Our View: Axing school buses is crazy

There are occasions when progress is in fact a giant leap backwards.
Slashing the school bus service is one such ill-considered move.
In Tauranga every day more than 5000 students rely on school buses to get home home safely and in good time.
It is a system that works and helps safeguard our children and surely that is paramount.
But that's not good enough for the Ministry of Education.
The ministry launched its school bus service in the early 1980s because Tauranga's public transport service could not cater for school students.
But over the past 10 years the regional council's urban public transport system has improved significantly and thousands of students are now close to city bus stops.
The ministry says school bus services are no longer required because these students do not meet the eligibility criteria.
By 2014 the ministry plans to stop the buses and leave these students to the mercy of Tauranga's public transport service.
Now while our local public transport system gets better every day, it is not geared up to handle the throng of students who pour on to the streets every afternoon when school comes out.
You only have to drive past one of the colleges at emptying time to see the many children are waiting for passage home.
Transport boffins are busily examining how they can cope with these additional numbers in terms of routes and number of passengers and buses.
But how many extra local buses is going to be needed to cope with this influx of students and how long are they going to have to wait for their bus?
Not only are we taking something that works and changing it, we risk creating chaos on the buses and a different chaos on the roads.
Bay of Plenty Regional Council's acting transport policy manager Emlyn Hatch said the closure of the ministry-funded bus service would have an impact on local buses used by the public and also sees the traffic network being affected "as a proportion of those affected will choose to drive".
More traffic on our roads is something no one wants.
When you weigh up the positives and the negatives of this proposal, you have to wonder about its merits.
Is this just another example of cutting services to save money?
If it is, we must ensure the needs of our children are protected.
Whether you live 1km from school or 10km from school in a rural area, you are entitled to equal access to schooling and the ability to get to and from there.