During these difficult economic times, everybody is looking to find ways to stretch their budget. Not only are people spending more on food and fuel, their time is often stretched to its limit as well. This can often be seen in the traffic rush to get kids to and from school.
Every weekday morning and afternoon, the Rowan County School System has almost 50 buses traveling throughout the county picking up students to deliver them to school in the morning and delivering them home in the afternoon. Each day, these buses, with their fully trained drivers and driver assistants, travel over 3,000 miles going to and from the schools.
According to the American School Bus Council and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, school buses nationally can keep an annual estimated 17.3 million cars off the roads each morning. This adds up to a savings of 2.3 billion gallons of fuel, an important fact as the cost of fuel puts a crimp in every family’s already tight budget.
“When you consider that one school bus could effectively replace 36 cars on the road, it is easy to understand why riding a school bus is a sound decision,” said Janie Davenport, Rowan County Schools Transportation Director.
Multiply those 36 cars by an average of 9,600 school buses per state and that’s a lot of extra traffic added to the morning commute. For those who are calculating the carbon footprint effect, that’s a C02 emissions equivalent of 32,473 trips between Los Angeles and New York on a Boeing 747 per state per year. (source: By calculating equivalents from EPA report: Greenhouse Gas Emissions from a Typical Passenger Vehicle, and http://www.carbonify.com/carbon-calculator.htm )
Altogether these are three great reasons to ride a school bus – save money, save time, and save the planet. See you at the bus stop!