How is that even legal? School buses are provided in part as a service to low-income families. Who decided it was okay to require parents of middle schoolers to shell out for a smart phone for their kids?

As far as I can tell, someone has “digitised” the local buses by adding tracking and cashless payments to go along with the mobile app.

They’ve also fragmented the services even more in the process since each bus company has their own version of the app (it’s just a skinning of the base app). It means I need to check back and forth between two apps to see which buses are on time. Naturally you can only buy a pass that only works on one bus route. The ux is pretty garbage.

Dealing with public transport in rural England definitely made me appreciate the seamlessness of transport in London.

Oh, I was assuming a US-style school bus system where a separate yellow bus goes around and picks up the kids. It sounds like your kid rides a regular public transit bus to get to school? It's still unfair to have that system be inaccessible without a smartphone, but it's not as completely incomprehensible.

It sounds like they definitely need better UX, and the buses around here very much accept cash still (or special tokens if you buy ahead).

The one that she takes in particular is a school bus, in a weird kind of way. Seems that it’s run by a private company but it only services kids travelling to and from a couple of schools.

But yes, it’s not like the big yellow ones the rest of us know from The Simpsons.

If you are on benefits you can usually(in some countries anyway) get a basic smartphone and laptop free of charge.

Holy crap, that's insane. Whoever made the decision that all middle school children need smart phones to ride the bus is an idiot.

Or a basic “product” person who will get their engagement metric met.

Complain to the school board. In person, at a meeting. Post about it on social media - you'll find you're far from alone in objecting to that ridiculous requirement.

Force the change, don't leave it up to others.

Are you sure? I don't have a smartphone and I also live in England. There are lots of services where the happy path expects a smartphone but I'm yet to find a service that actually requires it.

They don’t take cash and in theory you can pay by card but it doesn’t work.