Opportunities Available for Industry to Piggyback on National Ridership Statistics

(March 19, 2008) — The American Association of Public Transportation announced last week a 2.1 percent increase in national ridership last year to 10.3 billion, the best showing for mass transit systems, which consists of bus and light rail, since the late 1950s. The yellow school bus industry could be well served by publicizing its own numbers, which appear to still be in the lead.

The national school bus fleet is thought to number around the 475,000 mark in service of approximately 49 million students each school year. Data compiled by School Transportation News from all 50 states and reported in its 2008 Buyer’s Guide indicate the national fleet could be approaching the half-million figure, though several state departments of school transportation or their equivalent in the Department of Motor Vehicles had no new information to report for the past two of school years.

A little math shows that approximately 50 million student trips for a normal 180-day school year quickly grows when adding an estimated 5 million daily extracurricular activity round trips. This equals about 11 billion individual student rides, or 22 billion boardings and egresses, annually, when the national estimate for Head Start transportation, summer school and child care transportation are included.

APTA also released information that says public bus and rail lines reduce driving by 4,400 miles per household and saves 4.2 billion gallons of gasoline and 37 million metric tons of carbon. Comparable data for the school bus industry was unavailable.