School Board Mulls Transportation Study

Every day, the Bethlehem Area School District's 119 school buses transport 9,000 students a total of about 6,700 miles, or “the equivalent of a trip from Bethlehem to Disneyland and back.”

The district's buses are on average 10 years old, and about a quarter of the fleet is comprised of buses that are at least 15 years old. Due to budget constraints, the district has not invested recently in new vehicles.

For these reasons and more, the district should consider a professional review of the district's transportation system, suggests Mark Stein, facilities director for the school district.

“A third party review would yield substantial savings and efficiency,” Stein told school directors at the board's facilities committee meeting earlier this month.

There are about seven companies that specialize in public school system transportation studies, he said, estimating a study of the district's practices would cost somewhere between $10,000 and $50,000.

With only five people including himself running the day-to-day operation of the district's school bus service, undertaking the work with district employees would be impractical, Stein said.

“Looking at such a large network is beyond our capabilities in-house,” he said.

Board members were generally agreeable to the idea of scrutinizing the district's transportation system in search of cost savings, though some suggested they'd be more favorable to a deal where the cost of the service was directly tied to the district's potential savings found by the final study.

The matter of whether bids for a potential district-wide transportation study will be sought and under what terms will decided at the board's next regular meeting tonight, board members said.