The average ridership per bus is 24.32% on 10 school buses for a specific school. This is the rate I computed from data that some parents shared with me. The data was collected by bus drivers. Assuming the bus is a 72-seat bus. So I can see there is a potential and need to increase our school bus utilization rate. This can partially address the later high school start time initiative which I strong support.
Later I learned that 72 seat bus is supposed to house less students ( depending on student age), which still could not push this utilization rate above 40%.
A school by school bus utilizatiom rate will be more helpful. I will request those data from HCPSS and have a look.
72 seats is too high an assumption. Three students per seat in grades K-6 but only 2 per seat in grades 7-12. https://www.schoolbusinfo.com/faq.asp