School buses for public use ?

With traffic snarls in the city getting worse by the day and with the crowded public transport system making for a nightmarish experience, Hyderabadis debate on whether it is a good idea to put school and college buses to public use during the day.
The upside of doing this according to G. Shankar, an architect, is that “It would relieve the stress on APSRTC. School buses can be used to ply within a five kilometer radius to collect people from nearby colonies and transport them to the main roads where the RTC can run. This way the APSRTC can concentrate on the main routes with greater frequency and efficiency. The cost of transport by the sweeper school buses will be lower due to their capacity utilisation,” he says.
A. Deepak, chairman, Sentia Global School, couldn’t agree more. “School buses usually follow all the safety norms. Putting them to public use would mean safer roads, since they have speed governors. We only require them for about one hour each in the mornings and evenings. They sit idle the remainder of the day,” he says, adding that if the vehicles are let out to at subsidised rates, it would be a capital investment for schools and would ease the burden on the public too.
“On the flipside though,” says D.P. Chandrashekar, chief operations officer, Jain Heritage A Cambridge School, “the idea is not practical. Students of different classes are let off at different times, so the buses are constantly required. Since we have a large fleet of vehicles we even offer door to door drops and pick ups for our students. Plus, there are several field trips and excursions for which the vehicles are required.”
School managements also claim that since their vehicles are specifically designed for kids, with low seats, rounded edges, safety grills and in some cases have air conditioning, offering them for public use might not be feasible.
Dhirendra Tandon, whose kids study at Delhi Public School, says, “There is also the fear that school buses can be damaged by the careless public. From scribbling graffiti on the seats to tearing the seat covers, the damage can be disturbing.”
Narayan Swamy, executive director, APSRTC, Hyderabad Zone, however has the final say. “Using private vehicles for public use would be against the law. Public transport is a nationalised sector. Drivers need to be specifically trained to navigate through city routes and handle the heavy flow of traffic, something school bus drivers aren’t trained for. Moreover, once school buses are diverted for public use, it’ll be hard for them to switch back. It would instead be better to look for alternative means of transport to address the issue.”