Thinking Out Loud:
How Will Autonomous
Vehicles Affect School
Transportation?
By Michael J. Martin
Americans mostly prefer
predictability in their lives. However,
as we’re seeing these days, change
is inevitable.
Heretofore, the pace of change was
mostly gradual. These days, it’s warp
speed. It seems hardly a day passes
without hearing about some new
technology that promises to make a
huge change to our lifestyles or
Michael J. Martin
our work.
One that comes immediately to mind is the looming advent
of self-driving (autonomous) vehicles. These are no longer the
proverbial vehicles of the future, but of the very near future.
The ramifi cations for our industry will be profound for two
reasons: 1. The predictability and defi ned routing of yellow
school buses lends itself to automating, and 2. It would—at least
according to its advocates—result in further improved safety and
save taxpayer dollars.
In a recent political thought piece, “After Super Tuesday: Focus
on the labor market, inequality and the future,” Minneapolis
author John Crea opines about the future employment prospects
of truck drivers and school bus drivers. He believes jobs for both
groups will probably go away, but with a twist: truck “drivers”
will vanish but there likely will be some truck “operators” still
employed, working at computer stations directing fl eets of
delivery vehicles.
Not so for yellow school bus drivers. He believes—and I
concur—they will not be completely autonomous because parents
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will want their children to be supervised. Drivers, he says “will be
retained (and retrained) as school bus “monitors” who are aboard
to maintain order and keep children safe. But “with no gain in
productivity, they have a slim chance of keeping up their earnings.”
His conceptual solution? Supplementing their wages with an
Earned Income Tax Credit to recognize their value.
The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is a federal tax credit
for low- and moderate-income working people. It encourages and
rewards work as well as offsets federal payroll and income taxes.
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 29 states,
plus the District of Columbia, have established their own EITCs to
supplement the federal credit.
The EITC is designed to reward work; a worker’s EITC grows
with each additional dollar of earnings until reaching the
maximum value. The theory is that this creates an incentive for
people to join the labor force and for low-wage workers to increase
their work hours.
This incentive feature has made the EITC highly successful.
Studies show that the EITC encourages large numbers of single
parents to join the labor force, especially when the labor market
is strong.
So, does Crea’s idea have merit? Maybe. Maybe not. But
hopefully it at least makes you think about the future.
The pandemic created by the virus now known as CoVid-19
exposed the fact that we were ill-prepared for something we knew
was coming, or at least should have seen coming. Let’s not let
something like that happen again.
We know autonomous vehicles are coming…and jobs will
be impacted negatively. So, let’s begin planning now for the
transition so it’s as painless and constructive as possible. In fact, I
think this planning should go hand in hand with the development
of autonomous vehicles themselves, not be a subsequent economic
crisis for our industry.
What do you think?
Michael J. Martin serves as executive director and CEO of the National
Association for Pupil Transportation (NAPT).