Buses get stuck in traffic jam

School buses from Santa Rosa County motor past Pensacola on their way to New Orleans. Eighty buses that left on the first day of the transfer operation wound up getting stuck in traffic in the Crescent City when a drawbridge malfunction halted vehicular traffic on the Interstate. Scott Page/ Gulf Breeze News There are no more Laidlaw/First Student school buses left in Santa Rosa County.

More than 300 buses were driven by some of the school district's bus drivers to New Orleans last week.

"We had to send them in waves of about 20 at a time," explained Santa Rosa School District Transportation Director Joey Harrell. "You can't have a string of 300 buses running down the interstate in the middle of traffic. It isn't allowed by the powers that be in highway transportation."

The buses had to be transported to New Orleans because, as of July 1, Laidlaw/First Student no longer will hold the contract for bus transportation for the district. The School District signed a contract with Durham Bus Services for the next five years, so Laidlaw/First Student needed to get its buses to its closest bus barn, which is New Orleans, after school was out in Santa Rosa County.

"The new Durham buses will be here right around the first of July," Harrell said.

Any summer field trips contracted through the school district will be handled by the handful of buses owned by the district and kept at the district's Milton bus yard.

There were approximately 80 buses being kept at the South End bus yard in Navarre. The rest of the Laidlaw/First Student buses were kept in Milton.

Santa Rosa's school year ended June 5, and at 6 a.m. Friday, June 6, the first wave of buses left the yards - 20 from Navarre and 20 from Milton - at staggered times so the two groups would not hit the highway at the same time.

The next group of 20 was meant to leave at 7 a.m., but the Navarre buses were held up about 30 minutes because of some last-minute repairs and some buses being switched.

That ended up causing a bit of a shock for one security officer at a rest stop in Mississippi when a Milton group of buses caught up with the group leaving late from Navarre - and 40 buses suddenly started pulling into the rest area that was not planned for that many commercial vehicles.

Then again, one group pulled out several minutes ahead of the other, to stagger the traffic impact. But after all the preplanning and staggering, all of Santa Rosa County's 80 buses sent that first day ended up arriving at their final destination about the same time because of a faulty draw bridge off the final interstate exit that backed up traffic for about an hour.

Because so many buses arrived so close together at their final destination, drivers had a much longer wait than expected to get their buses checked into the yard - some sitting in the heat for more than an hour.

Drivers eventually were transported back to Santa Rosa County in an air-conditioned school bus. Some had signed up to do it all again Saturday and the following Monday.