Post by nickv on Aug 23, 2007 10:31:54 GMT -8
The budget uses $1.3 billion from the sales tax on gasoline to pay for spending that is loosely related to transportation. More than $1 billion will be spent to pay off bonds for rail projects that have been built or to repay the state highway program. The remainder will go to help school districts run school buses and to transport the developmentally disabled.
I thought it would be a good idea to bring up school bus transit into discussion since it appears that the budget mentioned that aprox $300M will be used to help school districts with their transportation issues.
School bus funding doesn't appear to be a big deal at first for us, but living near a giant HS that lacks both public and sufficient school bus service, I find that school districts need to have their share of the pot too to run these yellow busses (Of course, I don't support cutting regional/city mass transit funding to do this, like the state did in this year's budget).
Great Oak High School, opened in 2004, lies at the base of Wolf Valley and is surrounded by foothills and suburban homes. Located in Riverside County in the Temecula Valley Unified School District, the consistent, rapid growth of the area demanded the third comprehensive high school in the district. Great Oak offers many programs to assist these students as well as a career-technology program designed to prepare students for direct entry to the workplace. The staff is comprised of a group of highly qualified, idealistic educators who are taking advantage of the opportunity to try some new methods of assessment and education.
Source: gohs.tvusd.k12.ca.us/pages/aboutGOHS.htm
Getting to know people who learn/work at this school, GOHS is a nice place to learn; however before and after school, this campus suffers from one big flaw: There are very few school busses serving the student body (I've seen at most 3 full sized busses lined up after school) and lacks public transit. Most people who drop kids off may end up spending over 20 minutes one way in school traffic trying to get in and out of the school.
To demonstrate how bad the traffic is, take Capistrano USD's system back in 1997 when I was in Capistrano Valley HS. Before Tesoro HS openned, this school was packed with over 1,000 freshmen during my senior year. Back then, the only road into the school was one 2-lane road that t-connects from a 4 lane surface street. Being a school bus rider, I remembered the ride was delayed 3-5 minutes because of this chokepoint, but this school had about 12 full sized busses (they were full too, 3-to-a-seat in some lines) in service for the student body on top of OCTA Line 91 and 391 (now 191).
At GOHS, there's only limited school bus service, period. That means students without a bike living far away are totally car/parent ride dependent. Take a 3-5 minute delay and factor in 520 more cars (40 students per school bus times 12 bus lines + 40 taking public transit) at the same time. Now we're talking GOHS traffic delays of up to 20 minutes.
The point I'm trying to bring about is hopefully, we may see a decrease in school traffic in the future with school busses being funded, but as I said I don't support this funding at the expense of regional/city mass transit projects and funding.