Burlington Transportation Committee Sets Tighter Bus Age Limits, Requires GPS Tracking App

BURLINGTON — November 16, 2023 — Burlington's Transportation Committee agreed on tighter fleet standards and new technology mandates for the district's next school bus contract at its November 16 meeting. The committee, a subcommittee of the School Committee, reached working consensus to require GPS tracking with a parent-facing app — currently an optional add-on costing roughly $80,000 per year — along with cameras and lap seatbelts as baseline contract requirements. Members dropped the prior contract's tiered new-bus requirement in favor of a single hard cap: no bus in service may exceed eight years of age or 100,000 miles at any point during the five-year term, stricter than the state-law thresholds of 10 years and 150,000 miles. The committee also agreed to pursue financial penalty language for first-tier buses that miss their first scheduled stop due to staffing shortages or mechanical failure, with a proposed penalty of one-quarter of the daily bus rate per qualifying incident above a threshold to be finalized by staff. Electric buses were effectively tabled after a prior School Committee session confirmed no state or federal incentive funding is available to Burlington. A draft invitation to bid, with a bullet-pointed summary of all changes from the current contract, is expected at the December School Committee meeting.