School Buses

Today's Wall Street Journal looks at school buses as engines (pun intended) of desegregation. The article's a little unsatisfactory along the lines of "rising gas prices are hurting school choice efforts" when really we all know school choice efforts are hurt by... school choice efforts. What's wrong with school bus systems is that the routes look pretty much like they did when my parents took them. Public transportation suffers from the collection and distribution problem--if you don't have a bus stop near your home that drops you off close to your destination, you're going to opt for private transportation. It's just plain common sense.

School bus routes, as currently designed, pretty much weave through a neighborhood and then have one destination: the neighborhood school. But it doesn't have to be like this. They could continue on to other schools, giving kids the option to stay on the bus longer and attend the latter one. Or bus routes could be re-vamped entirely, in an effort to distribute kids across cities to the schools they want to go to. It would be like public transportation but for kids only. There'd be express routes, circular routes, and in-bound and out-bound routes.

In an ideal world my dreams, at least.