bus drivers has impacted service in Thunder Bay for the past four years or so.
Last year, multiple bus runs were cancelled the very first day of classes due to the unavailability of drivers.
"We did start September with several cancellations, and it kind of continued through the year," Murphy recalled in an interview this week.
Over the course of last year, there were 1,079 cancellations out of over 32,000 schedules routes, which he noted is a 97 per cent in-service rate.
Murphy said the outlook for this year looks more promising.
"We are seeing some improvements, and the school bus operators that are contracted to provide the service on behalf of our school boards have been actively recruiting and training non stop, and they've had some good progress this summer."
He said the bus companies seem confident the number of people interested in driving school buses is increasing, so "they're feeling pretty good about the year coming up, as far as being able to cover the runs."
A key issue in recent years has been a lack of backup drivers to fill in when regular drivers call in sick or are otherwise unavailable.
"It was kind of a crazy situation," Murphy said. "But right now, as it stands, they have all the routes covered for the first day of school, plus the contingency of backup drivers."
Routes have been reconfigured this year because of changes in eligibility for busing that were announced earlier this year by the Ontario government.
"A lot of historical data that we've used in the past is kind of on re-set right now with all new routing," Murphy explained.
"So we have some shuffling of the routes between the bus companies, and are monitoring it. Some areas are quite full, and some areas we do have room left on the buses. But every year at this time we have a surge of requests for transportation just before school starts, and into the first weeks of school. So a lot of those spaces will fill up."
Going forward, if it turns out there are empty seats on some school buses, students who aren't eligible under the new guidelines may still get an opportunity to take the bus.
Murphy said that in these instances, families can contact their school directly and ask for "courtesy transportation," which allows students to get on at a stop where an eligible student is already being picked up.
But he said the availability of courtesy rides won't be fully determined until sometime later in September.
