Associations Reaching Outside Industry
to Relay 'Green' Message

REDONDO BEACH (April 22, 2008) — The National Association of Pupil Transportation and the American School Bus Council are pulling out all the stops to send the message that the yellow bus can help out in the nation’s efforts to “go green.”

"The American School Bus Council has discussed this as a group a number of times,” said NAPT Executive Director Mike Martin. “Earth Day seemed like a great time to see if we could get people outside of the industry to think about the school bus in a different way.”

With ridership among high school students dropping as many prefer driving to school, the environmental benefit of riding the school bus may encourage green-minded teenagers to reconsider school buses as a viable form of transportation, added Martin.

According to Krista Ramsey, a member of Cincinnati Enquirer editorial board, if 500 teen drivers rode the school bus just two days a week instead of in their car throughout a nine-month school year, they could collectively save $37,152 and 10,800 gallons of gas. She has been writing a series of articles in preparation of Earth Day that looks at how society can rely on school buses and mass transit to help improve the environment.

Inaugurated in 1970, Earth Day's first celebrations included walk to school drives. While walking and biking promote child fitness and help reduce the carbon footprint, school buses of today are also doing their fare share to reduce pollution while providing safer routes to school. This year, the Environmental Protection Agency is assisting school districts and other diesel vehicle operators to get cleaner via $49.2 million in grants. The EPA also offers ideas for how to celebrate and resources pupil transporters can use for to clean their fleets Earth Day and every day.

According to the American Public Transportation Association, the record 10.3 billion public transit rides in 2007 on bus, commuter rail, heavy and light rail, trolley bus, and other modes reduced the national carbon footprint by 37 million tons – the equivalent of 4.9 million households using electricity in a year. While similar figures are scientifically unavailable for the student transportation industry, based in part to the boon of federal money each year available to transit agencies for reporting purposes let alone new vehicle purchases, estimates and extrapolations suggest reductions in the carbon footprint could be similar with school buses alone.

According to a survey of all 50 states in the 2008 School Transportation News Buyer’s Guide, school buses ferry nearly 25 million daily riders to and from school each school day. Figuring in daily activity trips, summer school routes, Head Start transportation and child care trips, and school buses could account for as many as 11 billion student rides a year. Also according to industry estimates, school buses in the United States travel approximately 4.3 billion miles a year, just below what APTA reports for the transit industry at more than 4.6 billion miles a year.