No Competition For Hawaii School Bus Contracts
06/01/2011
flickr: Wheany
The cost of transporting Hawaii students to and from school has nearly doubled in the past five years. A major factor contributing to the increase is that there's almost no competition among bus companies for contracts.
The 12 companies that provide bus services for the Department of Education typically do not compete with one another for new contracts, said Randy Moore, assistant superintendent of school facilities and support services. The companies range from small mom-and-pop operations servicing only a single island, to the ubiquitous Roberts Hawaii.
The department spends more than $70 million to transport students to and from school each year, or about $1,000 per student passenger. It has roughly 800 bus routes that are divided among around 100 contracts, most of which last for six years. In a given year, about 15 of those contracts will end and come up for bid again.
But the department often only receives one bidder for each solicitation, Moore told members of the former Board of Education at their December 2 meeting last year.
"When we put the bids out, we typically only get one bid back and it's usually from the company that held the contract before," Moore told Civil Beat. "There are two ways to look at it: Either there is a formal or informal agreement not to poach on each other's property, or the other way to look at it is that there is a significant barrier to entry into this business."
