The Houston Independent School District (HISD) is in the process of rolling out a new partnership with the Metropolitan Transit Authority (METRO) of Harris County to offer a revamped transportation system for the 2025-2026 school year. HISD, which oversees more than 200 schools, has initiated a review of routes, policies, and staffing to address the transportation challenges it faces, according to CW39. This overhaul includes plans to provide transportation services for eligible students, who live more than two miles from their respective schools or are enrolled in magnet programs, at a negotiated rate per pupil.
As part of the overhaul, the district has also given the green light for a $1.25 million purchase of new transportation routing software, an attempt to modernize their long-troubled system. Furthermore, HISD's board of managers meeting marked the beginning steps of this transformation, as they authorized a free Metro bus pass arrangement for about 50,000 high school students, as reported by the Houston Chronicle.
Efficiency and ride time reductions are a critical part of the strategy. As per the district via the Houston Chronicle, HISD's chief of organizational effectiveness, Kari Feinberg, stated that "We also have a goal around ridership, that we are putting more students on buses and also using the right size vehicle based on how many students are on the bus." Part of accomplishing this objective may involve pushing the distances from student homes to bus stops further, with zone students seeing stops placed under two miles from their homes and magnet students within three miles.
Furthermore, HISD is working on optimizing bus capacity and focusing on the use of 30-passenger buses. For specialized routes, the district is looking to replace full-size buses with smaller ones. Feinberg emphasized that "In order for us to do these last two things, decrease ride times and increase the number of kids on a bus, we have to push that home to stop distance a little bit," as noted by the Houston Chronicle. HISD is also giving parents the ability to directly request transportation through a survey or text messaging, which aims to simplify and personalize the process.
