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New app was supposed to revolutionize school busing in Boston, but it made it worse and now councilors, parents want answers
By adamg on Wed, 09/11/2024 - 2:39pm
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.
Not without devastating
Not without devastating impact on throughput for the other vehicles that constitute the vast, vast majority of traffic.
Cry me a bike lane.
The vast majority of people are worth more than private vehicles.
And no, the effects are not devastating on those pampered little vehicles used as exoskeletons by dinosaur drivers.
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.
Many buses each day are
Many buses each day are taking Boston students to out of district placements, and these buses usually only have a handful of kids. That may be the reason for the near-empty ones you see.
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.
This comment offered nothing to the discourse.
You know nothing about this topic.
Don Henley
"I just have to look good, I don't have to be clear."
From the second linked article
"The Center for Deliberative Democracy has used a process it calls deliberative polling, which brings together a statistically representative group of residents in a community to debate and deliberate policy goals over several days in hopes of reaching a consensus about how a policy should be shaped."
Residents reaching a consensus without the losers bitching and crying and putting pressure on their representatives? Not happening on this current planet.
Boston needs to suck harder.
To dislodge and bring over some of those eggheads in Cambridge.
Uber Fired Will
Because he would say he was available for passenger pick-up and then not pick up the requests (too lazy.) It wasn't an hour late, it was usually never.
That is, of course, unless he saw it was a woman. He's very open about how he would only drive Uber to gawk at female passenger's body parts as a creepy methadone for going home and watching porn. Not to mention the creepy stuff he's admitted he said to the women.
Maybe bus drivers could take criticism from someone who actually transported people appropriately.
After all, it could be worse: They could act like creepy Will.
Stalking is also creepy.
Stalking is also creepy.
Libel too
But, hey, I guess laws don't matter anymore. Look who we might elect.
Direct Quote From Will's Mouth
"Literally the only reason to drive rideshare is if you're a lonely man who wants to be around women.
I enjoyed that perk of the job when I gave it a try from 2014-2016 (back when it was $1.70 and then $1.24), except I didn't go farther than telling them that their dress/hat/haircut was pretty, and then, on a high from the "thank you", I went home and watched porn like a normal person."
Where's the libel?
Question
What does this have to do with school buses being late?
The Point Is
It's easy to whine about something online, but it's not so easy when you have to actually do it.
Will literally worked in transport and was very bad at it, and much worse than Boston school busses, in almost every way.
So he should be the last person that should be throwing stones here.
I'm confident
I can convince the public that "Your hat is pretty" does not meet the standard for "creepy."
Nice Pigeon Hole
But there's tons of other context you left out, like always.
1. Every action is already creepy in an Uber if the sole purpose is being a lonely incel who wants to be around women. That entire trip is creepy.
2. You weren't just making some comment, you were getting some pseudo-sexual gratification from the interaction. It's the only reason you were having the interaction in the first place.
3. There's plenty of other incidents that highlight your true colors including when a group of three women wanted to have one dropped off first and then the pair so nobody had to be alone with you and you argued with them so you could be alone with the woman (the only reason you were driving )
4. Not to mention "I know it's platonic but I gotta try."
5. Or when you said "If that's a breech of etiquette, than clearly I'm not capable of having female friends." But driving around with them?
6. On work forums,when a woman was hired, you immediately called her "pretty" and an admin had to delete it
7. It's creepy at work to call women pretty.
But other than that!
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.
Yes, but fixing the
Yes, but fixing the underperforming schools, instead of busing the kids back and forth across the city is impossible and possibly racist.
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...
Ouch. If ya don’t got sumthin
Ouch. If ya don’t got sumthin nice to say… jeeze
IIRC...
...Magoo took a self-imposed break from their comical musings, while I think Rfwgly (stet) has not been around in a long while, so maybe Adam decided it was time to cut bait on their shit-posting.
Pepen is delusional if he thinks BPS is well run
It’s a lousy district despite the fact that it is located in one of the wealthiest and well funded cities in the world. It would be hard to do a worse job, given the resources and brain talent at its disposal.
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, space savers and protesters protesting some TV show.
I need to eliminate his lane entirely. And turn it over to pedestrians.
Could say the same
About your anti car shtick.
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.
.
Thanks?
Thanks?
BPS is run by morons
and has been since Menino took control of the School Committee. At one time the school department and City Hall were completely seperate. Menino was the one who said to judge him harshly if he didn’t change the public schools. He couldn’t do anything right with BPS, Marty Walsh did no better, Kim Janey and Wu went down the same path. Judge them all harshly for the sake of the poor kids who have no other choice.
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!
"New fancy app screws up",
"New fancy app screws up", there's a shocker, at least if you've just emerged from a cave you've been in since 1990.
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)
We have an app.....
Well apps are not what kids ride on. Eventually we have kids ride on carbon neutral buses and still can't read. This is not rocket science, get up early, have a planned route, pick up the kids, bring them to school. We spend so much per student, this is pathetic. Well you can get a 250.00 grant for a fun Halloween. The government fails everyday, if it was private business we would be suing them, I ride a bus that's late, I cannot read at grade level, the schools are dangerous, I do not feel safe, I spend too much time on a bus, Mary Skipper is God, the teacher's need raises, Michelle Wu claps it is all wonderful. Boston Schools used to be a national model. We slouch toward ignorance, nobody's fault, we need more money....
We spend more per student
Than any other city in the country and can’t get the basic to work. Never mind kids graduating without reading at grade level.
"kids graduating without reading at grade level"
Citations needed.
Note that they have to pass MCAS to graduate.
The Superintendent never
The Superintendent never takes accountability nor does BPS Transportation Supervisors or the Mayor this is a forever ongoing issue. Zum is a terrible app but this starts at the yard. Put more money into getting adequate drivers and monitors upgrade the buses have enough back up’s learn how to communicate with the office so parents and schools can be informed. They don’t care that kids are getting to school hours late home hours late. Do they know how badly this affects a child’s day. The problems start within. You all want the kids to attend school but transportation can’t even get the kids to school.
It’s really disgraceful.
In the first 5 days, the bus that takes my kids home has been more than 90 minutes late 3 times. On time it was 3 hours late. The hold times for BPS transportation center are quite long and you can’t reach anyone in the office to coordinate pickup at the school. So you’re forced to just head to school and hope the bus doesn’t show up before you.
It’s really poorly managed and I’m afraid BPS is just a broken organization.
BPS parent here, with 13 years of experience with the buses
Among my 3 kids, I've had an elementary schooler (or 2 at a time) on the schoolbus for 13 years. Back in 2012-2015, when I lived in the South End, the buses my kids were on were fairly reliable--occasional late days when there was massive traffic, etc., but unremarkably fine. Starting in 2016, when I moved to JP, I had a massively different experience: maybe something changed with how BPS planned/staffed routes then, but maybe also the smaller neighborhood streets were at play--at any rate, I think my JP experience is more typical of others' experiences as well.
Every schoolyear from 2016 through 2023, I'd be waiting for my kids for 30, 60, even 120 minutes after the posted arrival time at the end of the day. It was insane. Calls to BPS did nothing. Calls to the school did nothing. Yes, I'd take the subway to the school to pick them up when buses hadn't arrived and it was 60+ minutes after school dismissed. Every single year, this all worked itself out by Thanksgiving, occasionally by the end of October, but it was 3 months of pain and agony and exhausted kids who desperately needed the bathroom and were starving when they got off the bus at 6:30!
Last year, BPS finally started texting when that was going to happen, so at like 1pm I'd get a text saying "We have no bus driver for your afternoon route!" and I'd make plans to drop everything at work and go to the school for pickup.
This year (still living in JP), I know it's only been a week, but my kid is getting home AT the time the bus is supposed to arrive, or 5 minutes before. It is a shocking and dramatic difference.
I am not discounting the experiences of families who are having awful times this year, but Zum definitely changed something, I would 100% agree. I don't know how they fixed our route and screwed up so many others, but this should be a solvable problem without waiting for drivers to have 3 months of experience on the routes.
Maybe this explains
The short bus trying to turn around on my street yesterday afternoon. Fortunately for the driver, there were no other vehicles parked on the street, but he was trying to back into the parking lot just beyond the white car in the Google street view.
More outsourcing
So, we've outsourced our student busing to an Uber-wannabe (that has a track record of being fucking awful at its job)?
Cool.
I can't wait until the students have to Yum (outsourced-school-DoorDash app...said "yoom") their school lunches and we find out those drivers are eating the cardboard square pizzas and leaving the empty bags on the school's steps.