Fewer Toledo high school students should be shuffled to and from downtown this year than when they rode Toledo Area Regional Transit Authority buses in the past.

While Toledo Public Schools’ budget-driven 2010 elimination of high-school transportation was bemoaned by many, there was at least one positive, school and transit authority officials said: Cutting “school routes” gave TARTA time to review how it bused students. A new route system devised for the restoration of school service this year means that only students who attend a high school other than the one assigned to them will have to transfer downtown.

“As we looked at the routes, one of our goals was to keep the buses as close to their respective schools as possible,” said James Gee, the transit authority’s general manager, “making sure the kids get home as quickly as possible.”

A five-year, 5.8-mill levy Toledo district voters passed in November provided money for TPS to restore high school transportation and to increase elementary school bus service. Since 2010, only grade-schoolers who lived outside a 2-mile radius of a school had been provided with bus service.

James Gant, the school district’s business manager, projects that the district will increase from 4,000 to 11,000 the number of students who are transported daily. While elementary students travel in traditional yellow school buses, high school students receive TARTA passes.

Mr. Gant said about 5,000 TARTA passes were distributed. The new routes designed by TARTA should benefit students at parochial and charter school as well, since the district must provide equal transportation to those schools within its boundaries. While the new routes aren’t directed at non-TPS schools, more go through neighborhoods and are near those schools, and thus would require fewer students to transfer downtown.

“There is a benefit for everyone,” Mr. Gee said.

Since the TPS school year just began Tuesday, it was too early to say Friday exactly how many students made downtown bus connections, Mr. Gant said. Those numbers should be clearer in the late fall, and TPS will also have a better idea of whether students are getting to school faster.

“One of the things we will be monitoring is the average travel length,” Mr. Gant said.

While designed to handle schoolchildren, the TARTA “school routes” are open to any passengers.

Contact Nolan Rosenkrans at: nrosenkrans@theblade.com or 419-724-6086, or on Twitter @NolanRosenkrans.

First Published August 31, 2015, 4:00 a.m.