The Washoe County School District is celebrating the beginning of construction for their new school bus transportation yard. This $33 million upgrade is long overdue with the current facility built over 50 years ago with a lot of challenges.

Scott Lee, director of transportation for the WCSD, says, "Our current facility was built in 1974 and is built in the flood plain - and has been flooded several times and had to evacuate several times."

Wilma Marshall, bus driver for WCSD, says, "It's a lot of mud, and it gets hard when you're trying to chain and you have all the mud going on." 

Marshall also says the current space is pretty small, making it difficult to maneuver the buses around.

The new facility will have more space with brand new fuel tanks for all 750 buses. It also is planned to have an expanded bus garage, maintenance garage, an upgraded training facility, upgraded dispatch facility, more parking for staff and enhanced security.

The transportation yard will continue to operate while construction is underway.

"There's going to have to be some creative maneuvering for parking and making sure that there's enough available space for us to operate and they can still do construction," says Lee.

The school district says bus drivers are typically the first faces students see on school days and the last at the end of the day, which is why it's so important the transportation department is taken care of just as much as any other part of schools.

Superintendent Joe Ernst says, "This is just another step forward in terms of modernizing the facilities here in Washoe County School District. Upgrading in so many different ways and all of that helps lead to improve on time delivery for our students."

The project is expected to be finished in fall of next year.