News
The new bus garage at Lower Merion School District in Pennsylvania includes a new above-ground lift.
School Bus Garages Get Innovative WRITTEN BY CLAUDIA NEWTON |
CLAUDIA@STNONLINE.COM T
he story of the school bus industry is making the best of what you have. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the bus garage. Lack of funding, aging school buses, out- dated equipment and a rapidly accelerating digital age
combine to create a demand for innovation that must be creatively met. However, some student transporters have made strategic improvements in their maintenance departments in order to more efficiently care for and extend the lives of their buses, as well as increase safety for students and drivers alike. A completely new bus garage was in order for the Lower Merion School District in Pennsylvania. Having outgrown its previous lo- cation behind a high school, the transportation department found and customized a new facility. It added new equipment and tech- nologies such as an antifreeze recycling system, a new floor with a built-in drainage system, overhead reels for organizing cords, halogen lighting, three in-ground bays, one above-ground lift and a laptop for each mechanic to run diagnostic software. “Te mechanics love the new shop,” shared Bryan Bohn, Lower Merion’s shop foreman and lead mechanic. “It’s clean, modern
20 School Transportation News • FEBRUARY 2018
and has five bays. Te old shop was old and dark, and we only had three bays.” Transportation Supervisor Uldis Vilcins added that an import- ant change was specially configuring the new bus garage to service the district’s 65 CNG buses, which make up the largest alt-fuel fleet on the East Coast. Sometimes it’s more about the people and what they can do than it is about new equipment or technologies. One such dif- ference-maker is Johnny Williams, fleet supervisor for Scottsdale Unified School District in Arizona. When he arrived in 2016, the district had switched from contracting out its maintenance operations to providing them in-house. But it had not had a shop supervisor in over two years. “We had a fleet that seemed to be neglected and a crew whose morale was very low and a shop in complete disarray,” Williams shared. He assessed the situation and began making simple but vital improvements, such as building and organizing a parts room, re-painting the dark red floors and replacing lighting. He moved technicians to different locations, fired some, hired
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