It’s that time of year again when the school bells start ringing in anticipation for the annual Christmas bus decorating for Northern Beaches and Lower North Shore
The long-held, annual tradition for decorating buses in Northern Sydney continues with 3 buses and local schools selected this year to take part in the annual Christmas Bus decorating event.
Keolis Downer, transport operators for the Northern Beaches and Lower North Shore have delivered buses from each of its depots at North Sydney Brookvale and Mona Vale to local primary schools at Neutral Bay, Cromer and Mona Vale Public Schools.
Mark Dunlop says, “It’s always a delight to see how excited the students when they know they have free reign to decorate as they please.”
“We of course need to make minor adjustments and alterations to ensure safety, visibility and comfort for our passengers – but they love it just as much!”
“We get many enquiries from the travelling public as to what routes the Christmas buses will be operating on.”
The students from the three participating schools have thoroughly enjoyed being part of the annual event. Naomi Stevenson, a teacher at Mona Vale Public School adds, “It’s always a fun time of the year moving closer to Christmas and our students start to get excited about Christmas and school holidays.”
“I’m sure there will be some students who will plan to catch the Christmas bus with their family and they can point it out to their friends as they see it drive by!”
As an event that is celebrated each year across Sydney, for the first time, all Sydney Metro bus operators were invited to bring their Christmas bus to Brookvale Depot, where the Minister for Transport, David Elliott, Chief Operations Officer for Transport for NSW accompanied the delightful Olive who was representing Sydney Children’s Hospital, on a tour of all the Christmas buses and vote on the ‘best dressed’ competitor.
We were extremely proud and humble to have Keolis Downer’s North Sydney Depot bus, as decorated by Neutral Bay Primary school, take out the coveted award as voted by Olive herself. Congratulations to everyone involved! Check out the 7 news story here.
Buses can be found on the network using NextThere or AnyTrip mobile transport applications* to quickly find and track Christmas buses. To find out on the day where a Christmas bus might be, customers can call 131500 and speak with a representative for more information.
*NextThere – xmas.nextthere.com allows you to quickly find Xmas buses and then track them via the iOS app, screenshot below
*AnyTrip – Use the filter on website to select “special vehicles”, screenshot below. Also visible in the app.
*TripView – visible in the app with xmas tree emojis, but not specifically searchable.
