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BARRHEAD - It will take at least a year before Alberta Transportation will review the current 90 km/h speed limit for school buses throughout the province, the removal of which has long been advocated by the Pembina Hills School Division trustees.
“Although we were excited to see our joint advocacy come to fruition ... we are disappointed in the length of time it may take to see this change implemented,” said board chair Jennifer Tuininga in an e-mail.
"The advocacy of Pembina Hills and fellow school boards alongside the provincial associations has brought this issue to the forefront. We are hopeful that the change will be made as quickly as possible.”
In early 2020, the province created a Student Transportation Task Force to identify challenges facing student transportation, such as overly restrictive training requirements, funding issues, potential hazards to school bus safety and so on.
Ultimately, the task force held 74 meetings with school authorities and stakeholders throughout the province and accepted numerous written submissions and e-mails from others.
Among the groups to submit feedback to the taskforce was Pembina Hills, who pushed for the elimination of the 90 km/h speed limit for school buses.
The task force’s final report contained 21 recommendations, one of which was to have Alberta Education work with Alberta Transportation to explore changing the current speed limit and allow buses to travel the posted speed limit.
The task force echoed Pembina Hills’ concerns in the report, noting that the 90 km/h speed limit creates confusion for the general motoring public and sometimes leads to motorists taking dangerous risks to pass school buses that could be travelling up to 20 km/h below the speed limit.
“This results in serious safety concerns for students and other drivers, as well as additional stress for the bus driver,” the report stated, acknowledging that besides Manitoba, Alberta was the only province that didn’t allow school buses to travel at the posted speed limit.
The task force also noted that during the fall 2019 meeting of the Alberta School Boards Association, 90 per cent of all school divisions supported a change to the bus speed limit. As well, the Student Transportation Association of Alberta and the Alberta Student Transportation Advisory Council were in favour of the change.
In fact, the only group to oppose the change were some industry representatives, who were concerned about safety and decreased fuel economy.
On May 10, the province announced the launch of a three-phase plan to act on the task force’s recommendation, starting with the creation of two audit teams to review the student transportation operations of up to 15 school divisions by the fall.
The first phase of this plan will also include the creation of a working group of provincial government and task force members to look at concerns around Mandatory Entry Level Training (MELT) requirements and school bus “flybys.”
The second phase will also examine the possibility of a provincial purchasing program for buses, fuel, insurance and parts, while the third phase will involve the creation of a new student transportation funding model during the 2022-2023 or 2023-2024 school year.
The Town & Country This Week reached out to the province to determine if the speed limit for school buses would ever be addressed.
Alberta Transportation spokesperson Nicole Sparrow stated that the recommendation around bus speed limits would be addressed in the third phase of the K-12 student transportation plan, which will be completed by September 2022.
“As part of the third phase, a joint working group of Alberta government Education and Transportation staff and Student Transportation Task Force members will be established to review the current 90 km/h maximum speed limit for school buses,” she said.
After expressing disappointment with the long timeframe, Tuininga said that the current transportation regulation around school bus speed limits is a ‘red tape’ regulation that has been in existence since 1979 and there would be no cost in changing it.
She added that Alberta school bus drivers participate in rigorous training standards and generally drive mostly in daytime hours while avoiding dangerous road conditions.
“According to the government website, the most common error involving collisions with school buses is caused by drivers following too closely,” she said.
Tuininga said Pembina Hills’ priority was keeping students and drivers safe, but also getting them to their destination sooner, and allowing bus drivers to travel at the posted speed limit would mean a reduction in ride times.
