Just as there's no one-size-fits-all way to educate students, perhaps there is no one-size-fits-all-way to get them to school either. That is the argument behind HopSkipDrive, a startup that is seeking to complement and redefine the traditional bus model of taking students to school. Instead of kids making their way to the pre-determined route of…

Wisconsin has seen a 17.7% drop in licensed school bus drivers over the past 15 years, creating challenges for school districts and the families they serve. This problem may get worse before it gets better, as more than onefifth of licensed school bus drivers are 65 and over. Transit systems across the state are facing a similar problem, with the…

Maintaining a fleet of buses to transport students to school is a major expense for school districts. An efficient bus routing system can greatly reduce the time and cost associated with transportation, while also ensuring the safety and comfort of students. Optimizing large-scale school bus routing problems (SBRP) is challenging due to the huge…

School transportation may increase student outcomes by providing a reliable and safe means of getting to and from school. Little evidence of the effects of such policies exists. In this paper, I provide some of the first causal evidence of transportation impacts on student attendance and achievement using a rich panel of student-level enrollment…

In this chapter, we examine how spatial access, the extent to which individuals must traverse space or time to reach a community college, varies by time of day across socio-demographic groups. We specifically measure spatial access as the time required to travel to a community college by public transit, a common mode of transportation for many…

While the yellow school bus is emblematic of American education, there is variation in bus service across the country. Millions of students rely on the bus, making transportation an essential part of a student's educational experience. Thus, equity in transportation access is a key component of educational equity. Using national district-level…

This study examines the impact of a bus driver attendance incentive program implemented in a rural Mississippi school district with the aim of improving bus driver attendance rates. There is a shortage of bus drivers across Mississippi which has made bus driver attendance paramount. Bus driver absenteeism causes disruptions in student…

Costs for transporting public school students have risen 33% from 2008 to 2018, reaching, on average, $1,152 per student transported. The reasons behind this shift include higher labor costs, various forms of school choice requiring longer commutes from students' neighborhoods, and environmentally friendly upgrades to bus fleets. As a result, some…

This study analyzes how bus eligibility impacts student attendance and achievement in Michigan where almost half of the largest districts limit bus transportation to students who live more than 1.5 miles from school. The study finds that while eligibility has no major effect on student attendance or achievement overall, economically disadvantaged…

In this study, we use estimated public transit routes for high school students in Baltimore City to predict the number of days they are late during the school year. We find that after adjusting for individual and school characteristics, school preferences, and neighborhood fixed effects, total travel time and transit use are not predictive of…

This essay combines an ecological perspective with a mobility justice theoretical framework to reconceptualize the relationship between school transportation and educational access. Authors Sarah Winchell Lenhoff, Jeremy Singer, Kimberly Stokes, James Bear Mahowald, and Sahar Khawaja document the problem of "getting to school" that is at…

Congestion is a persistent and expensive problem, costing the nation collectively over $300 billion each year. Cities have generally attempted to address congestion using an unoriginal set of expensive strategies, like building new roads or expanding public transit, and many cities are considering implementing congestion pricing. Expanding school…

School buses may be a critical education policy lever, breaking the link between schools and neighborhoods and facilitating access to school choice. Yet, little is known about the commute for bus riders, including the average length of the bus ride or whether long commutes harm academic outcomes. We begin to fill this gap using data from New York…

This study explores the association between having a transit stop within walking distance of campus and Pell Grant recipient completion rates at US commuter institutions, using a novel dataset on transit stop locations and institutional level data. The findings indicate that there is a positive association between transit access and Pell…

School buses facilitate access to education for many children. This research aimed to systematically review factors associated with safe school bus transportation for children with neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs). Searches of 5 databases, combining terms denoting NDDs and school buses, for English publications since 2000, yielded only 12…