Thursday, June 14, 2018

[Marin County] Marin civil grand jury calls for countywide school bus program

Marin Transit should take the lead in creating a countywide school bus program that would be funded by the county and its cities and towns, Marin’s civil grand jury says.
“Traffic congestion is consistently cited as the No. 1 problem in Marin County and school-related traffic is a significant contributor,” the recommendation in a report issued by the jury Friday reads.
The report quotes liberally from a study conducted by Marin Transit, in partnership with the county Office of Education and the Transportation Authority of Marin. That study, released in December 2015, found that about 40,000 K-12 students traveled by car to and from school during peak-hour traffic and that 21 percent to 27 percent of morning commute traffic involved parents taking their children to school.
The study predicted that a comprehensive countywide school bus program would attract nearly 5,000 additional students and boost usage by students from 13 percent to more than 30 percent of all trips. The study concluded that expanding school bus service in Marin offered the greatest chance for traffic congestion relief.
“Anyone who lives or works in Marin County can understand the critical nature of traffic congestion impacting our quality of life,” said county Superintendent of Schools Mary Jane Burke. “There is no question that such a pervasive issue needs to be addressed in a collaborative and creative fashion.
“I think that agencies, municipalities and school districts can construct a variety of options that would help reduce the level of congestion, using more than just yellow school buses,” Burke said. “Our schools are prepared to explore all options collaboratively.”
State and federal funding for school bus programs has dwindled over the years. The grand jury reported that in the 2000s, when there was no longer a dedicated stream of state funding for yellow school bus programs, “many districts felt newly unrestricted funds could better used on academic or enrichment programs.”
Nancy Whelan, general manager of Marin Transit, said the report focuses on “a really important need that we’ve been trying to address for some time.
“It’s a really great synopsis of what we’re facing,” Whelan said. “The grand jury did a great job of taking a very complex issue and distilling down the real meat of it.”
One of the grand jury’s findings is that currently some Marin school districts offer no bus service while others provide varying levels of service. The grand jury says this lack of coordination results in inefficiencies.
Mill Valley and Tiburon/Belvedere provide the Yellow School Bus program for students K-8 with Marin County and those municipalities contributing funds to reduce the cost of bus passes.
The grand jury wrote, “School districts, transportation agencies and municipalities should develop a cost-efficient, coordinated yellow school bus program serving more K-8 schools.”
The grand jury states that Marin Transit is well positioned to manage such a program and take advantage of economies of scale.
The grand jury recommends that “the county and municipalities of the urbanized corridor should make financial support of all yellow school programs a part of each year’s budgeting process.”
At the same time, however, the grand jury wrote, “Cities, towns and the county, which all run on annual budgets, will not commit to allocating funds for yellow school buses.”
Whelan said finding a funding source for a countywide school bus program will be the biggest challenge. She said other key obstacles are finding a Marin location for bus parking and maintenance, and a lack of local bus drivers.
The grand jury report states that most school bus services in the Marin are contracted through transportation companies based outside the county.
The grand jury wrote, “The additional expenses of fuel and driver hours traveling to and from remote parking areas are passed on as increased fees.”
Whelan said Marin Transit has been searching for a parking location for three years without success. She said one obstacle to finding a location is that if Marin Transit purchases the property it will become exempt from property tax and thus result in reduced revenue for the jurisdiction it is located in.
To address this, the grand jury recommends that Marin Transit facilitate a cost sharing agreement between the jurisdictions benefiting from the school bus program to compensate whoever is losing tax revenue.
The grand jury also recommends that Marin Transit form a new standing school bus committee to provide guidance to Marin Transit on school bus issues such as cost allocations, routes and coordination of bell times. The committee would include representatives from Marin County, Marin County Office of Education, and each school district and municipality in the urbanized areas of Marin.
The grand jury envisions the committee working with the goal of beginning a coordinated program by the 2019-20 school year.
 June 11, 2018
Marin Independent Journal
By Richard Halstead


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