All Aboard the Sports Batbus

3 Youth Transport Services on the Far North Coast of NSW received in May 2006 additional funding for 2 years to provide transport for Sporting groups consisting predominantly of young people between the ages of 12 -25.

The Transport services are Batbus, Yaxi and Yowi. These services identified a need for groups of young people to get to sporting matches, particularly those matches further afield, such as regional tournaments. Lack of public transport has been frequently identified as one of the key concerns for young people in these rural areas.

The benefits of sport are well documented but for some young people access to events was limited. Factors such as low socio-economic households, rural isolation, no vehicle or one car families, or siblings needing transport at conflicting times all contributed to transport disadvantage.

As the Coordinator of the Batbus I have received a very positive response and sporting groups are extremely grateful to be able to use this new service.

We have followed our existing brokerage model, where vehicles are hired and subsidies provided, to ensure all passengers can afford to travel. In some cases, we have hired self drive vehicles, where the group has provided a driver and we have subsidised the hire cost. This is particularly useful for weekend tournaments in other regions, where the cost of either keeping a driver for the weekend or paying for return transport, can be excessive. 

The Ministry of Transport has funded the 3 projects and will be evaluating the success over the next 2 years. Batbus has received $10,000 per year to provide Sports Transport. With this relatively small amount of funding we expect to provide hundreds of passengers per year with affordable and accessible transport.

For further information

Contact	:	Melissa Armstrong, Coordinator Batbus
Address	:	Shop 9 14 Middleton St Byron Bay 2481
Phone	:	02 6685 8771
Email	:	batbus@norex.com.au

WWW

:

http://www.batbus.net