Merseytravel invited coach and bus operators on its approved supplier list to detail what additional resources they will have available from September in an indication of how some local authorities in England may choose to procure additional dedicated home-to-school transport.
The government has estimated that an additional 5,000 vehicles will be required for that purpose from the new academic year.
It is committed to removing as many children as possible from regular bus services and transferring them to dedicated transport, which it will fund. Social distancing measures will not be required on dedicated home-to-school services, guidance from the Department for Education has confirmed.
The deadline to apply to Merseytravel has now passed. It says that its exact requirement for additional home-to-school transport is not yet known. As a result, it invited operators to submit bids for resource-based contracts. That involves them making an offer based on capacity, driver hours and operational miles, rather than for a specific service.
The spreadsheet used to submit bids asks for details of factors including how many vehicles are available, and of what type (minibus, double- and single-deck bus, and coach); the seated and standing capacity, and the capacity if one metre social distancing is in place; and whether the vehicle is DDA (sic) compliant.
Additionally, Merseytravel asks whether the operator “is satisfied that its drivers are suitable to drive the service from a safeguarding perspective.”
Rates are requested per hour, for a maximum of four hours and for a maximum of 10 hours. In the latter two cases, utilisation can be either in a single block or split across the morning and afternoon. That suggests school opening and closing times on Merseyside may be staggered, allowing a vehicle to carry out more than one journey in each of those periods.
“Discussions [will] be held with individual operators where the capacity offered meets Merseytravel’s requirements and the price is considered to represent value for money,” the invitation says.
