Friday, November 4, 2011

School Transportation Could Be Victim Of Recession

School buses may be the next victim of the recession in Washington. Governor Chris Gregoire is considering eliminating state dollars for school bus service. She is sending lawmakers a long list of ideas, including many she admits could hurt regular people.

How would that affect our area? We're not sure yet, but Vancouver's newspaper 'The Columbian' takes a closer look at school bus usage in the state.

2 comments:

Charles said...

Lets see we have school buses transporting overweight children to schools so they can take PE to lose weight, but I guess their parents would drive them if the bus did not come and get them.

SRTC Staff said...

That was one of the concerns mentioned in the article, that if transportation isn't provided, parents will drive their children to school, which adds to vehicle miles driven and air pollution. I asked a couple of my friends over the weekend why they drive their kids to school, thinking maybe it was a safety issue or something and both said they've just always done it and aren't sure now if the kids would be 'disciplined' enough to walk by themselves.


About SRTC

SRTC is the federally designated Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for Spokane County. Urbanized areas with populations exceeding 50,000 people are required to have an MPO. SRTC was formed to address the county's transportation planning needs. It provides coordination in planning between the public, cities, small towns, the county, the state, transit providers, and tribes.

SRTC offers services including transportation monitoring, transportation modeling, census information analysis, travel demand forecasting, historical traffic count analysis, geographic information systems, and trip generation rates.