I rode in a school bus the other day because a friend who works at the local bus garage for out local school picked me up in one. Thing was like brand new, and it rode like a dream. Nothing like the old ones that I remember a long time ago.

The new ones that our school district has have kneeling buses, including the one I rode in.

For what purpose? We've got a total of like 650 total kids if that, going to this school.. and yes that is from k-12.

 

We've got some dangerous drivers around here too. This is my first year driving, so last year and every year before that I was riding the bus. Our route has had more bus drivers than any other bus in the county! We had the standard 90's Internationals. Last year our county (already up to its eyes in debt) bought like 10 COE's with dual A/C and all and like 14 rows instead of 11. Now they just bought 2 of those new C-2 SAFE-T-LINERS with everything you can think of. And an average bus ride is about 45 min- 2 hours around here, so the newest bus went to all the welfare children (99.8% black) who live a mile from school and are too lazy to walk. Pisses me off so much everytime I get behind one of these new busses I like to mess with them w/ my PA!

My bus: 45 min ride, no A/C, hot as hell, uncomfortable seats and crappy suspension:



New bus for the kids who like 2 miles from the school: tri-mounted A/C, seat belts, LED, internal PA, CD PLAYER (WTF?!?!?!) AM/FM radio, leather seats, computer controlled air-ride suspension:



But everytime the bus driver got sick, we'd get a sub driver with a old crappy one (the drivers around here took the busses home) and I think those were the best. They accelerated like a bat outta hell and sounded mean with that old diesel!

 

Three words: Waste of Money.

 

Along with their new Magnum and Charger interceptors for the police department.

So thats why us high schoolers are still using Windows 2000 while the middle schoolers have Vista on new Dells?

Our town is retarded

 

There is this small town only 5 miles away from me... They use SRT-8 PIs... for what purpose? A crown vic would've sufficed. Not to mention, there is really no place to speed..

 

Ask your buddy how much they are paying for 08 school buses, they doubled in price because of the clean burn diesels. ( and prolly the must have options) If you see a bus driver on a cell phone it may be sprint type phone that tracks where they are so they can be on mark with routes. Technology, gotta love it.
There are all kinds of variables when it comes to purchasing new vehicle equipment, sometimes packaged deals are less expensive .. govt pays a lot less money than we do anyway for these rides. Ive seen those Chargers loaded to the hilt with cameras, led bars, hemi,etc for $23,000. We average Joe's couldn't touch one for that, not even close.

 

In IL, city police departments have the option to tag onto the state police buys - economically that makes sense even though they don't NEED a P.I. package.