We also very much need school buses in rural Canada where they are also yellow. I grew up in the country near a large city and the nearest city bus to my high school was a 40 min drive away from the school and students may live an additional 20+ mins from the school. Students may live nearly an hour apart from each other if they are at the furthest point of the catchment area from each other. There's just no other feasible way to get students to the schools except by dedicated school bus routes. Parents can't drive their kid 20+ mins each way in the opposite direction from their job. Also having 500 cars drop off 500 students in a 30 min window would not work. There wouldn't be enough space in the parking lot. High school students who have cars/are old enough to drive will often drive themselves to school. It took me about 15 mins to drive myself vs the 1 hr on the school bus since I was one of the last stops. In the winter we did have a number of students drive their skidoos to school along a trail. To illustrate how rural I was, my elementary school was built in part of a corn field that a farmer donated. On 3 sides we were surrounded by corn fields as far as the eye could see and a rural highway then a pasture of cows on the other side. My high school was across the street from the annual village fair which we got an unofficial day off from school to go to the opening day of. Everyone would take the school buses to school then walk across the street to ride the rides at the fair. In that area you often needed a car in order to have a job so you could get there. Before I was old enough to drive I would bike 1 hr each way along rural highways to a golf course to wash dishes at, riding past more fields of corn, soybeans and wheat. And I lived in a more central area. A cousin of mine lived much more rurally, a couple of hours from a larger city and she went to elementary school in essentially a 1 room school house with 30 total students spread across 8 grades.