HUNDREDS of satisfied young customers are finding that, when it comes to getting to and from school, their new favourite colour is yellow.
Yellow school buses may look like they belong on the set of an American high school movie, but they have become a familiar sight on the borough’s roads over the past five years.
And there are more on the way.
Thanks to a partnership between the council and the Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive, Wigan has no fewer than 14 of the county’s 36 buses. They serve five of our high schools and make sure that nearly 1,000 pupils get to class safely, on time and ready to learn.
“We wanted to offer a safer and better service and to encourage more pupils out of their parents’ cars and onto public transport,” says council green travel expert James Noakes.
“We also wanted to tackle problems of anti-social behaviour that pupils and drivers were experiencing. In areas where these buses have been introduced there has been a decline of nearly 80 per cent in anti-social behaviour.”
The yellow school buses have seatbelts and CCTV cameras throughout. They are also fully accessible and in some cases can even pick pupils up from their own front door. The Wigan fleet is currently taking a staggering 300,000 car miles off the borough’s roads each year, helping to tackle congestion, pollution and the number of accidents on our roads.
Not surprisingly, the buses are proving extremely popular, with more pupils wanting a seat than there are seats available. But because they have proved their worth, the council is committed to providing more.
Cabinet Champion for the Environment, Cllr David Molyneux, says: “The buses are so popular that they’ve almost become a victim of their own success. They give children a great experience of public transport early in life, which hopefully they will carry with them into adulthood.
“This goes beyond the bus ride and into the classroom in the form of better behaviour and learning.”
To find out more you can visit the GMPTE website – Yellow School Bus Information (external link)
