New app was supposed to revolutionize school busing in Boston, but it made it worse and now councilors, parents want answers
![Ed Flynn](https://www.universalhub.com/files/styles/main_image/public/images/2024/flynnbuses.jpg?itok=JMKKyClM)
Ed Flynn being not happy about the first week of school busing.
Boston City Councilors ordered up a hearing today at which to press Boston school officials to explain how the new BPS Zum (pronounced "zoom," but for obvious reasons not spelled that way) app that was supposed to make BPS buses run as softly as a cloud instead led to some buses not showing up in the morning for an hour or more - and some kids riding buses home for up to three hours as their poor, befuddled drivers tried to navigate Boston's dropped-bowl-of-spaghetti roads.
Councilor Ed Flynn (South Boston, South End, Chinatown, Downtown), said he was leaving a meeting - having nothing to do with the buses - at the Quincy School in Chinatown at 7 p.m. on Monday when he ran into a woman from Roxbury who'd just gotten out of an Uber because her child was still at the school, waiting for a bus that never came after school let out at 4 p.m. He said he heard from one parent whose child was two hours late getting from Dorchester to South Boston - and that at the end, the child had to give directions to the bus driver.
Flynn cited a Globe report that only 34% of buses were on time on the first day of school last week - down from 61% last year and the worst on-time performance in nearly a decade.
"We cannot accept this is just what normally happens" at the start of the school year, he said. Councilors said it was particularly critical to get it right this year, because it's the third and final year of a state-mandated improvement cycle after which state education officials say they will consider whether to take control of Boston schools - and that one of the criteria is simply getting kids to school on time.
Councilor Erin Murphy (at large) said she's heard from several parent who were still waiting for their kids at 7:30 p.m. Councilor Julia Mejia (at large) said she's dipped into her own money to reimburse parents forced to retrieve their kids by Uber.
Councilor Enrique Pepén (Hyde Park, Roslindale, Mattapan), who cited his own BPS horror reports - such as an hour-ride bus trip from the Channing School to River Street in Mattapan, about two miles away - said he visited the BPS transportation department this week - and the home of a BPS bus driver - and said the one brief, flickering light is that after 50 years of using paper maps, in more recent years, printed out via the old Mapquest site, BPS has finally committed to a "state of the art new app."
The problem, he said, is that drivers are still getting used to the Zum system, which is supposed to give them better guidance on their routes - and let parents track the position of the buses and their kids. BPS should have done more training before school started, both with parents and especially drivers, not just on the general use of the app, but on the specific routes the drivers would be taking, he said.
BPS, he said, "is supposed to be the best public-school system in the country" and he said he's confident BPS and drivers can work it out, eventually, even if they should have had it right on the first day.
"Our parents deserve, this, our families deserve this, our schools deserve this," he said.
One parent with a young child at the Ohrenberger School in West Roxbury described the first three days of school, in e-mail to Universal Hub:
The first day of school, the bus driver asked my daughter if she was Lucas and couldn’t tell me what school he was going to. According to the new app Zum, he drove in circles, even entering Brookline at one point.
And today was the 3rd afternoon where my child’s bus just didn’t show up on the app or at school. Parents are stressed, poor Principals are staying late with stranded kids.
How is that okay? No acknowledgement from BPS, Transportation, the Mayor…
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Comments
Have to imagine traffic didn't help either
There's a strong case for a connected network of bus lanes that can help prioritize transit riders, BPS buses and emergency vehicles.
Doesn't address all routes that BPS covers but hey, its better than doing nothing.
Good idea in theory, but
Good idea in theory, but difficult in practice. Local Boston streets are not wide enough to accommodate the volume of local traffic and a dedicated bus lane. Maybe there have been studies solving this problem, I can only speak from personal experience.
I drove through Roslindale this morning and the school bus traffic on Hyde Park Ave, along with all other commuter and business traffic was challenging and very slow.
Even if there is a dedicated bus lane when the bus stops to pick up students, traffic on both sides have to stop as well for safety.
A dedicated lane would not help in that scenario.
A dedicated lane is good when there is more than two lanes per direction and one can be sectioned off. Cutting down Boston local traffic permanently from two lanes to one would not necessarily help the students or the local community trying to get to work.
By removing a lane of traffic from two down to one would hurt the local community making transit even slower than it is today.
Two lanes is more than sufficient…
… for making one bus only. This is a fact. This is reality.
Oversize buses
In prior years we always had a "short bus" come down our street, but this year it's been a large bus that comically cannot make the turns down our residential road without many backups and pullups.
In general, BPS buses frequently appear almost entirely empty.
I would hope version 2.0 of this app would actually take capacity in mind and stop sending oversize, polluting buses down tiny streets just so they can carry 3 kids.
This among so many other reasons why this whole system makes no sense, at every level.
Those might be the last three kids ..
… on the bus but your point is valid.
Periodic reminder
That Boston exists across a river from MIT.
Does sucking this hard on purpose not embarrass anybody in charge?
not an easy problem to solve, even for brainiacs
You must remember what happened the last time BPS engaged MIT to help solve dilemmas in bus routes and school start times, in 2017.
https://www.universalhub.com/2017/bps-reconsider-elementary-start-times
https://www.media.mit.edu/articles/what-the-boston-school-bus-schedule-c... (Joi Ito)
I suspect they "learned their lesson".
I don't recall that at all
I don't have kids. I moved to Boston just to live life and (expletive) around. Mission accomplished.
Thank you for sharing. Whine-ass idiots always get their way, unfortunately.
Boston needs to suck harder.
To dislodge and bring over some of those eggheads in Cambridge.
Neighborhood Schools
This is ridiculous that BPS has this or similar bus related issues each year that takes 2 weeks to sort out.
We drive our kids, to the school closest BPS to our house -it's a mile away from us and have been doing this for 3 years now.
If only BPS could improve all their schools to a point that families would all feel confident in their choice and send their kids to their neighborhood school much less busing would be needed!
And a state takeover won't fix the BPS issues - it's mostly related to administrators that work
inside the Boling building and don't directly contribute to the school that they supposedly oversee ( I believe that many are still working remote) ; if the Bolling building was closed for the first and last month of each school year so all staff would work from the schools that they oversee that would make a big difference.
Zum has failed before
It seems like Zum's real "disruptions" are underbidding on contracts, hiring non-union bus drivers, and trying to spackle over all that with AI hype: https://www.dailydot.com/debug/zum-buses-howard-spokane/
all our children are above average
When Pepén says that BPL "is supposed to be the best public-school system in the country," does that involve any comparison to other school systems, or is this like saying "it wasn't supposed to rain on our picnic"?
I don't care whether the Boston public schools are the best system in the country--I care about how well they're educating the students. Ideally, every school would do a good job, and they couldn't all be better than each other.
But that’s not playing ball!!
It’s not about education and learning. It’s about winning the championship, the chunky gold rings, the flash.
The outrage when the other team gets the glory.
Sports is everything.
That “sports is everything”
That “sports is everything” is a sign of society’s moral dysfunction. It’s corrupting. Case in point: Tom Brady’s “good looks.” I think it’s fair to say that Tom Brady does not objectively meet the standards and measures of having pleasing and attractive- “you like to look at ‘im” facial characteristics. True, his face is “chizzled,” but Michelangelo called it quits way too soon. Now, if you haven’l tl;dr’d yet my point is the news media is utterly corrupt, incestuous- news is sales and marketing- and a PR vehicle when all of the sudden a year-ish ago the talking point across Boston media was Tom Brady’s “good looks” as though all were in the throes of collective sycophancy, but more likely those utterances of opinions were the result of given marching orders. It’s like, because he’s traveling amongst celebrities, the beautiful ones, with a model on his arm some of their publicists reached out to one, or more of the six parent companies that own all media and demanded they order their newsvertisment channels to gaslight us into thinking Tom Brady has the face of a model.
It is getting easier every day …
… to scroll past your posts.
Magoo and Refugly are notably MIA. John Boy Costablow barely has time for UHub now that he has a new hobby involving string and pigeons.
Not that that is a bad thing. Though at least the fugly one was not scatalogical or wordy.
I swear
I swear he's high. A response on another post was almost babble.
As far as our Russian friend.. I have a gut feeling him being MIA is not his own doing. :-)
Magoo? Not sure but dont care...
Ed Flynn gives me such a headache just to think about ..,
… these days. He has his own lane in my head. It’s full of Ubers and food delivery vehicles and protesters protesting some TV show.
I need to eliminate his lane entirely. And turn it over to pedestrians.
Ma Legislators are the creatures of the tech industry.
Ma Legislators are the creatures of the tech industry.
It takes one…
… to know one.
I don’t get it.
I don’t get it.
Never share your PIN.
.
Züm. If marketeers are going to bastardize the English language
Züm. If marketeers are going to bastardize the English language then at least teach us the correct diacriticals.
.
I've sold Zum to Brockway, Ogdenville and North Haverbrook, and by gum, it put them on the map!
Ah Ed Flynn's upset again...
So what else is new?
"We cannot accept this is just what normally happens"
- the state legislature doesn't pass their budget on time ever either but we accept that it's what normally happens... (and yes I recognize one is city and one is state)