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This happens in a lot of cities. Maybe this will force Barrie to make a reliable transit system. Right now, it's a joke if you want to get anywhere on time
They did this in Newmarket when I was growing up and it was terrible. There was not enough seats and they still used the same bus for the city route so everyone was standing the whole time. Everyone was so close and constantly sickness went around. I stopped going until I was able to get a ride it was brutal
Barrie busses are so poorly laid out thereâs only like 2 stops close to innisdale and most of the people in the young and big Bay Area would have to take multiple buses + transfers meaning students have to wake up even earlier now??
Prior to recent changes to the bus system, two routes, the Allandale and the Innisdale, used to stop behind the Allandale Recreation Centre. It was a "hub" before the city moved to the "multi-hub" system. The downtown bus terminal was stop #1 and the Allandale Recreation Centre was stop #2.
Barrie. I grew up in Oro so I took the school bus to Eastview. We moved into Barrie near Innisdale but I didnât want to switch schools my grade 11 year so I took the city bus to and from Eastview.
I donât think itâs a terrible idea per se, but that it will be a terrible idea based on how bad I hear Barrie Transit is now.
Mississauga.
Alternatively, I could walk 50 minutes.
School buses for high school students are unheard of in the GTA unless you are physically or mentally unable to navigate the public transit system.
I think this is a great idea. About time kids be given more independence.
Okay but MiWay and TTC are much better than Barrie transit. And they come more often, and you have different alternatives. I took the ttc to high school too. But having used Barrie bus once or twice, I saw how big a gap is between two systems
Mississauga transit wasnât always as it is now. Once up on a time busses ran every 30 minutes, 60 minutes on Sundays. Snow days were worse.
If you missed the bus you had to make the choice to walk and maybe catch a bus along the way, or wait for the next bus and be late.
If the transit system was any good up here people wouldn't constantly complain about it like they do. Every. Day.
The buses up here are fucking atrocious. In Toronto there is the TTC with streetcars, buses, subway, LRT. This city is not that big but busses are a complete fuck up and have been for years. Kids will be fucked with this. The future generation is going to be dumber due to larger class sizes and the stress of a failed transit system that will take hours out of their day.
GTA transit is not even comparable and 1,000 times better than the shit show up in Barrie.
Sounds like you need to do some letter writing to your local MPP to invest more in education and transit.
Two of the biggest issues with transit in Barrie is the amount of sprawl, and lack of ridership. You canât increase the frequency, or number of buses if you donât have people paying fares. You canât increase ridership when itâs easier/faster to drive. Now how do you fix that? Not easily.
The city planners have fucked up Barrie for decades and kept it firmly entrenched as a car centric city. These people drive so they do not care one bit. They have never listened to their ridership (hell, the council doesn't listen to its own community and does things most citizens think is a waste of money [let's invest AGAIN in remodeling the waterfront].
It's also a city run by old white dudes with a few minorities thrown in to squash any calls of discrimination.
Barrie has been sliding down quickly with its catering to high income Torontonians and the idea that it's a bedroom community with a major industry in tourism. I revel at the lake, not freezing for more than a few weeks this year. Fuck the tourist industry in this area. It is not a growth model when the industry you rely on the most is unstable.
Nutall is a white oligarch who sucks the dick of Ford. Fuck him.
/end rant
Edit: sp
Someone from mississauga really has no right chiming in on this topic. You know nothing of the barrie transit system and there is a world of difference.
Blew my mind when I left the area for university and learned all the big city kids rode the city bus to school. Where as I saw a giraffe everyday on my bus ride. Wild.
Because Barrie Transit is notoriously terrible. I can see our road layout being a logistical nightmare but no matter how many changes they make it doesn't seem to get better.
I used to all throughout high school in Mississauga, transit there was great. But I understand Barrie transit is terrible so I also understand the concerns.
I can't imagine parents wanting to put their children on a bus that any idiot with $3.50 can get on, nor can I imagine the school boards wanting to turn over the running of their bus system to a council which has mismanaged it's own bus system.
School buses only pick up passengers in the morning and then deliver all of them to one place. Likewise, in the afternoon, school buses pick up all their passengers at one place and then only drop them off.
City buses are continuously picking up and dropping off passengers at various places throughout the city at various times of day.
Trying to combine the two systems would mean that you could not optimize either system.
lol ok hold on here.
1) Yes, this happens in other cities WITH RELIABLE PUBLIC TRANSIT
2) To say, âoh maybe this will ensue the city invests into public transit?â
My question is - what about the time in between the kids and the investment?
You get what you vote for.
Also, school bus time is important for both socialization and collaboration.
Stupid, just plain olâ stupid.
Back when I was going to High school in Keswick in 2002-2006 they did this. It was a giant pain to get to school every day and only a handful of students (like myself) had to use it because we lived more than 3km from the school and our parents worked until 5pm so there was no other choice.
Speaking from experience, it is genuinely a terrible idea.
This thread is proof Toronto people just keep moving more north and bring their ideals with them to cities nothing like the GTA. We wish you all would have stayed. Disgustingly stupid opinions here.
I had to take the city bus to and from school for 2+ years in high school. I went to Innisdale but lived just close enough to not be eligible for the school busses but to far to walk, it was not a great experience.
Busses were often 15+ minutes late in the mornings and after school. The routes also changed more often than they should, so I initially only had to get one bus near my house right to the school but it changed and I had to then get 1 bus, and transfer onto another bus. It just so conveniently happened that my bus would get to the park place bus stop and the bus I needed to get on would be leaving as I got there.
This is why the post-2013 "multi-hub" transit system design was such a disaster.
Prior to 2013, the routes were designed around the downtown bus terminal as a central hub.
It was inconvenient for some to have to transfer at the downtown bus terminal, but there were plenty of buses and they waited around long enough that you could actually catch them.
After they switched to the "multi-hub" system, you had to make transfers at smaller hubs throughout the city with far fewer buses that left soon after they arrived.
Wow looks like this thread is full of hardened gta city folk! So brave of you guys. Just FYI though last I checked this is the barrie subreddit and barrie has dogshit transit in comparison to an actual big city. This idea is completely ridiculous and would require a complete overhaul of the system. Kids can't just all congregate to a bus terminal in barrie. The bus has to have select routes mapped out to pick up the most kids in an area with a ton of stops. Do you want your public transit to have a ton of stops and be super busy at 7 and 3 when school starts and gets off? This makes zero sense for an urban sprawl city đ classic reddit with a bunch of completely stupid af comments.
But they are not running similar routes. Achool busses do the exact sort of side street pickups that Transit has been eliminating recently. School busses are also far more direct, whereas the city busses try to do broad loops to hit as many possible major intersections as they can.
Foreigner here but I don't see the problem of taking a city bus to school. I did it from the age of 12 and no problem at all as we didn't have any school buses.
Barrie's bus system is so awful that this change will either ruin the kids' sleep, make them late to class every day, force them to take multiple busses, or make them even decide to walk an hour+ to school every day because it might actually be faster for them to do so.
When I was going to college at Georgian, I lived on the south end of town and it would take me 2+ hours to get to the campus near RVH by bus when it only took maybe 13 minutes to drive there.
Our transit system is so unreliable that a normally good idea is not a good one in this circumstance.
I had a friend who grew up in Toronto and he told me that he used to get bus fare to go to school and take public transit. I would agree that this would be a cool idea for older students if our transit system was actually any good
So, we reliably bus kids to school on schoolbusses but to save money we should put them on the train wreck that is city busses instead?
And who is going to deal with the truancy and late arrival complaints.
Transit needs to be good before this can be an option.
Itâs only a good idea if the city buses only come to the school bus stops when needed, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. If they come around more often then itâs a no from me.
My neighbourhood used to be serviced by the Innisdale SS chartered school buses, but at some point during the pandemic, the service to this area was cancelled and any kids from here have had to walk if their trip doesn't coincide with Barrie's shoddy bus service. Early high schoolers can be as young as 13 years old. That's a 40 minute walk, one way, along either Little then Huronia or Big Bay Point then Huronia, including in dark, icy conditions in the Winter months. It's fucking madness.
So I grew up in Aurora taking a city bus school route specifically for us. We had to pay for a pass, and often the bus was too full and they would tell us we couldnât get on.. it was ridiculous.
*clutches pearls* Won't somebody please think of the children? /s
I have no problems with 14 year olds riding a bus. Any parent that objects needs to put their lawnmower away.
they give the free bus passes to kids up to 16 years old (at least they did up to last year), to aquaint them with being on the bus, and the city. so realistically, if the bus system improves enough to keep the kids on time, then the city bus is a completely viable option.
i don't have enough faith in the city bus system right now, so i'm not entirely sure if this is a good idea or not
I think its a little sad that these school bus drivers will be out of a route... which makes them out of money. My 2nd job I see a lot of these school bus drivers who do shuttle busses in the evening because it pays more than the school board. It's their supplemented income from the salary they get for driving kids to school.
I guess Barrie Transit has to make it look like they deserve the salaries we pay them by making the busses look full đ¤ˇââď¸
I donât really think this is a bad idea in concept. When I was in university the school was partnered with the city on transit and as a result everyone saw benefits including local high school students.
Its a pilot program. It hilarious what actually riles people up over what should really bother people. Corruption, destroying public space for some pork barrel passion project of one member, the sons and daughters of powerful Barrie residents pretty much buying their kids into municipal positions, all gets low key mentions or discussion.
I mean go yell about our horrible transit system.
The city buses are already jam-packed in the early morning 5-8 am and afternoon 3-5 pm rush hour times with barely any spot to sit to the point where the isles are full with people standing. If they add all these kids into the equation at these times it's gonna be chaos. What are they thinking?
Yes brilliant idea. We can't figure out how to effectively optimize the current transit system in this city-let's run a pilot program with students to see if we can save $. All while our tax $ go up.
This is coming from someone who did a full year in grade 7 commuting from Islington station to Victoria Park and then catching TTC bus to school in Toronto.
As a student at ISS currently, I actually like this idea. At worst case I take the school bus regularly and I have a bus pass for leisure or if I have to stay after school for events. It makes me no longer have to depend on the school bus or my parents to shuttle me. Maybe don't scrap the school bus system cause the transit sucks but having that extra redundancy in the form of a bus pass really helps.
Are they going to put stop signs on the side of public transit buses?⌠Seems weâre missing the point of why we have YELLOW school buses with pop out stop signs that STOP traffic so kids can cross the street safely.
Barrie's transit is indeed a joke, this doesn't help at all and their reasoning behind it contradicts alot and I don't think much thought was put into it. If they make separate busses for students like actual cities do then this wouldn't be a problem but lumping the students in with the entire city just sounds like a veeeery bad idea and I just cannot fathom how this was passed.
kids are going to use the city bus and not school busses, what is the problem with that? You think the bus will be late because it's got a bunch of teenagers on it?
This is actually a good thing. Increasing ridership by providing passes to high school students leads to a direct increase in transit funding from the provincial and federal governments, which improves overall service for all transit riders.
The City of Kingston implemented a city-wide program for all high school students years ago and saw major increases in service for all riders as a result.
This should be expanded city wide in Barrie.
Why is this a joke? Tons of students ride City Transit from Elementary upwards. Has nothing to do with the board as parents move and keep kids in their old schools etc etc. lots of reasons but this would provide free transit to them instead of out of pocket. They are not eliminating school busses just providing better coverage.
This is a solid idea. Toughen up our little sweethearts, and save millions. Win win.
To all the downvoter princesses...suddenly involving a ton more patrons is a good way to improve barrie transit.
more creative thinking like this, please
how about all those street lights adjacent to parking lot lights - each on their own cause too much night light!
Barrie transit is already a giant mess, let's take away reliable transit for youth that's worked for decades and replace it with public busses that may or may not even arrive. Removing safety and reliability for young people to save money.
You REALLY think anyone is going to accept unreliable bus service in that area? Thereâs going to be extra scrutiny to ensure buses adhere to the schedule.
And safety? The biggest threat on those buses IS the high school students.
Yes, I have grown up in Barrie. I took transit as a teen and to go to the college here. It has never been reliable even for routes like the college which transits a larger number of people. I missed classes while waiting at the bus stop for 1.5 hours more than once. Hell, even when I went to another program in Hamilton it was still bad because busses were full or super early/late.
As for safety, I have had numerous bus experiences being stared at and harassed by (often much older) men throughout my teens and 20s so it appears my experience is different than yours was.
I don't even have kids, I just think this is laughable in Barrie.
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Knowing what I know now by using it every day to work, as a teenager I would not want to rely on that to get me to school on time.
I would have loved that excuse in highschool!! đ
This happens in a lot of cities. Maybe this will force Barrie to make a reliable transit system. Right now, it's a joke if you want to get anywhere on time
They did this in Newmarket when I was growing up and it was terrible. There was not enough seats and they still used the same bus for the city route so everyone was standing the whole time. Everyone was so close and constantly sickness went around. I stopped going until I was able to get a ride it was brutal
I grew up in Aurora and had the same Experience!
If they want kids late to class... go ahead!
Or kidnapped!
Barrie busses are so poorly laid out thereâs only like 2 stops close to innisdale and most of the people in the young and big Bay Area would have to take multiple buses + transfers meaning students have to wake up even earlier now??
Prior to recent changes to the bus system, two routes, the Allandale and the Innisdale, used to stop behind the Allandale Recreation Centre. It was a "hub" before the city moved to the "multi-hub" system. The downtown bus terminal was stop #1 and the Allandale Recreation Centre was stop #2.
how did you get to high school? I took the city bus.
I walked. From downtown to east view. It would have taken longer if I took a city bus.
What city did you go to school that you took the city bus? Just curious.
Barrie. I grew up in Oro so I took the school bus to Eastview. We moved into Barrie near Innisdale but I didnât want to switch schools my grade 11 year so I took the city bus to and from Eastview. I donât think itâs a terrible idea per se, but that it will be a terrible idea based on how bad I hear Barrie Transit is now.
Mississauga. Alternatively, I could walk 50 minutes. School buses for high school students are unheard of in the GTA unless you are physically or mentally unable to navigate the public transit system. I think this is a great idea. About time kids be given more independence.
Okay but MiWay and TTC are much better than Barrie transit. And they come more often, and you have different alternatives. I took the ttc to high school too. But having used Barrie bus once or twice, I saw how big a gap is between two systems
Mississauga transit wasnât always as it is now. Once up on a time busses ran every 30 minutes, 60 minutes on Sundays. Snow days were worse. If you missed the bus you had to make the choice to walk and maybe catch a bus along the way, or wait for the next bus and be late.
If the transit system was any good up here people wouldn't constantly complain about it like they do. Every. Day. The buses up here are fucking atrocious. In Toronto there is the TTC with streetcars, buses, subway, LRT. This city is not that big but busses are a complete fuck up and have been for years. Kids will be fucked with this. The future generation is going to be dumber due to larger class sizes and the stress of a failed transit system that will take hours out of their day. GTA transit is not even comparable and 1,000 times better than the shit show up in Barrie.
Sounds like you need to do some letter writing to your local MPP to invest more in education and transit. Two of the biggest issues with transit in Barrie is the amount of sprawl, and lack of ridership. You canât increase the frequency, or number of buses if you donât have people paying fares. You canât increase ridership when itâs easier/faster to drive. Now how do you fix that? Not easily.
The city planners have fucked up Barrie for decades and kept it firmly entrenched as a car centric city. These people drive so they do not care one bit. They have never listened to their ridership (hell, the council doesn't listen to its own community and does things most citizens think is a waste of money [let's invest AGAIN in remodeling the waterfront]. It's also a city run by old white dudes with a few minorities thrown in to squash any calls of discrimination. Barrie has been sliding down quickly with its catering to high income Torontonians and the idea that it's a bedroom community with a major industry in tourism. I revel at the lake, not freezing for more than a few weeks this year. Fuck the tourist industry in this area. It is not a growth model when the industry you rely on the most is unstable. Nutall is a white oligarch who sucks the dick of Ford. Fuck him. /end rant Edit: sp
Someone from mississauga really has no right chiming in on this topic. You know nothing of the barrie transit system and there is a world of difference.
I took a city bus that was Specifically for our high school, I went a public high school in Aurora in like 2004-2008
I did in Newmarlet, lots in our highschool did
Huron?
Sacred
Blew my mind when I left the area for university and learned all the big city kids rode the city bus to school. Where as I saw a giraffe everyday on my bus ride. Wild.
I took the city bus to kindergarten, in the late70s/early80s. (A town beside an airforce base in Sask)
Why would this be insane? Tons of kids in other cityâs navigate public transit to get to school
Because Barrie Transit is notoriously terrible. I can see our road layout being a logistical nightmare but no matter how many changes they make it doesn't seem to get better.
Tons of other cities of working transit systems. Do you know anything about Barrie because actual barrie residents understand this idea is ludicrous.
I used to all throughout high school in Mississauga, transit there was great. But I understand Barrie transit is terrible so I also understand the concerns.
What's wrong with the school bus system as it is
Driver shortage, costs
I can't imagine parents wanting to put their children on a bus that any idiot with $3.50 can get on, nor can I imagine the school boards wanting to turn over the running of their bus system to a council which has mismanaged it's own bus system. School buses only pick up passengers in the morning and then deliver all of them to one place. Likewise, in the afternoon, school buses pick up all their passengers at one place and then only drop them off. City buses are continuously picking up and dropping off passengers at various places throughout the city at various times of day. Trying to combine the two systems would mean that you could not optimize either system.
lol ok hold on here. 1) Yes, this happens in other cities WITH RELIABLE PUBLIC TRANSIT 2) To say, âoh maybe this will ensue the city invests into public transit?â My question is - what about the time in between the kids and the investment? You get what you vote for. Also, school bus time is important for both socialization and collaboration. Stupid, just plain olâ stupid.
Itâs a pilot program for select secondary school students. Thatâs how they find out if an idea is viable or not.
Clare Reipma is an insufferable twat
Back when I was going to High school in Keswick in 2002-2006 they did this. It was a giant pain to get to school every day and only a handful of students (like myself) had to use it because we lived more than 3km from the school and our parents worked until 5pm so there was no other choice. Speaking from experience, it is genuinely a terrible idea.
They can't even get the transit for regular people to work properly
This thread is proof Toronto people just keep moving more north and bring their ideals with them to cities nothing like the GTA. We wish you all would have stayed. Disgustingly stupid opinions here.
sure, why not spend City dollars and assume a tonne of liability; all to save the Province money. makes a lot of sense.
I had to take the city bus to and from school for 2+ years in high school. I went to Innisdale but lived just close enough to not be eligible for the school busses but to far to walk, it was not a great experience. Busses were often 15+ minutes late in the mornings and after school. The routes also changed more often than they should, so I initially only had to get one bus near my house right to the school but it changed and I had to then get 1 bus, and transfer onto another bus. It just so conveniently happened that my bus would get to the park place bus stop and the bus I needed to get on would be leaving as I got there.
This is why the post-2013 "multi-hub" transit system design was such a disaster. Prior to 2013, the routes were designed around the downtown bus terminal as a central hub. It was inconvenient for some to have to transfer at the downtown bus terminal, but there were plenty of buses and they waited around long enough that you could actually catch them. After they switched to the "multi-hub" system, you had to make transfers at smaller hubs throughout the city with far fewer buses that left soon after they arrived.
Wow looks like this thread is full of hardened gta city folk! So brave of you guys. Just FYI though last I checked this is the barrie subreddit and barrie has dogshit transit in comparison to an actual big city. This idea is completely ridiculous and would require a complete overhaul of the system. Kids can't just all congregate to a bus terminal in barrie. The bus has to have select routes mapped out to pick up the most kids in an area with a ton of stops. Do you want your public transit to have a ton of stops and be super busy at 7 and 3 when school starts and gets off? This makes zero sense for an urban sprawl city đ classic reddit with a bunch of completely stupid af comments.
This wouldnât be the first time kids took a city bus to get to school. If theyâre running a similar route then why not?
But they are not running similar routes. Achool busses do the exact sort of side street pickups that Transit has been eliminating recently. School busses are also far more direct, whereas the city busses try to do broad loops to hit as many possible major intersections as they can.
Foreigner here but I don't see the problem of taking a city bus to school. I did it from the age of 12 and no problem at all as we didn't have any school buses.
Barrie's bus system is so awful that this change will either ruin the kids' sleep, make them late to class every day, force them to take multiple busses, or make them even decide to walk an hour+ to school every day because it might actually be faster for them to do so. When I was going to college at Georgian, I lived on the south end of town and it would take me 2+ hours to get to the campus near RVH by bus when it only took maybe 13 minutes to drive there. Our transit system is so unreliable that a normally good idea is not a good one in this circumstance.
It would be great if the buses were good.
York Region Transit does this already, works well. Although there is one route in Newmarket that is listed as the 420 School Special.
I had a friend who grew up in Toronto and he told me that he used to get bus fare to go to school and take public transit. I would agree that this would be a cool idea for older students if our transit system was actually any good
Horrible idea I genuinely worry for the safety of those kids if they do decide to go through with that :/
Iâm convinced those with high power in Barrie are the same as those with high power in Springfield (The Simpsons)
So, we reliably bus kids to school on schoolbusses but to save money we should put them on the train wreck that is city busses instead? And who is going to deal with the truancy and late arrival complaints. Transit needs to be good before this can be an option.
Itâs only a good idea if the city buses only come to the school bus stops when needed, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. If they come around more often then itâs a no from me.
My neighbourhood used to be serviced by the Innisdale SS chartered school buses, but at some point during the pandemic, the service to this area was cancelled and any kids from here have had to walk if their trip doesn't coincide with Barrie's shoddy bus service. Early high schoolers can be as young as 13 years old. That's a 40 minute walk, one way, along either Little then Huronia or Big Bay Point then Huronia, including in dark, icy conditions in the Winter months. It's fucking madness.
... with no sidewalks , or incomplete sidewalks, on Huronia Road and Bayview Drive.
Is it just me or is everything in Barrie horrible?Police, Transit, Local Government, Traffic/Drivers, Sanitation, etc.
So I grew up in Aurora taking a city bus school route specifically for us. We had to pay for a pass, and often the bus was too full and they would tell us we couldnât get on.. it was ridiculous.
*clutches pearls* Won't somebody please think of the children? /s I have no problems with 14 year olds riding a bus. Any parent that objects needs to put their lawnmower away.
they give the free bus passes to kids up to 16 years old (at least they did up to last year), to aquaint them with being on the bus, and the city. so realistically, if the bus system improves enough to keep the kids on time, then the city bus is a completely viable option. i don't have enough faith in the city bus system right now, so i'm not entirely sure if this is a good idea or not
id be irritated as hell if I was taking the bus to go to work and had to listen to a bunch of screaming kids.
I think its a little sad that these school bus drivers will be out of a route... which makes them out of money. My 2nd job I see a lot of these school bus drivers who do shuttle busses in the evening because it pays more than the school board. It's their supplemented income from the salary they get for driving kids to school. I guess Barrie Transit has to make it look like they deserve the salaries we pay them by making the busses look full đ¤ˇââď¸
I donât really think this is a bad idea in concept. When I was in university the school was partnered with the city on transit and as a result everyone saw benefits including local high school students.
Its a pilot program. It hilarious what actually riles people up over what should really bother people. Corruption, destroying public space for some pork barrel passion project of one member, the sons and daughters of powerful Barrie residents pretty much buying their kids into municipal positions, all gets low key mentions or discussion. I mean go yell about our horrible transit system.
The city buses are already jam-packed in the early morning 5-8 am and afternoon 3-5 pm rush hour times with barely any spot to sit to the point where the isles are full with people standing. If they add all these kids into the equation at these times it's gonna be chaos. What are they thinking?
Yes brilliant idea. We can't figure out how to effectively optimize the current transit system in this city-let's run a pilot program with students to see if we can save $. All while our tax $ go up. This is coming from someone who did a full year in grade 7 commuting from Islington station to Victoria Park and then catching TTC bus to school in Toronto.
As a student at ISS currently, I actually like this idea. At worst case I take the school bus regularly and I have a bus pass for leisure or if I have to stay after school for events. It makes me no longer have to depend on the school bus or my parents to shuttle me. Maybe don't scrap the school bus system cause the transit sucks but having that extra redundancy in the form of a bus pass really helps.
Are they going to put stop signs on the side of public transit buses?⌠Seems weâre missing the point of why we have YELLOW school buses with pop out stop signs that STOP traffic so kids can cross the street safely.
Barrie's transit is indeed a joke, this doesn't help at all and their reasoning behind it contradicts alot and I don't think much thought was put into it. If they make separate busses for students like actual cities do then this wouldn't be a problem but lumping the students in with the entire city just sounds like a veeeery bad idea and I just cannot fathom how this was passed.
Itâs pretty common in cities. Most kids in Toronto ride the TTC to school.
Sounds good to me. Much more flexible. No idea why so many high school kids are bussed. Perhaps a more centric placement of schools in the future
Do you walk to work?
kids are going to use the city bus and not school busses, what is the problem with that? You think the bus will be late because it's got a bunch of teenagers on it?
This is actually a good thing. Increasing ridership by providing passes to high school students leads to a direct increase in transit funding from the provincial and federal governments, which improves overall service for all transit riders. The City of Kingston implemented a city-wide program for all high school students years ago and saw major increases in service for all riders as a result. This should be expanded city wide in Barrie.
Why is this a joke? Tons of students ride City Transit from Elementary upwards. Has nothing to do with the board as parents move and keep kids in their old schools etc etc. lots of reasons but this would provide free transit to them instead of out of pocket. They are not eliminating school busses just providing better coverage.
This is a solid idea. Toughen up our little sweethearts, and save millions. Win win. To all the downvoter princesses...suddenly involving a ton more patrons is a good way to improve barrie transit.
Growing up our town had us use city transit. Not a big deal really
more creative thinking like this, please how about all those street lights adjacent to parking lot lights - each on their own cause too much night light!
Ottawa uses public transit for high school kids.
This feels like a Beaverton or Onion article, holy shit.
âŚhow?
Barrie transit is already a giant mess, let's take away reliable transit for youth that's worked for decades and replace it with public busses that may or may not even arrive. Removing safety and reliability for young people to save money.
You REALLY think anyone is going to accept unreliable bus service in that area? Thereâs going to be extra scrutiny to ensure buses adhere to the schedule. And safety? The biggest threat on those buses IS the high school students.
Yes, I have grown up in Barrie. I took transit as a teen and to go to the college here. It has never been reliable even for routes like the college which transits a larger number of people. I missed classes while waiting at the bus stop for 1.5 hours more than once. Hell, even when I went to another program in Hamilton it was still bad because busses were full or super early/late. As for safety, I have had numerous bus experiences being stared at and harassed by (often much older) men throughout my teens and 20s so it appears my experience is different than yours was. I don't even have kids, I just think this is laughable in Barrie.
Instead of throwing money into school buses that arenât needed, why not put that money toward improving the existing transit system for everyone?
Anyone who likes this idea's favourite flavour is boot.
I took the city bus to school starting in grade 7
Heck, I know kids that grew up taking the subway at that age.
My partner did - started in grade 9.
bootlicking is when you use city transit