Before the pandemic, roughly 70,000 students rode 800 buses to public school buildings in Orange County, Fla.
But as of the first few weeks of this school year, the number of students riding the bus has dropped to 53,000 riding 500 buses.
What’s to blame for such a sharp drop in ridership and buses on the road? “It’s not because we’ve gotten more inefficient,” said Bill Wen, the Orange County school district’s senior director of transportation services.
