A bill formally introduced in the Louisiana State Legislation seeks to amend a law passed last year that prohibits school bus stops from being located in such a way that students need to cross a road to or from the bus.
HB 695, introduced Wednesday by Rep. Neil Abramson, would allow individual local governments to determine if a school bus stop on a particular shoulder is unsafe and to then permit the school bus driver to load and unload students in a lane of traffic. It also strikes the previous language that bus stops must not require students to cross any lane of traffic to get on or off the bus. Instead, it inserted a phrase that bus stops should not have “a lane of traffic between the bus and the right-side curb or other edge of the road.”
The new provisions in HB 695 prohibit the loading and unloading of students only on a divided highway where vehicles traveling in the opposite direction of the bus are not required by law to stop. When traffic traveling both ways must stop for the bus, students would be allowed to cross a lane of traffic, even on the right side of the bus, to get to and from the stop.
HB 695 also removed an exception that motorists need not stop for school buses when driving on a highway with two or more lanes in each direction and with a two-way, left-turn lane separating them.
In removing the requirement for bus stops near student homes be located on a shoulder rather than in a lane of traffic, as long as the school district determines the shoulder to be hazardous. In those situations, school bus drivers are allowed to stop while still in a lane of traffic but only at the farthest right-side edge of the road.
HB 695 retains language that school bus stops located at school must be on shoulders and out of any type traffic lane, unless the local government has not designated the shoulder for loading and unloading of students during school zone hours.
The bill would revise HB 600/654, which Abramson introduced last year. Many school bus operators expressed frustration with language changed to the original version that presented last-minute routing challenges to local areas, even as the new school year dawned.
