Talk:School bus/Archive 4

Talk Page Archived

In case anyone is wondering why it looks different here, I archived the talk page again, as it was getting a little long (longer than the actual article itself!). Now we don't have to scroll down anymore through discussions of things that are taken care of. SteveCof00 (talk) 22:33, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Archived again

6 months of edit explanations was starting to clog up the talk page, so it was archived again in order to make room for the discussions currently under way. --SteveCof00 (talk) 02:59, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Alternative fuels - biodiesel

One you are missing is biodiesel, a local bus company tried it a few years ago on it whole fleet but it didn't so so well but it also relates to not just Australia but the US as well. Biodiesel - Cost savings not enoughNew Products - The GRDC view on biofuels (Grains Research & Development Corporation ). Bidgee (talk) 03:59, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Along with what is already listed in the section, biofuels/biodiesel could easily be up there; I just haven't seen much information out there about what kind of scale it's being used in on school buses anywhere...this seems to be a relatively emerging technology. Another thing I'm trying to figure out is how to word any such section. As far as verifiability, the article shown above could be fairly useful. --SteveCof00 (talk) 05:33, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Adding content about MFSAB buses

Currently, as far as configurations go, although body styles (Type A, B, C, D) are discussed, the article currently overlooks another configuration for school buses. These vehicles are known as a MFSAB (Multi-Function School Activity Bus). Although these are typically small Type A designs intended to replace 15-passenger vans for the purposes of transporting students, manufacturers also offer their full-size buses in similar designs. Usually, in product literature, they are also known as "activity buses" or "child-care buses" if they are not openly referred to as MFSABs.

Although the body design and structure itself is identical, these vehicles do not have the traffic-stopping capability of a standard school bus (no red or amber warning lights and no stop arm); some MFSABs also differ from school buses from their seats. Also, MFSABs are not specified with school bus yellow as a paint color.

As this is brought up in many manufacturers' articles on here (that they make MFSAB products), perhaps it is time to explain (on here) what an MFSAB is. --SteveCof00 (talk) 09:14, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Content Added Currently, it doesn't really elaborate much more than what I've said here, but I've added a subsection for MFSAB buses. Admittedly, most of the "school bus configurations" section comes from a single source, but on something like this, I don't expect to find much in the way of conflicting information. It is a "work in progress", but it's here now. --SteveCof00 (talk) 09:59, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

School transport article has been started

I have begun writing an article School transport, which draws heavily on the parts of the article School bus which do not directly refer to vehicle design. The use of the term "school bus" in the new article to refer to a generic vehicle carrying students is avoided, in deference to the School bus article (it should be noted, however, that school transport buses in many parts of the world are simply called "school buses").

Editors may now wish to reduce or summarise the discussion of worldwide school transport in the present article and give it a "main article" link to the new one. As previously, I'd like to suggest the following header to the present article:

This article is about vehicles specifically designed and manufactured for carrying students to and from school. For a general discussion about school transportation, see Student transport.

...or words to that effect. I chose not to implement these changes myself but I hope others will consider them.Nankai (talk) 21:48, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Support. It definitely makes sense to move the country-specific details to another article, so that this one can focus on details of the bus itself. Further, the present article seems to be growing quite long and splitting it in two will make it more readable as well as more manageable for editors. Casablanca2000in (talk) 23:06, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Hat note has been added to the article. –BMRR (talk) 23:41, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Next step, I suggest, is to delete the logistics info from this page and stick to engineering: the chief target for deletion is Outside North America. I suggest this be changed to Specially-designed school buses outside North America. Content would be mostly the First Student UK and Mybus material in the UK and a brief mention of the Hong Kong situation with the mainlink to Nanny bus. If no-one objects I'll do these things in 24h or so from now.Nankai (talk) 23:02, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Edits made to reflect change

I just finished re-formatting the school bus article top to bottom based on the comments on this discussion. Although a bit heavy-handed, they will help develop the two specific articles rather than blend them together. Here's what was done:

• The "Outside North America" sub-section was turned into a separate section dedicated to School Bus Designs Outside North America. The location at the bottom is temporary and may change later. The reason that only Hong Kong and the UK examples remain is that these best explain the specific vehicles used rather than the transportation systems (the UK subsection is in need of a re-write, though).

• The section dedicated to Canada and its school buses is moved to a subsection in the manufacturing section. This is a move for the better, as the content's previous location likely could have created some questions for readers unfamiliar with the subject matter. I also removed the information concerning Canada's role in student transport. This is filled by the student transport article.

• The statistics in the "Usage" section were moved to the introduction (their original location). Now that the student transport article has been created, this section is obsolete and some of its content can be either merged back into the introduction or just deleted.

There are some more minor changes to be done (any potential copyediting, category adding), but I don't plan on making any more fundamental format changes for the article for the time. --SteveCof00 (talk) 08:23, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Cultural references

A new section of cultural references would be nice. I'd do it myself but I'm no expert. Notable mentions would be the movie Shortbus and the Magic School Bus books etc.Nankai (talk) 23:36, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

I'd hold off on adding that right now, as the material in a section like that could be viewed as a trivia section. It does sound like an interesting suggestion, but I'm not sure how to suggest integrating it into the article in a format that would not be tagged for deletion by other editors with differing editing philosophies. This would be something that could be discussed further on here. --SteveCof00 (talk) 04:58, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Intro length

Is it just me, or does the intro seem a bit too long? I wonder if some of the content in the intro should be moved to the body of the article. Looking back at older revisions of the article, the intro consisted of the first two paragraphs used in the current revision, and the rest was in the body of the article. I think it was a bit less overwhelming that way. Thoughts? (I also liked that older revisions of the article had photos of multiple school buses at the top of the page, representing different countries. This also helped fill up the enormous amount of white space next to the table of contents.) –BMRR (talk) 18:05, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

I just finished a bit of a revision of the introduction section for length. After the student transport article was written and some content was moved around; the rest ended up in the introduction after being "orphaned". I was able to eliminate some content that was quietly duplicating itself and now the introduction should be a little bit better for the actual size of the article.

As far as the pictures up top, there's two sides to that...the article is starting to have a LOT of images and I don't know how many would be too many (page loading and for looks). While the gallery at the top was a nice feature, I don't want to go into "image overload". For the purposes of cutting down its size, the TOC is formatted to display only down to the L3 section headings (instead of L4 or L5); some settings allow it to collapse as well. --SteveCof00 (talk) 09:30, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Edit request from WalthamWriter, 9 June 2010

{{editsemiprotected}} What is your source for the sentence that states school districts in the 80s took out belts due to behavior problems? We have researched seat belts on buses for over a year and have found NO such evidence of problems, other then students not always using them. This sounds highly biased, like it is from the bus industry and not from a credible source. Can you either delete that or source it? Sue Hildreth, wikipedia editor and member of Waltham4Seatbelts.org

WalthamWriter (talk) 19:37, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Removed. —fetch·comms 19:52, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm typically not much for openly deleting content, but sourcing this statement would have been a bit of a challenge. I don't, however, consider the removed content as being "highly biased" (yes, it's awkwardly written, but not because it doesn't cite sources...) --SteveCof00 (talk) 10:06, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Design history

There have been several improvements and additional references added since the refimprove and cleanup tags were applied to this section. So, I've removed the tags. If there are still places in this section where you'd like to see citations, please mark those specific locations. If there are other improvements you'd like to see, please leave a note here. Be as specific as you can. Folklore1 (talk) 17:29, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for helping out, and taking the tags off. Many of the sections are starting to become fairly well-referenced and the article has basically been re-written 2-3 times over the past year, so tagging whole sections (for the most part) is no longer needed. It's a much better help for editors when they know what specific content needs to be worked on rather than a whole Level 2-Level 3 section. is a a good tool. -SteveCof00 (talk) 21:16, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Pending changes

This article is one of a number selected for the early stage of the trial of the Wikipedia:Pending Changes system on the English language Wikipedia. All the articles listed at Wikipedia:Pending changes/Queue are being considered for level 1 pending changes protection.

The following request appears on that page:

Comments on the suitability of theis page for "Penfding changes" would be appreciated.

Please update the Queue page as appropriate.

Note that I am not involved in this project any much more than any other editor, just posting these notes since it is quite a big change, potentially

Regards, Rich Farmbrough, 23:57, 16 June 2010 (UTC).

As far as the trial goes, I'm not sure how it works, but if it is a way of opening this article up to more editors, then I'm for it. This page was semi-protected after a few IP-address editors vandalized the page several times. -SteveCof00 (talk) 05:23, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Stop arm revisions

I've taken a look at the recent revisions to this sub-section and although I support the revert, I wonder if these changes could make for an addition in a different way. I've heard of the term "stop paddle" before; it seems to be used regionally (in the Northwestern United States). Additionally, it could also be added that some states specify more than one stop arm on a school bus (one on the front, one on the back). -SteveCof00 (talk) 05:42, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

In California, school buses have rear stop arms but not front stop arms. If a passenger must cross in front of the bus, the driver is required to get out of the bus and use a hand-held stop sign to ensure that the child makes it safely across the road. We should add that (and references ought not be too hard to find). –BMRR (talk) 17:07, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Dead Reference

Ref 3 is a dead link. 128.198.30.17 (talk) 16:58, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm searching for a new link that works. –BMRR (talk) 18:36, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

They revamped their web site and the page seems to have vanished. Still looking for a replacement. –BMRR (talk) 18:16, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Found it, sort of I was able to dig up the majority of the information that was originally referenced; however, a key fact is now missing: instead of the number of buses, it mentions the number of people involved instead. Here's the new link for the NAPT site: About NAPT|History and Vision|NAPT Overview (on the right side). While the School Bus Fleet Research Center could potentially be a very useful resource for statistics (for the safety-related content, especially), one has to sign up to access that information, and I'm not sure how well that works in terms of references and citations. --SteveCof00 (talk) 21:02, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Content about Mexican school buses

I support removing it from its location in the article (Mexico is part of North America, not outside of it). As it was written, the content could really be split between this article and the student transport article. If added back, I would suggest adding it right after the section covering Canadian school buses (the only thing I would worry about would be length...it may take a few tries to balance things out). Any thoughts? --SteveCof00 (talk) 19:31, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

I removed it, and I hope that if anyone adds it back, they'll at least do some major copyediting first — it was a real mess, not to mention completely unsourced. Clearly the article does need better coverage of Mexico... but lack of coverage is better than poorly-written unreferenced coverage, in my opinion. –BMRR (talk) 19:58, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

The Mexican-related content has been added back in a different location. I did some major editing for length and context (I'm not sure we need an exhaustive list of every single type of van/minibus used in Mexico). As it's written now, it's reasonably in line with the content that is there about Canada. --SteveCof00 (talk) 22:50, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Content about school buses and motorsports

I'm mixed about expanding or deleting this, as I'm not sure how to find supporting material for this (as it stands, there is just a link to a racetrack website). If one were to look deeper, there are probably a number of racetracks that have school bus races, but this section isn't meant to be a list of them and this article itself really concerns itself more about the vehicle design. If there access to design rules online, that might be a helpful resource. I'm not quite up for the deletion of this subsection, since this is something that does happen out there, but this content is in need of help. --SteveCof00 (talk) 08:06, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Explaining some changes

After running the article through a peer reviewer toolbot , I've made a few minor, but visible changes to the page. While the infobox ( an adaptation of Template:Infobox UK Bus) is an obvious change, I made several more subtle ones: including correcting the layout of the sections at the bottom of the page, some copyediting, and reducing the number of images a bit (mostly switching out the multiple-image templates wherever appropriate; they are still useful in a couple of places). There's some more to be done, but this does help a bit. --SteveCof00 (talk) 10:45, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Systemic bias

I've put on this template because all the companies mentioned in the Alternative Fuels section are in America. Cutecutecuteface2000 (talk) 00:47, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

I wouldn't go as far as saying this section (or article) has the issue of systemic bias. While what you said is true, purpose-built school buses are vehicles that are not as often seen outside of North America as in. Outside of North America, vehicles used for transporting students have much more in common with standard transit buses (in urban areas) or smaller buses (in rural areas). In short, part of the reason North American school buses have evolved into purpose-built vehicles is because of the stringent safety standards imposed by the American and Canadian governments. If one wanted to go after similar systemic bias in buses, one would have to say the same thing about red British double-decker buses.

Anyways, to expand upon the alternative fuels section, there was a brief discussion mentioned several sections above here on the talk page on the use of bio-diesel in Australian school buses, but so far, the discussion has been fairly dormant and it has not led to any change in content on the article itself (at least not yet). --SteveCof00 (talk) 21:24, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I was not aware of that. By the way, the template was removed. Cutecutecuteface2000 (talk) 11:11, 8 August 2011 (UTC)Cutecutecuteface2000

Working on the article

While changes don't necessarily don't need to be made for the sake of change, this article has largely remained stagnant for the past few months (if not longer than that). Once in a while, there are edits to combat vandalism and content is added regarding school buses outside the United States (thank you, since I have no first-hand knowledge of that subject).

Are there any changes that need to be made/should be made to the page (as a whole?). I just want to hear other editors weigh in on this subject a bit. --SteveCof00 10:41, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Some changes to the buses from abroad section. It's fair enough to combine the Mainland China and Hong Kong sections together (if someone else named them that way...). The UK part of the section rambles a bit, so I cut out some of the content that was rambling a bit. Now it is better focused on production and usage. I switched out a couple of pictures as well and gave the Australia section an image. --SteveCof00 10:50, 20 October 2013 (UTC)