Geelong mayor Stretch Kontelj has called on the state government to address a “systemic failure” in ensuring the region’s students are able to travel safely to school by bus.
Mayor Kontelj wrote to the Victorian minister for public transport Gabrielle Williams asking her to take “immediate action” to address the bus safety concerns of school leaders and parents in Greater Geelong.
“In recent weeks St Joseph’s College, Western Heights, Clonard College, Belmont High School and North Geelong Secondary College have expressed concerns publicly about severe overcrowding, safety risks and significant service deficiencies,” he said.
“The concerns raised are consistent and increasingly urgent: severe overcrowding, capacity shortfalls, buses unable to service key growth areas, inadequate timetabling, and a system so complex and outdated that schools are unable to navigate it effectively.
“These are not isolated incidents; they reflect a systemic failure to meet the basic expectation that children can travel safely to and from school.”
St Joseph’s College principal Tony Paatsch said he had two main concerns with the provision of bus services.
“The first is that there’s simply inadequate capacity on the buses that we are being provided by the Department of Transport to get our students home to Ocean Grove and surrounds,” he said.
“And the second issue is that for many of our buses on these longer routes it is legal to have people standing.
“We’ve got a 72-seater bus allocated as one of the primary Ocean Grove buses, and it can only seat around 50. So there are 25-plus students standing in the aisle as it travels down the Bellarine Highway.
“While that’s legal, we don’t believe that’s safe.”
Mr Paatsch offered examples of injuries to students, including one incident where a boy standing in the aisle sustained significant damage to his jaw and teeth when his bus was forced to brake suddenly.
He said while these issues had existed for two decades, the growth on the Bellarine and the resulting influx of young families meant the problem would only get worse.
Mayor Kontelj said having up to 20 students standing on a bus travelling 80km/h to 100km/h could not be “considered compliant with modern safety guidelines or risk frameworks”.
“The City of Greater Geelong is committed to being an active partner in addressing these challenges,” he said.
“We are willing to work closely with the state government to bring together schools, operators, departments and community representatives to help identify a coordinated and practical pathway forward.”
Member for Geelong Christine Couzens said the government was responding to the growth and changing needs of the region.
“We have announced funding for a bus review across the Geelong region, which will commence in the coming weeks,” she said.
“I think the mayor needs to focus on local government; there are plenty of issues he needs to deal with and (he should) let the state government get on with its processes of a review.”
