Somersfield Academy Takes up Govt. Offer of Dedicated West End Bus
April 20, 2007 –- A private school is pioneering a scheme to cut traffic from the West End to Hamilton by having its own Government-provided bus for students.
The scheme - the brainchild of Somersfield Academy parent Fiona Currie - is already thought to have taken more than 30 cars off the road during morning rush hour and now other private schools are calling for their own dedicated vehicles.
Ms Currie, of Boaz Island, Somerset, told The Royal Gazette: “The bus in the morning has been fantastic. I just felt that all those cars were going in the same direction and surely there was something we could do to cut it down.”
Traffic on the Island’s roads was found to be 16 percent worse during term time in a study conducted by the Department of Transport a couple of years ago and the West End route into town is notoriously gridlocked.
The Island’s two senior public schools - Berkeley Institute and CedarBridge Academy - already have dedicated school buses provided by Government. If the Somersfield scheme was extended to the Island’s other private schools - particularly those in Hamilton - it is believed it could dramatically reduce road congestion and ease environmental concerns.
Green campaigner Stuart Hayward said last night: “It’s a positive idea. The idea of moving many people with fewer vehicles is a good one. The more people you have per vehicle the more effective your transportation system is.” He said anecdotal evidence suggested that traffic eased when schools, particularly private, were on holiday.
Commuter Joanne Hayward-Kippax, of Somerset, added: “If you don’t leave home by ten past seven you get stuck in all the traffic and it’s awful. But when the kids are out of school you can leave at 20 past eight and cruise right through. It definitely is the parents taking the kids to school. I don’t know why they can’t just put buses on to drop all the kids off.”
This week, Government launched a pilot shuttle bus scheme from the Hamilton Ferry Terminal for pupils at three city private schools - Bermuda High School for Girls (BHS), Mount Saint Agnes Academy and Saltus Grammar School.
Premier and Transport Minister Ewart Brown described it as a “critical piece of our traffic decongestion plan which is aimed to deal particularly with the historic congestion from the West End into Hamilton”.
BHS principal Roy Napier described the shuttle bus as “a very good first step” and said he thought Government might eventually introduce US-style school buses for private schools.
“I support it in terms of getting safe transportation to school for our students,” he added. “We are very much into our green policy and we would co-operate fully. with buses by contacting our parents and giving them information.”
Saltus head Nigel Kermode said his school had been in talks with the Public Transportation Board (PTB) about dedicated school buses for a long time and parents generally supported the idea. “We obviously share the general community concern about the volume of traffic,” he said. “We regard the provision of a shuttle bus this week as a very positive move on the part of the PTB. What we have found is that people do regard this as a positive step but it’s regarded as an initial step. I would like to think that we could get to a situation where we are positively reducing the volume of traffic in any way that we can.”
The Somersfield bus, launched last September, sets off from Watford Bridge each morning at 7.10 a.m. and students use their normal bus passes to board along the route to the Devonshire Montessori school.
Parent relations co-ordinator Stacey-Lee Williams said about 40 families were taking advantage of it. “I think at this point if other schools requested it, it could work. It seems to be working very well.”
Ms Currie, who has two children at Somersfield, said she first contacted the Premier last year with her idea. “Dr. Brown was just amazing,” she said. “He thought it was a fantastic idea. He said that was the way he wanted to go. It took maybe six months to get it up and running. The parents who don’t work don’t need to use the road on a morning now. It’s far better for the school and it’s far better for the children because it gives them independence. A lot of those children had never been on a bus before.”
Arthur Hodgson, chairman of the Sustainable Development Round Table, said he would like to see the need for student transport eliminated altogether by having community-based schools which children could walk to. “I’m hoping the review of the school system at the moment will take this point on,” he said.