Keeping the Rubber on the Road: NYC Senior Citizens to Ride School Buses for Free

NYC School Buses to be Used for Access-A-Ride Program When Not Transporting Students

By Lisa J. Hudson

School buses that sit idle between their morning and afternoon runs would be put in service to transport New York City's senior citizens under a proposed quality of life improvement plan announced August 25 by Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

The offer of free bus transportation to supermarkets to increase access to healthy food options is just one of 59 recommendations announced at a joint press conference with the Mayor, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, and the New York Academy of Medicine, which praised the recommendations as a blueprint to enhance city's livability for older New Yorkers.

"Department of Education school buses, when they are not needed to transport students, will be available to older New Yorkers at no charge," the recommendation report, Age Friendly NYC Enhancing Our City’s Livability for Older New Yorkers, states. Transportation will be provided for older adults from senior centers and naturally occurring retirement communities (NORCs) to supermarkets throughout the five boroughs.

Mayor Bloomberg explained, “We’re going to be using our school buses, which, if you think about it, stand vacant for a large part of the day, to shuttle older New Yorkers to and from grocery stores.”

The New York Times, reporting from the press conference, stated that the cost of using school buses for this program, "would be minimal, since the drivers are already paid for more hours than they actually work," and went on to quote Linda I. Gibbs, the deputy mayor for health and human services, who said, "We’ve purchased the full day’s service, so it’s within the contract."

The article did not offer a reaction by school bus drivers, the unions that represent them or the private school bus operations whose drivers would be impacted. The idea for using school buses to transport New York City's older residents comes from a pilot program in Brooklyn which started providing rides to an estimated 1,800 New Yorkers last year.

The idea of riding the school bus for this program garnered mixed reactions. Most seniors who spoke with the New York Times were skeptical, and their concerns included the potential lack of room for them to sit comfortably, that air conditioning would be a must, and that the lack of bathroom facilities on board would also be of concern.

On the other hand, given some of the criticisms of Access-a-Ride, the federally-mandated service for people who cannot use public transit usually due to mobility impairments, and taxis by seniors in the blueprint report, the school bus may provide the balance the administration is seeking.

For example, in the blueprint, seniors noted several reliability and efficiency concerns with Access-A-Ride. The Mayor acknowledged these cost efficiency concerns at the press conference, saying that, “You see the Access-A-Ride vans going all around the city, many times with only one or two people in them.”

Additionally, seniors indicated in the blueprint report that many taxis and livery cabs are not wheelchair accessible or easy to get in and out of. For other transportation initiatives where Access-A-Ride, taxis and livery cabs will be needed, the plan is to improve these services by adding GPS and implementing phone notification system in Access-A-Ride vans and a creating a better matching system of accessible taxis and livery cabs with seniors that need these features.

But going back to the school bus issue, the paper did speak with one supporter of the idea: Lovette Glasgow, a 75-year-old retired teacher, who was more willing to give the school buses a chance, and told the paper, “I’m a former educator so I know about yellow school buses. The bus is fine."

The mayor's committee is said to want to have the school bus for a senior’s initiative running by next month.