Officials with the Greater Essex County District School Board will be keeping a close eye on how a change to the city bus system is working to start the school year.
As part of the 2025 budget approved in January, city council approved a plan to eliminate the Transit Windsor 'school extras' and reassign nine buses to provide necessary service improvements and expansion along other routes.
The dedicated extras were designed to take pressure off regular routes during the school year, with an estimated 650 students relying on the designated buses going to their school every day.
Now the impacted students will need to rely on the regular Transit Windsor bus service, which means finding the right pickup times along a given route and transfers depending on the location of each student, along with dealing with concerns around overcrowding as students try to take a city bus along with regular riders.
Director of the Greater Essex County District School Board Vicki Houston says they'll be listening to the challenges and concerns people are experiencing and relay those to Transit Windsor.
"In terms of students getting to school. How many buses are they going to have to take? Are they going to get there on time? Hopefully within the first week, if there are any wrinkles, those can be worked out through the city with Transit Windsor," she says.
The change will impact students going to the public school board's Vincent Massey Secondary School and Riverside Secondary School, along with the Windsor-Essex Catholic District School Board's Holy Names Catholic High School and St. Joseph's Catholic High School.
Houston says they want students to be able to get to school and not be late.
"It's really monitoring what that ends up looking like when it's actually put into place. We always know you can put something on paper, and it looks fantastic. But when you implement it, then that really shows you where the pressure points are," she says.
Houston says they expect to hear concerns on the first day, but it's the city and Transit Windsor that will need to respond to any city bus system issues.
"The principals will be, unfortunately, the front person hearing the concerns, and then it's communication," she says. "So we have set up with the city around what that communication protocol looks like when concerns are coming. How do they get shared? Who on their end is going to be receiving those and then communicating back to families?"
Residents are encouraged to visit transitwindsor.ca for the latest updates, route information, and helpful resources.