With less than a week left until the last debate on the state of the region of the legislature begins, the parties represented in the Madrid Assembly are outlining the battery of proposals that they will deploy in front of Isabel Díaz Ayuso and her advisors to point out the shortcomings they see in her management. On the part of Más Madrid, one of the initiatives that will gain relevance has its own name, 'En bus al cole', and some undisputed protagonists, the children enrolled in public preschool and primary schools in the municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants in the region.
The main opposition party has already registered a non-legal proposal (PNL) to demand that the Executive design a line of subsidies endowed with 15 million euros to help the 23 cities in the region that have more than 50,000 inhabitants to design municipal school routes in urban transport services that connect their educational centers and that these do not entail an extra cost for families.
The bench led by Manuela Bergerot has been inspired by the program that has been operating in Rivas-Vaciamadrid, where they are part of the municipal government, since the 2024-2025 academic year and which has yielded satisfactory results both in terms of mobility, since the number of private vehicles in the town has been reduced at the start and end times of classes; as for family conciliation, because parents avoid traveling from their homes to the educational center and vice versa.
In Rivas, it is the City Council that has created the different school routes that go to the educational centers with premises such as guaranteeing the proximity of the stop to the home of the children who are going to get on the bus, that in no case does the trip exceed 40 minutes and, of course, that the school is not arrived too early or too late. The schoolchildren who are assigned to each route, after registration in the program by the families, are selected solely taking into account mobility criteria and are accompanied from the moment they get on the bus at the stop until they are received at their schools.
On board the vehicle, the guardianship of the children is carried out by trained personnel who also have a system that provides real-time information to families through a mobile application. Parents know the position of the buses at all times and, thanks to the recording made by each monitor from a terminal, they also know when their children get on or off the vehicles at the stop near their homes and when they arrive or leave school, because there are routes both in the mornings and in the afternoons.
"This initiative strengthens the autonomy of children, improves mobility and reduces road traffic in the city during the time of entry and exit to schools," highlights from Más Madrid, sources that detail that in Rivas it has been possible to verify that 'En bus al cole' has allowed an average of 400 cars to be removed from school environments every day.
In the academic year that is about to begin, almost a thousand Ripeense children will ride the 13 routes, two more than the 2025-2026 academic year, that connect the educational centers of their city. Más Madrid demands from the Government of Díaz Ayuso that in the near future, the sooner the better, the children of the 23 municipalities with more than 50,000 residents can do the same: the capital, Móstoles, Alcalá de Henares, Fuenlabrada, Leganés, Getafe, Alcorcón, Torrejón de Ardoz, Parla, Alcobendas, Las Rozas de Madrid, San Sebastián de los Reyes, Rivas-Vaciamadrid, Pozuelo de Alarcón, Coslada, Valdemoro, Majadahonda, Collado Villalba, Aranjuez, Arganda del Rey, Boadilla del Monte, Pinto and Colmenar Viejo.
