To challenge the assumptions and figures behind North Yorkshire Council’s (NYC) school transport cuts, the School Transport Action Group has commissioned two independent, data-driven modeling systems. These models bring transparency and scientific rigor to a policy decision that directly impacts rural education, child safety, and family budgets.
Commissioned by parents, audited by facts, and grounded in real geography.
Every single parameter, rule and calculation in these models is built directly from North Yorkshire Council's own published information and official reports. We have used their official data to model their proposed policy changes directly, giving you simple tools to see the real-world impact on our schools and families for yourself.
Compares how different school allocation rules affect the physical bus routes, vehicle sizes, and fleet contracts required to transport students daily.
It simulates the physical distribution of homes (both nucleated village communities and scattered isolated properties) and local schools across a geographical region, comparing:
The simulator populates a 500x500 grid with village centers, remote outliers, and schools. It maps students to their target schools and dynamically packages the student cohort into a virtual school transport fleet:
Rather than assuming idealized, frictionless travel, the model utilizes real-world operational constraints. Its underlying assumptions are highly conservative: it calculates travel by straight lines (meaning real road distances and taxi costs are higher) and assumes the council can perfectly pool students across different villages into a single bus run. Because the model represents a best-case scenario for the council, its finding that the "Nearest School" policy creates operational fragmentation and ballooning taxi costs is highly robust and statistically reliable.
Audits North Yorkshire Council's claim of £4.26M in annual savings at maturity by factoring in the real-world operational and administrative costs they ignored.
It calculates the cumulative, phased net balance of the proposed transport cuts over the implementation timeline (from 2025-26 to 2032-33) by factoring in three massive, overlooked cost drivers:
The model phases in the council's claimed annual savings relative to the maturity year using official implementation weights. It then runs a parallel calculation of actual operational overheads:
Standard council projections assume immediate savings and perfect efficiency. This model respects the transition timeline: when a large bus route is cancelled for new starters, the remaining older siblings must still be transported, often requiring expensive individual taxi contracts. Furthermore, every single parameter (taxi day rates, appeal rates, administrative costs) is fully adjustable, allowing anyone to stress-test the model against different variables and witness how easily claimed savings are wiped out.
Our models prove that North Yorkshire Council's proposed cuts do not represent a simple budget saving. Instead, they shift the financial and emotional burden onto rural families while fracturing local school communities. By forcing students onto fractured routes and into individual taxis, the council faces rising contract costs, overloaded administrative appeals, and a significant cumulative deficit.
We invite councilors, parents, and journalists to play with the parameters themselves. The math speaks for itself.