Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards; Definition of Multifunction School Activity Bus

This final rule establishes a new class of school buses, multifunction school activity buses, for use in transporting children on trips other those than between home and school. We anticipate that this final rule will also facilitate efforts by the Federal Transit Administration to provide funding to Head Start programs and coordinated transportation providers to purchase the school buses. Currently, that Administration is prohibited from providing financial assistance to purchase regular yellow school buses that exclusively transport students and school personnel in competition with a private school bus operator. We anticipate that the new buses will be used for coordinated transportation purposes by State and local social services agencies, which may, for example, use the new buses to transport children from Head Start facilities to school in the morning, and to transport senior citizens later in the day. Finally, enabling schools and other institutions to choose the new buses instead of a 15- passenger van will provide them with a safer transportation alternative.