The bus system that picked students up from their respective neighborhoods and drove them to and from school should be reinstated. The buses went to multiple neighborhoods such as Woodbury, Stonegate and Beacon Park. The bus system should be reinstated because it extremely helps students’ families and traffic.

“We should re-implement the bus system because it helps many families here at Portola in getting their kids to school,” sophomore Garrett Lim said. “I myself got to meet and know students that are now my friends that I wouldn’t have if it were not for the bus.”

The bus greatly helped many families who had difficulty in getting their students to school and still would for those same families. In addition to helping families with the commute, reimplementing buses will help other drivers and local traffic.

According to Blue Bird Corporation, an American bus manufacturer, “Consider[ing] that each school bus takes about 36 cars off the road, the effect they have on congestion becomes very clear. Multiply 36 cars by an average of 9,600 school buses per state and that’s a lot of extra traffic added to the morning commute.”

In addition to traffic, the Blue Bird Corporation also explained the carbon footprint buses would save is tremendous, equivalent to 32,473 trips between Los Angeles and New York on the average plane per state per year.

Though the bus system has many benefits, there were some key reasons to why it was not reinstated this year, the main reason being the cost. The bus system had plans of being reinstated but was cancelled because not enough people were willing to pay the high price around 1000 dollars. The district’s reason behind not offering the bus again this year was because not enough people signed up for the bus likely because of the excessive price. The solution to this problem would be lowering the price to a more reasonable price of 600 dollars for the entire year. This number comes from national statistics on school bus systems in the US which reasons that about 692 dollars is spent per person on average.

Reimplementing the bus system would make a significant difference in the traffic heading to and from school for both students going to school and regular commuters on the road. Traffic is hectic especially in the parking lot, and considering that the student body will have double the population in two years, the bus will be a big help in the future.