WORD of the Baillieu government’s cuts to school bus subsidies didn’t cause a stir at Tarneit Senior College, even though it is in one of the suburbs that is set to lose out.
After all, you can’t cut bus services to a school that has none.
Tarneit, in Melbourne’s west, is in one of 10 postcodes within the city’s expanded urban-growth boundary that will no longer qualify for school transport subsidies, under state government cuts to be phased in over the next six years. The government expects to save $21.6 million.
Students walk along busy Leakes Road. Photo: Justin McManus
Schools in Tarneit are among more than 110 in outer Melbourne that will lose their conveyance allowance because they have been judged to have good enough public transport to do without it.
Michael Fawcett, Tarneit Senior College’s principal, disagrees.
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”There are no bus routes out here in this part of Tarneit,” Mr Fawcett said. ”We’ve complained to the Transport Minister a number of times about the fact that there’s no public transport for our students.”
Two separate bus routes zig-zag through Tarneit with 40-minute frequencies, but neither stops near Tarneit Senior College, the suburb’s only state school for students in years 10 to 12.
Next year it will expand to take students from prep upwards and its numbers will swell from 75 to 200. It expects to have 500 students by 2015.
Currently its students are mostly either driven to school or walk along Leakes Road.
”They walk on the road because there’s no footpath in some sections, so it’s pretty disastrous,” Mr Fawcett said.
Public Transport Victoria maintains that the nearest public bus is a good option for students, even though its closest stop is about a kilometre away.
”As enrolments grow at the college, PTV will continue to monitor patronage levels to determine whether extra buses are required to cater for demand,” a spokeswoman said.
However, the distance between the bus and the school’s front gate does not meet one of the government’s key criteria for measuring a school’s eligibility for the conveyance allowance – that transport routes be ”within a 400 metre catchment of a school”.
Mr Fawcett has approached the bus operator, Westrans, about rerouting the bus so it passes the school. A Westrans spokesman said it passed this request on to Public Transport Victoria, but was told no.
Public Transport Victoria’s spokeswoman said the authority would ”review the operation of buses in the Wyndham area as part of the network planning for the new Williams Landing station and the new stations on the Regional Rail Link route”.
The Regional Rail Link is in the early stages of construction, but is not due to open until 2016. ”There is frustration from the school community, definitely, and we’ve missed out on enrolments because we haven’t had a bus driving past,” Mr Fawcett said.
