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Student transport in Rotterdam is vulnerable.

More and more people are suffering from the failure of student transport. Of course first and foremost the children and the parents, but the teachers also suffer from the problems with student transport. The rain of complaints led to the start of an online petition to place the problem on the national political agenda.

Thousands of vulnerable children are structurally late or not at school due to driver shortages at student transporters in the Netherlands. For the initiators of the online petition this must come to an end. There must now be an emergency, no more false solutions!

facts

Pupils, parents, teachers and healthcare professionals observe that at least 14.000 vulnerable children are late every day due to driver shortages. This increases from 15 minutes to several hours, including in the afternoon. The uncertainty whether the van will come, whether the hours can be made up and the total disruption of a day causes many problems for these vulnerable children. Not only do they have a lot of stress in the morning, not only do they miss lessons, but they also miss therapies in the afternoon.

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Headlines don't lie in recent weeks.

To solve all problems in student transport, a clear plan is developed. An emergency measure involving the deployment of WMO transport during school rush hours and the hiring of extra private taxis and companies. In addition, they demand urgent attention for the composition of the routes and a more efficient arrangement of the vans.

long-term

As a result of the major problems with the Rotterdam transport company Trevvel, the initiators are also asking for longer-term measures such as decentralization of transport during the tender process, escorts back on the bus and more regular drivers who receive a better pay. For the children themselves, there is a fixed pattern on the agenda that they can rely on and shorter travel times.

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Parents and teachers calling Trevvel are put on hold indefinitely and then the connection is lost.

Since the beginning of this school year, the number of complaints received by the ombudsman and children's ombudsman about Trevvel has exploded. Too early, too late or not appearing without notice, that's what most complaints are about. And Trevvel cannot be reached for clarification. Parents and teachers calling Trevvel are put on hold indefinitely and then the connection is lost. 

The bus that comes too late, too early or not at all is a national problem. This is also the case in Overijssel, according to a tour of RTV Oost along transport companies. In Zwolle we see the same picture of a significant proportion of students who arrive late. They are transported by Munckhof Taxi. The company transports 20.000 students throughout the Netherlands, 275 of whom are late. 80 to 100 of the 'latecomers' come from Zwolle. 

"It is a huge puzzle to make efficient planning, where we work with regular drivers and vehicles as much as possible and also have to take individual wishes into account."

Loes Visscher is commercial director at the Oldenzaal company Taxibedrijf Brookhuis. She let the colleagues of RTV Oost know that it was less complicated in the past. “Then students either went to school or went home. Today it is more complicated. We need to take children to more different places. Examples are grandparents, after-school care. Or then again with mothers because she is divorced, and a week later to fathers who live in a different place. The increased complexity of transport makes maintaining structure almost impossible.”

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