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 What's going on in Lakewood, NJ?
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WayneCustom
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Posted - 09/01/2016 :  10:56:03 PM  Show Profile  Visit WayneCustom's Homepage  Reply with Quote
Lakewood, NJ is one of the hottest school bus markets in the country, with approximately 36,000 students, the majority of whom are Orthodox Jews who attend private schools, as well as a number of yeshivas which are serviced in the afternoon and evening hours. There have been debates over whether the school district should transport some of these private students. Gov. Christie last month made available funds to continue the courtesy busing of students in the township, whose streets on any given morning are packed with school buses.

A few years ago the school district began building up its bus fleet once again, initially under the supervision of Gus Kakavas, who has acted as a consultant to the Lakewood school district and is the former transportation director of Toms River Regional Schools (as well as ultimately serving on its Board of Education). This fleet has now expanded with the purchase of 20 brand new Thomas C2 buses and ten minibuses. Lakewood's fleet now numbers 52 vehicles.

There are about a dozen private bus operations in Lakewood. The predominant private bus operator in Lakewood is Jay's Bus Service, founded just eight years ago by Jay Elinson, who started his fleet with five Thomas C2's and an ad in the paper recruiting drivers. Jay's got its first big boost when another private bus company based in Lakewood failed, a victim of poor service and a fleet peppered with dangerous older buses. Jay's received 25 of their newer, more reliable buses. Steady growth followed, and last month Jay's acquired a smaller Lakewood operator, Central Bus Service, whose 72 vehicles were all taken into Jay's fleet. Central was founded in 2010, with its first buses being castoffs from George Dapper and Sheppard Bus Service, then purchasing new big buses from all three major manufactures and minibuses from Starcraft and Thomas.

Jay's fleet now stands at 277 buses, with three operating locations, two in Lakewood, and one in Monmouth County (Tinton Falls). Jay's has contracts with many school districts throughout Ocean and Monmouth counties, in most cases offering supplemental transportation (trips, school games, etc.)

What rounds out this news story is who isn't operating out of Lakewood any more. Last summer, Student Transportation Inc. pulled out of Lakewood and opened a new garage in Willingboro, to serve the South Jersey market. The buses stationed at Lakewood went mostly to that new garage, with others going elsewhere in the NJ STA system. And over this summer, National Express/Durham School Services has been retiring many of its older vehicles, with no August inspections held at the Lakewood depot, and many of the newer buses finding homes at other garages in the system, particularly Freehold, Middletown and Tuckerton, with buses at those locations headed toward retirement.
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