BUS ROUTES AND STOPS
Westmount currently operates 11 bus routes throughout the City of Calgary. The bus routes are available for viewing on our website under Transportation. Click here to view the bus routes.
Our bus routes are reviewed and adjusted annually based on the registration information received each year by April 30th. Locations of routes and their stops are determined by Westmount in consultation with our carrier Southland Transportation Ltd.
In accordance with Westmount Charter Board’s restructured transportation policy (April, 2006), the bus routes and stops are determined based upon the following criteria:
- The community of either the student’s primary residence(s) or registered childcare provider of those families who live beyond a 2.4 km radius from the school and within the city limits and who registered for busing by April 30th.
- Two community stops will be considered for dual family students.
- A student may, however, access both a home community and childcare community stop if the secondary stop is concurrently used by other students(s) as their primary stop.
- Stops will not be created for extracurricular activities or at the parents’ workplaces. A student may, however, access such a stop if the said stop is concurrently used by another student as his/her primary stop.
- Stops are congregational in nature, serving multiple families and communities. These congregational stops may result in the need for parents to drive their children to their bus stop in either their home community or a neighboring community. Stops are not necessarily created for every community in which a rider resides.
- Where possible, stops are created at or near publicly accessible facilities such as libraries, community centers, retail shops and Calgary Transit locations.
- Westmount does not offer door-to-door, or near-to-door service, due to the distance the buses must travel and our requirement to maintain drive times and costs within policy guidelines.
- Bus routes travel along major arterial roadways and not in and out the smaller suburban streets.
- The direction of the afternoon routes is reversed from the morning route. Generally our routes are linear in nature and therefore do not support a circular path of travel. Generally, the first one on is the last one off.
- Bus service outside the City of Calgary is not provided. Parents are welcome, however, to drive their children to an existing stop within city limits.
- Westmount Charter School has no service in the downtown core, industrial parks, and Inglewood. This includes, but is not limited to Bow River to 17th Ave S, 14 St SW to 6 St SE. As well, many of the newer outlying communities in Calgary will not have bus stops.
- Students living closer to the school will have shorter ride times than students living further from the school. Students living in Calgary’s further communities should expect minimum ride times of 60 – 75 minutes each way. This is a common driving time for Charter schools.
- Westmount and Southland Transportation reserve the right to alter routes and stop locations during the school year to accommodate changing rider demographics and/or to improve the flow, timing or safety of a route and/or stop.
- Routes, stops and travel times change from year to year with the changing student population.
Stops are chosen based upon a combination of the following criteria:
- Safety of the stop
- Accessibility of the roadway for bus traffic
- Distance and time of the route
- Minimization of backtracking or wandering
- The number of riding families in a community
- Centralized location of the stop for all users in the community
Under the School Act, section 51, a board is deemed to have complied with the provision of student transportation when the said transportation is “provided on a route that is not greater than 2.4 km from the residence of the student”. Although, as a charter school, Westmount is exempt from compliance to this section, we nonetheless endeavor to create stop distances that are equal to, or less than, the 2.4 km guideline, although they are not guaranteed.
Distance is measured by the shortest route using roadways, pathways and walkways in accordance with the School Act, section 51 (4)(c), as follows: “the distance of a residence from a school or from a bus route is the shortest distance measured along a traveled road or public right of way between the school site or the bus route, as the case may be, and the nearest roadway access at the boundary of the quarter section or lot on which the student's parent resides.”
If you are checking the distance by car, please be aware that a typical vehicle will add approximately 10% to the actual distance.
ROUTE INQUIRIES AND CHANGES
Bus routes are finalized in June of the previous year. All routes are posted on the school website for viewing. Families who move residences or who wish to access busing after routes have been finalized are required to access an existing bus stop on an existing route. If you know prior to May 1 that your family will be moving for the new school year, please advise transportation services of your new address and/or community so we can factor this into our route planning for the new school year.
Parents with questions about the routes or stops should contact Westmount Transportation Services. Under no circumstances should a parent approach a driver to make a route change request. Drivers will not alter a route and/or stop in any manner without written permission from Westmount and/or Southland Transportation.
Route change requests will only be considered for stops with safety concerns. All safety concerns brought to our attention will be handed over to Southland for their Safety department to review and recommend an alternate stop location if need be.
Please note the following guidelines:
- Route/stop change requests will only be considered for stops with safety concerns
- A request to move a stop will be considered only with the written approval of all the users at the said stop at the time of submitting the request
- New stops will not be created by nature of being “en route” (e.g. the bus drives by the house)
Westmount and Southland Transportation reserve the right to alter routes and stop locations to accommodate changing rider demographics and/or to improve the flow, timing or safety of a route and/or stop.
Route sheets that contain the names of students who will be riding a given route will be given to the route driver before the start of school. The same list is also held by Westmount’s business office, the school office, Southland Transportation, and is given to all riding families on the said route. This allows families to familiarize themselves with fellow riders and to share in emergency response planning. Route sheets that are posted on the school’s website do not include student names.
Morning Pick-Ups
Students are required to arrive at the bus stop five minutes before its scheduled departure time. The bus will leave as soon as all the scheduled students for that stop have boarded. If any of the children assigned to a stop are not there at the scheduled departure time, the bus will not wait for them. Parents who arrive late to the stop will need to proceed to an alternate stop on the same or different route. All routes and stops are posted on the Westmount’s website under Transportation.
Morning Arrivals
School staff will meet the buses arriving at the Van Horne campus at 8:15 AM and Parkdale Elementary campus at 8:30 AM. Students are not permitted to disembark the buses until the supervisors have arrived to greet the buses.
Afternoon Departures
Buses depart Van Horne at 3:28 and Parkdale at 3:45. Once a bus has started to roll, it will not stop to pick-up a tardy student who is attempting to board his/her bus along the bus line-up. The bus supervisors have the discretion to stop a bus to load students who have arrived late to the buses, so please have your students speak with a bus supervisor if they are late getting to their bus in the afternoon. Once a bus has left the school, it will not return to the school to pick up any students who have missed the bus. The Supervising Teacher will return the student to the office and the family will be contacted.
All riders are to board quickly when they arrive at their bus. Drivers reserve the right to ask students to board the bus if they are loitering outside the bus door. A student who loiters at a bus, which is at a distance from their own bus in the afternoon line-up, runs the risk of not being able to board once the buses start moving.
Afternoon Drop-Offs
Students in grades one and greater are permitted to disembark the bus alone. ECS students, however, are not permitted to disembark the bus without an attendant or preauthorization by Westmount Charter School. If an attendant is not present, Southland Transportation will attempt to contact the parents. The bus driver may take the child with them as they complete the route and will remain with that child until he/she is picked up either at a stop or is delivered to a Calgary Police Station. The child will not be brought back to the school. If the route time extends into overtime to accommodate this situation, the family will be billed the overtime fee that is charged from Southland Transportation. Please ensure your young child(ren) know their telephone number.