More than 1,100 Catholic students rode the bus to school during the 2021-22 school year, with buses in Moose Jaw travelling an average of 281.3 kilometres per day, a new report shows.
There were 1,122 youths who travelled by bus from Sept. 1, 2021 to Feb. 28, 2022, while there were 1,145 pupils who took a similar conveyance to school from March 1 to Aug. 31, according to the 2021-22 transportation accountability report presented during the recent board meeting.
Buses transported 515 Catholic pupils in Moose Jaw, 170 Prairie South students to urban and rural locations, 427 Catholic students to Swift Current and 33 Catholic pupils to Shaunavon.
There were 28 routes in Moose Jaw during that school year, with two runs equalling one route. Due to poor weather, the division cancelled 42 runs during the first six months of the school year.
Meanwhile, Chinook School Division — which transports Catholic students to Shaunavon and Swift Current — cancelled 232 runs during the first half of the school year because of poor weather, while Prairie South cancelled 71 runs to South Hill and rural areas during the first six months of the year and six runs during the second half of the year for similar reasons.
Buses on the Moose Jaw North routes travelled an average of 283 kilometres per day during the first half of the 2021-22 year, while that number dropped to 279.6 kilometres per day during the second half of the year, said the report.
The average age of the Moose Jaw bus fleet was 5.35 years, while the average age of buses on regular routes was 4.75 years and 6.25 years for the spare fleet. Meanwhile, about 85.5 per cent of the buses’ capacity on the Moose Jaw North route was used during the day.
The average ride time in Moose Jaw was 26 minutes, while the longest one-way ride time in Moose Jaw was 27 minutes, the report said.
Holy Trinity renewed its bus fleet by retiring six diesel buses and replacing them with newer propane vehicles, which reduced year-over-year maintenance costs by $47,000 — or 74 per cent — and reduced fuel costs by seven per cent, the document continued. Furthermore, it created a school division transportation safety video to address emergency evacuation procedures on school buses. It also developed procedures that enabled it to update its bus planner program daily to be current with other data about student attendance.
The next Holy Trinity board meeting is Monday, Nov. 28.
