Sudbury, Ont. school bus consortium cancels 8 routes Monday due to vandalism

Around 500 students in Greater Sudbury needed other arrangements to get to school Monday morning after 11 school buses were vandalized over the weekend.

"It affected many schools from the four different school boards here in the Sudbury local area," said Renée Boucher, executive director of the Sudbury Student Transportation Services Consortium, which manages school bus routes in the region.

Boucher said the consortium had to cancel eight bus routes, since the operator which owns the buses, the Voyago Schoolbus Company, does have some spare buses in case of emergencies.

"It's impossible to bring buses from outside and from other operators because every other operator requires their number of buses," Boucher said.

"We're really hoping that the repairs will be done in a short order."

Brad Wills, Voyago's operations manager, said the buses were parked at a depot on Notre Dame Avenue in Sudbury when they were vandalized.

"What happened is the vandals broke the loading doors on the buses trying to gain entry into them," he said.

"This of course makes the doors inoperable, so we aren't able to use those buses until we repair them."

Wills said he estimated each bus had around $600 worth of damage, but added the broken door latches could be repaired in a day.

"So hopefully they will be up and running by tomorrow (Tuesday)," he said.

Wills said he contacted Greater Sudbury Police about the vandalism and they are investigating.