Resources Clean School Bus Related Articles ASBC Puts Yellow Shade on Earth Day
ASBC Puts Yellow Shade on Earth Day PDF Print E-mail
Thursday, 09 April 2009 00:00
The EPA released a video statement from Administrator Lisa Jackson commemorating the 39th anniversary of Earth Day with a call to all Americans to continue and increase progress in cleaning up the environment for the nation’s children, and the American School Bus Council responded with updated figures on how the yellow school bus can reduce fuel consumption and relieve traffic congestion.

“After working for years to make buses more environmentally friendly, we want to make sure our riders know how much of an impact they have on the environment by riding the yellow school bus,” said Barry G. Stock, president of the National School Transportation Association and a member of the ASBC. ”An even bigger bonus for these students and their parents is that by taking the school bus, they are also taking what the U.S. government believes is the safest way to school.”

Culled from a fuel calculator developed last year, ASBC found that the nation’s fleet of approximately 470,000 school buses could save 2.3 billion gallons of fuel at a cost of $8 billion per year by transporting students compared to Mom and Dad or others driving them to and from schools. That would save the public 62.4 billion miles driven to and from school, or about 346 million miles a day nationwide. ASBC also found that it takes about 36 cars to transport the same number of kids who ride one school bus, which equates to an extra 17.3 million cars each school day clogging roads near schools.

ASBC also said school buses today are much safer in terms of exhaust then they were in 1960. In the last six years, 12,000 school buses have been retrofitted with emissions-reduction technology, in large part due to the EPA’s Clean School Bus program as well as state-run grant projects. Schools have until April 28, incidentally a week after Earth Day on April 20, to submit grant applications for stimulus money tied to the EPA’s National Clean Diesel Campaign for installing emission reduction and anti-idling technology as well as for purchases of new clean diesel buses. Included are those buses that run on biodiesel blends, hybrid diesel-electric power, natural gas and propane.
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