2023-07-19-AHTC-min - Laserfiche WebLink

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Deepika -The school bus fees last increased in 2019,for about 30 dollars.Therefore if one of the recommendations are to look at a possible increase then perhaps model some of the different amounts of increases and resultant revenues.Keeping in mind that at some point an increase in fees beyond a certain point will make ridership fall off as it becomes too expensive for families to pay. Carolyn:increase in fees,look at bus routes efficiency,someone or a consultant that specializes routing to look for efficiencies.In some neighborhoods due to the grandfathering required by the redistricting 2-3 different school buses were coming to pick elementary school children up.Is that still teh case or can there be reduction of traffic.Also keep in mind that there are laws that 2 miles and beyond children have to be picked up by school bus for free. Sally:govt funding,looking at public grants Carolyn:was looking at the overall budget not at specific grants Susan:talking with planning about this,we came to the TDM fund as opposed to the TDO fund. So that we can reserve more funding for non alewife funding.Also hope to encourage the walking and biking to school practices as advocated by Safe Routes to School. Deepika:If the recommendation is to promote Safe Routes to School then the School Committee will be given that recommendation along with all the other recommendations which are within its purview and will then think about how to implement them.At that point Susan B could give more information and encourage certain policies or practices. Susan:One challenging thing,over the past 5 years,the 6 interlinked routes which were loops were transformed into 3 long routes,thus we had to scale back the mileage we had to cover.We were working on the routes before covid,resumed in 2021.A lot of the issues with the 6 routes were that they couldn't operate on schedule.The school pickup and drop off times would create traffic congestion and teh buses would get late.As a result sometimes it would take many trips before they would be back on time. Susan:We didn't decrease three buses;instead of 3 mini routes,they made just one big route. This reduced riders needing to transfer between routes.Everytime a new development or area of service was added the Lexpress had to go to that one too.This stretched the service without adding any additional buses or overall time for service.So the time the vendor had to scale back because of all the areas the service was stretched too.However,when the community center opened up the timing was changed.The on time arrival was getting worse and worse because there were speed bumps,low speed zones etc which increased time taken to service the Community Center..So getting back on time was hard.During school pickup and drop offs one route took 1 hour 20 minutes instead of 1 hour. When Lexpress started it never went near to the Belmont border to service avalon.So when new service stops were added such as community centers,it slowed the service down.