Parent Advocates for Improved Transport Board Service for Students' Commute from Speightstown to Bathsheba

Parent demands better service from Transport Board.

David Collymore is calling on the Transport Board to do a better job in providing the 3:15 p.m. bus from Speightstown, St Peter to Bathsheba in St Joseph.

Contending it is “happening too often”, he said his 15-year-old daughter who attends Alexandra School does not get home in Easy Hall, St John, before 7 p.m. if that bus is not dispatched.

He said she was on the road from 6 a.m. to get to school, but it was not an issue in the morning as she takes an alternative route which involves her going towards The City.

Collymore explained that if there is no bus at 3:15 p.m., there will not be another for two hours and many schoolchildren from Coleridge and Parry, Alleyne School and Roland Edwards Primary School rely on it.

Yesterday, the rain was falling but there was no bus up to 4:56 p.m. when he contacted the Daily Nation.

“It comes up full, so you can imagine how it is going to be with the 5 o’clock and the 3:15 p.m. She won’t get home before 7 o’clock. I called to complain and asked, ‘If you don’t send a 3:15, send a 4?’. The [person] said only nine buses running in Speightstown or something like that and hang up in my ears,” said the irate father.

Attempts to reach the Transport Board’s chief operations officer Lynda Holder were unsuccessful.

“That 3:15 is a priority. They should have that bus waiting for schoolchildren. No school child should be in a line after 5 o’clock,” Collymore said.

He said after his daughter disembarks in Bathsheba, after about an hour’s ride since the bus goes through Bawden’s and Shorey Village in St Andrew, among other areas, she then has to take the Bridgetown bus to her stop in Horse Hill, St Joseph, before making her way home.

Collymore said most evenings there was no Transport Board bus available from Bathsheba, so she has to rely on a route taxi or minibus. Once the bus was on time, she usually made it home by 5 p.m.

Editor’s Note: The Nation understands there was no bus again today.