This is a story about a bus. It’s a school bus. The children who take the bus to school call it “The Singing Bus”. Do you know why?
Is it because the children sing on the bus? Do you know that song? The bus song? “The Wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round. The wheels on the bus go round and round, all day long.” You do know that song? Sing it!
Brilliant. But that’s not why they call it “The Singing Bus”. No.
They call it the “Singing Bus” not because the children on the bus sing. But because the bus sings itself. Do you know why? Because it does not have a big, smelly engine like normal buses. Instead, it’s an electric bus, with a battery. And so it doesn’t make a big noisy like a smelly diesel bus. It is so quiet that people are afraid that people won’t hear it and might step in front of it.
And that’s why the bus plays a little tune as it goes along with the children on their way to school. It sings its own little happy tune and people here as the go along and they turn and smile.
But that’s not the only thing that makes the Singing Bus amazing. It’s also really good for our planet Earth. It doesn’t make lots of fumes like most buses and so it doesn’t make the world warm up and make our weather go weird. Like electric cars, electric buses are the future.
That anyway is what the people in White Plains in New York state think. They are much more expensive than normal buses — they cost as much as three diesel buses. But they cost much less to keep going from day to day, and they are much better for our planet.
The schools in White Plains got some money to help buy their singing buses. But the people who make them say that if more and more people buy them, then in something like seven years, they will be able to make an electric bus for the same price as a normal, smelly bus.
Teachers think that would be great. Not just because they want the children to get to school without poisoning the planet. But because the children also learn directly about the ways that electric buses can help make our air clean to breath, just from riding on the bus to school.
And while they go, the bus sings merrily along. And so do the children.
How does it go again? “The wheels on the bus go round and round…”