{"id":504194,"date":"2026-02-28T01:03:23","date_gmt":"2026-02-28T01:03:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/504194\/"},"modified":"2026-02-28T01:03:23","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T01:03:23","slug":"students-who-walk-to-school-through-hazard-zones-can-soon-ride-the-bus-instead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/504194\/","title":{"rendered":"Students who walk to school through ‘hazard zones’ can soon ride the bus instead"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Dozens of children in Ottawa will soon be eligible to take a school bus to class instead of walking, over concerns that their routes take them past shelters and drop-in centres.<\/p>\n

The Ottawa Student Transportation Authority (OSTA) says it’s designating new “community hazard zones” around certain emergency and transitional support services. They include shelters, drop-ins and addiction treatment centres.<\/p>\n

Around 60 students who walk to school past one of these zones will now be able to take a school bus instead, OSTA said.<\/p>\n

“One child injured \u2014 or even exposed to an environment they are not developmentally equipped to comprehend \u2014 is one too many,” OSTA wrote in a news release. <\/p>\n

5 schools affected<\/p>\n

The change affects students at five schools in and around Ottawa’s downtown, including in Lowertown and Chinatown.<\/p>\n

Those schools are: <\/p>\n

Devonshire Community Public School.St. Anthony School.Cambridge Street Community Public School.York Street Public School. Viscount Alexander Public School.<\/p>\n

While OSTA said no particular incident spurred this decision, it noted an increase in safety concerns expressed by parents, school administrators and the wider community.<\/p>\n

The students will become eligible to ride the bus to school starting March 9.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 2 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":504195,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194295],"tags":[49,48,20739],"class_list":["post-504194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ottawa","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-ottawa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=504194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504194\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/504195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}