Ross Valley school bus service switch nears end

Regular bus service for two schools in the Ross Valley School District will resume in January, ending a hiatus forced by a construction project in San Anselmo.

Marin Transit, which manages the yellow bus program administered by Bauer’s Intelligent Transportation for the school district, temporarily moved several bus pickup stops from the San Anselmo Memorial Park parking lot to two of its bus transit stops along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard.

The relocations began Sept. 25, about two weeks after the San Anselmo Public Works Department notified Marin Transit that access to Memorial Park would be closed for about three months to allow for repairs and renovations.

Last month, parents complained that the Sir Francis Drake Boulevard stops, which serve Hidden Valley Elementary School in San Anselmo and White Hill Middle School in Fairfax, were unsafe because they were too crowded to accommodate large groups of children and parents.

Parents also said the service was unreliable and that drivers had missed pickups and caused their children to be late to school.

Nancy Whelan, general manager of Marin Transit, said Tuesday that several improvements are already in place and will continue into the new year.

“A dedicated backup driver has been assigned to be available in the morning at the yellow bus parking lot,” Whelan said in an email. “This driver will be able to fill in if the assigned driver cannot start the route on time.”

An additional driver training has been added to help smooth pickup operations. The service also now has a mobile phone app, RidePal, for parents “to show real-time bus location and to provide notifications of late bus arrivals,” Whelan said.

Whelan acknowledged that there had been six missed bus pickups out of 450 trips since the beginning of the school year. She cited “driver shortages and other late trips due to traffic and bus breakdowns.”

One delay was attributed to a driver who saw a student vandalizing a vehicle and other property before trying to board.

“Overall, we are encouraged by the improvements in service over the past week,” Whelan said. “We will continue to provide weekly updates after the Thanksgiving holiday.”

San Anselmo’s public works director, Sean Condry, said Tuesday that construction at Memorial Park was nearly completed.

“The town is currently paving the parking lot now,” Condry said. “Striping of the parking lot is scheduled for the first week of December. So, sometime in the second week of December — pending no rain or other issues — the lot should open.”