WBUR News9%
Boston school bus vendor fined more than $400,000 over delays, missed trips 19%
By Suevon Lee21%
7/14/2026, 4:13:24 PM
Keywords: School Bus, Boston Public Schools, Transdev, Fines, Transportation, Delays, Missed Trips, Education
BS Summary: This article contains 16 faulty reasoning types, including Anecdotal, Availability Heuristic, and False Dilemma, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 13.1% saturation with 72 hits. Analysis detected 670 faulty-reasoning hits from 548 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 33.6% and a BS Rank of 19% (17,893 of 21,887 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 81.80% of the article peer group.
Boston Public Schools fined its transportation vendor $184,000 for missed and late school buses in May.
Transdev, which operates the city's school bus fleets and hires and trains drivers, has now been fined $400,500 to date for significantly late or no-show buses between March and the end of the school year in June, based on data provided by district spokeswoman Samara Pinto.
In a statement, Pinto said the district will “continue to use all available tools under our contract to ensure Transdev maintains sufficient drivers and vehicles to meet service expectations.”
“We will also continue to enforce non-performance damages when warranted to hold the vendor accountable and drive ongoing improvements in transportation service for Boston students and families,” she added.
The district's five-year contract with Transdev allows officials to assess a $500 fine against Transdev for each instance a bus is more than an hour late or doesn't show up.
Though the contract was signed in June 2023, school authorities only began enforcing that provision earlier this year.
Timely bus transportation has long challenged Boston Public Schools, leading to frustration among parents, disruptions to kids' after-school programming and lengthy school days for staff.
Boston City Councilor Liz Breadon said one school in her district — the Edison K-8 School in Brighton — had a particularly challenging year.
She's heard of teachers having to stay at school as late as 7 p.m. to make sure kids got home safe.
“That’s totally unacceptable,” she said.
"Sometimes it takes hours for a replacement bus to come and pick the kids up and bring them home."
Transdev did not respond to a request for comment.
The district budgeted nearly $200 million for bus services for the new fiscal year.
That represents an $11 million increase from the previous year, driven by “increased demand for door-to-door services” and efforts to improve on-time buses, according to a district budget book.
Boston's five-year $651 million contract with Transdev, which runs through June 2028, requires at least 95% monthly on-time bus performance.
The vendor met that requirement just once, in June.
It came close in November, April and May with at least 94% on-time morning arrivals, according to district data.
Afternoons remain more problematic: May had a total of 488 uncovered routes.
That’s more than double the 235 uncovered routes in April and lagged only behind the winter months, when snow and bad road conditions contributed to delays.
The average number of available drivers dipped in the latter half of May “due to a number of factors,” Pinto said, though newly trained drivers were able to pick up routes in June to improve service before the summer recess.
Breadon said she believes part of the issue is the entire district being serviced by a single bus contractor.
“Levying the fines is certainly one thing but I also think as a school district you need to seriously look at breaking the city up into smaller regions to see if we can introduce some competition in the market,” she said.
The Boston City Council held an emergency transportation hearing in late March to hear from parents and the district's transportation director, but no follow-up hearing was scheduled before the end of the school year, Breadon said.
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100%flagged-word coverageLiz Breadon
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