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Yellow Bus Info En Route To SchoolZone
Wed, 10 Aug, 2016
Parents are labeling school supplies and buying backpacks. Kids are picking out new runners with non-marking soles. And Edmonton Public Schools transportation planners are busy designing bus routes.
Back-to-school time is approaching, and transportation planners are finalizing the first round of yellow bus routes. Those routes will be adjusted again during the 2016-17 school year, according to a set calendar with deadlines to request a yellow bus route change. Families can find information about their children’s yellow bus routes and schedules on SchoolZone starting in mid-August. The Where’s My Bus? program on SchoolZone uses GPS so parents can check the location of their child’s bus on a computer or mobile device, to see if it’s on time or running late.
Students new to busing can learn the safety rules and take a test ride at the free First Riders event on Aug. 23 at Northlands Park. Families are encouraged to pre-register before Aug. 22.
About 400 yellow school buses will travel more than 29,000 kilometres a day, delivering thousands of students to school starting Sept. 1.
BUSING: BY THE NUMBERS
Here are a few more numbers about busing in Edmonton and beyond.
30,000: that’s how many District school students board ETS and yellow school buses to get to class each day.
380: that’s how many passengers the world’s longest bus can carry. The five-compartment articulated behemoth from China is limited to routes with no sharp turns.
26: the average number of minutes District school students ride the school bus one way in Edmonton.
1930: decade in which it’s believed Lydia Ulsaker wrote the famous UK folk song, The Wheels on the Bus.
5,257,188: the number of kilometres yellow buses travel to District schools in a year.
6.9: that’s how many trips to the moon and back those buses would make in a year, if they traveled equivalent kilometres through space.
1662: year that French mathematician, physicist and religious philosopher Blaise Pascal introduced the first horse-drawn bus in Paris. The coaches ran regular routes and carried between six and eight passengers. High ticket prices drove them out of business after 15 years.
10: the average number of kilometres students walk to the school in the village of Macambacuine, Mozambique. The school was built with funds raised by Edmonton’s Gateway Rotary Club.
3,000: price for a used 66-passenger, 1997 GMC school bus available in July on Kijiji Edmonton. And it’s only got 260,000 kilometres!
1,250: views per day of GPS bus information over SchoolZone, through Where’s My Bus?. 
