MONTEGO BAY, St James — Acting principal of Spot Valley High School in St James, Jessica Davidson is pinning her hopes of improved student punctuality on the planned return of service by Montego Bay Metro bus service.

“It will be a tremendous benefit for Spot Valley High,” she told the Jamaica Observer.

“On many occasions we do have students who have transportation issues. Even when they come out early in the mornings, you’ll find that they are unable to get on a taxi, get on a bus and be here on time and that is a consistent problem,” she explained.

According to Davidson, there will be renewed emphasis on getting students to class on time.

“One of the things we are pushing this semester is for us to have that increase in punctuality so that we can start the school off on the correct footing,” she said.

“When we are here you will have students coming rather late; they are coming in the middle of the first session,” the school administrator revealed.

Spot Valley High is among the schools that will benefit from MoBay Metro service when schools are fully reopened next week. Davidson said that initially there will be one trip each way daily for her school but that could increase over time, based on talks with the bus company.

“Right now I believe the agreement is for two trips of 50 students, one in the morning and one in the afternoon,” she told the Observer.

“The pickup will be downtown, in the town thereabouts, and they will be transported to school. In the evening we will have the same kind of pickup back into the town,” she continued.

This return of service has been made possible with the addition, in late August, of 12 buses to the fleet of the State-owned bus service that serves western Jamaica.

Company Chairman Garnet Edmondson said they have made a concerted effort to return to a number of schools they previously serviced, and some new ones have been added.

“We look forward to next week Monday when the full force of the school population is out. We have been planning and we have been making the necessary preparations,” he told the Observer.

Thought is being given expanding the service to cover most high schools outside the town centre.

“A number of schools have been targeted such as Irwin, Spot Valley, Anchovy, Maldon, Cambridge, just to name a few, but we won’t get a true test until next Monday,” Edmondson said.

A parent who gave his name as Biggs is already looking forward to the money he will save once the buses are available to his daughter and other students.

“Right now them pay $200 but with the bus it will be $100. That is good savings for them,” he said.

Edmondson said there have also been positive responses from other commuters.

“It’s early but the feedback we are getting from the commuters is that they are really happy that we have expanded the routes and we [will be] catering for the student population,” he said.

“The elderly gave us their feedback and they are super happy with the timeliness of the service,” added the Montego Bay Metro chairman.

He also used the opportunity to remind commuters that there is an app that can help them track MoBay Metro buses, so they can plan their commute.

“Come the end of this week, you will see a super public educational campaign to have persons living within the areas that we service know about things like the time of the buses, the departure, the arrival and just everything to do with the service that we provide for the wider western Jamaica,” Edmondson said.