Chicago2210
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Good afternoon, has anyone ever listened to School buses on either the first or last day of School? If so how busy is it? Thanks.
School bus monitoring
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The first day is great , every one is on the wrong bus ,....The last day is even better there all fighting on the bus.....Actually bus monitoring can be very informative when they report traffic problems and accidents.,,God bless them they put up with a lot and work very hard,....
Chicago2210
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And at least on the first day you might even here lost drivers?
I can't speak for your area but in mine the first student days are definitely by far the busiest of all. Pure pandemonium. Only thing that comes close are days when a district closes early due to a winter storm and buses struggle to traverse through snow cover
Heard the Edwardsville, Illinois bus dispatcher broadcast “all buses are to come to a complete stop at all stop signs”
Who is running stop signs with a bus loaded with children?
Who is running stop signs with a bus loaded with children?
If you live close to the school itself check the FRS channels, many of them use these for bus loading and traffic control, they are often a riot on the last and first days of school.
First days of school can be the best and sometimes only time to hear secondary channels, slots or talkgroups in use.
I work in a K-12 district in Ohio and mornings are usually quiet. The only thing you hear is radio checks and when the transfer bus pulls up to the high school to take elementary kids to the elementary off of the career center bus.
Afternoons though are a different story. The elementary drop-off run is usually a cluster because some one got on a bus and wasn't supposed to or got off at the wrong stop. I stream my scanner at the house so I can listen to it. If there is no other administrators in district, I usually have to deal with the issues if there is no one around to handle it. Normally though I don't have to deal with anything.
At the beginning of school It's usually a mess for about 3 days until the drivers get their routes sorted out. They do a practice run the day before to get their timing down, but give it a week to get your times nailed down.
Afternoons though are a different story. The elementary drop-off run is usually a cluster because some one got on a bus and wasn't supposed to or got off at the wrong stop. I stream my scanner at the house so I can listen to it. If there is no other administrators in district, I usually have to deal with the issues if there is no one around to handle it. Normally though I don't have to deal with anything.
At the beginning of school It's usually a mess for about 3 days until the drivers get their routes sorted out. They do a practice run the day before to get their timing down, but give it a week to get your times nailed down.
Chicago2210
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Don't the drivers have route maps?
We're a small district. 36 square miles. Most drivers get a schedule that tells them where the stops are. Most of the time it's at an intersection. For example I'll use our street names here. They may pick up at 7:02 at Rockland and Middle St. 7:03 at Rockland and Brentwood. 7:04 at Rockland and George and so forth.
When I say it takes 3 days to get the route sorted out, it usually revolves around timing and not getting lost. Our routes don't change much unless they feel they need to re-route due to an efficiency need and then it would be the timing and possibly the order of the stops. A lot of the problems revolve around any new students that show up and are not sure where they are supposed to get off. For the first part of the school year, most of the kids, especially the younger ones have cards that they have on their backpacks that have their name and stop.
Our issues is just people will come to pick their kid up and then not tell the office and the kid is on the bus and the parent is at the school or they aren't at the bus stop waiting on their kid and we have to call the parent and then bring them back around with the HS route.
Davenport (IA) Community School District shared a three channel LTR system with a local hospital. But the buses loaded the system too much. They shift the bus ops to a another LTR system the radio contactor owned. They kept the Bus Lot on the other. Now days they moved to a DMR owned by the City of Davenport. All the other school districts i know use a single channel UHF.
Back awhile I happened to hear when driver suffered a medical problem and heard a little voice saying the driver wasn't waking up. The base got the girl to give the bus' location and a ambulance and a sub driver was sent, It made the local news.
Back awhile I happened to hear when driver suffered a medical problem and heard a little voice saying the driver wasn't waking up. The base got the girl to give the bus' location and a ambulance and a sub driver was sent, It made the local news.
On the Chicago news today at noon , bus driver passed out and seventh grade kid jumped up grabbed he wheel and put his foot on the brake,....Said he will get a award from city for being alert,....
Chicago2210
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Just saw it on WGN
Chicago2210
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Anyone ever heard any school bus radio traffic related to field trips?
I will say a lot of times the buses in our district move over to a "talkaround" channel. They basically put the radios in simplex mode on the output frequency of our repeater. A majority of the time they are not local to us and couldn't talk to another bus if they needed to. Our school is in Southeastern Ohio. I went with my son and then a few years later with my daughter's fifth grade class to the Air Force Museum in Dayton. We took two busses and they were in talkaround mode so that they could communicate in case we got separated.
I listen to school busses, my old Special Ed one in the Arlington Hts/Mt. Prospect area. They were a hoot with the kids yelling, wrong drop off points, or the driver not knowing where they are supposed to go.
Chicago2210
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Or if a street gets closed I could see a reroute occuring.
Chicago2210
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Or during recess?
Back when my local school district used UHF repeaters at Intermediate and High Schools. The elementary schools used 154.570/.600
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