Some school buses have flat fronts and some have an engine under a hood. Why?
I went to the Blue Bird bus manufacturer website and I found no explanation of the costs and benefits of the different models:
Blue Bird All-American with Front Engine and Rear Engine models (Flat Front)
and
Blue Bird Vision (Front Engine with Hood)
How many different ways do you need to get a bunch of kids from point A to point B?
What difference does it make?
Conventional cab, e.g. engine front is just the way it’s always been done. CF or cab forward does give the driver an advantage by putting them at a better place to avoid sight line resrictions, but some folks don’t like driving CF vehicles. They do require changing your thinking about cornering.
Beyond that, the advantages are related to maintenance, and each one can swear that they have the other beat.
Do the different types handle better in different types of communities (e.g. urban vs. rural)?
Latin America and the Middle East are where old school buses go to die. (US rules require you get new ones every twelve years.) I have never seen a CF type in either place. Perhaps the flat-front ones lag in holding value?
How is this different from semi-tractor trucks, which have been built in both these configurations for many years?
Why are all big intra-city buses always snub-noses? Even here?
I can tell you the reason for the two types of semi tractors. There used to be a length restriction on a semi tractor/trailer. So, by making the tractor shorter, you could make the trailer longer and haul more stuff. The cab-over tractor puts the driver over the engine and effectively shortens the tractor. But, cab-overs are a PITA to work on since you have to tilt the entire cab over to access the engine. When the length restrictions were rewritten, cab-overs were no longer advantageous and they went away.
I dont’ know if there’s length restriction on buses or not, but it is a possible answer.
The earliest buses generally were all engine in front models, having evolved from ordinary cars that were stretched to carry more passengers. It’s just the way vehicles were built. I suspect one factor with school buses today is that the manufacturers also build medium size trucks, and they can use the same chassis design for both buses and trucks. I don’t know about Bluebird, but I know that Navistar/International Harvester made midsize, front-engine school buses for years, and they also made trucks.
Now who can tell me how long “short bus” has had that association?
In the UK and - I think - the rest of Europe you hardly ever see front-engine buses or trucks. They always look quaint and old fashioned in American films and TV programmes 
You could speculate that the absense of front-engine models outside the US is something to do with the size of roads, sharpness of bends, etc. Do they have front-engine trucks/buses in Australia? Big open spaces etc …
Front-engine school buses are starting to be quaint and old fashioned here as well as they’re generally being phased out.
As **danceswithcats ** mentioned above, they have a HUGE blind spot right in front, and more than a few children have been injured or killed over the years because they were crossing in front of the bus and the driver could not see them when they pulled out from the stop.
Rear-engine buses have essentially no blind spot in front, giving them a substantial edge in safety. Naturally, there’s a trade-off: They’re mechanically more complicated as the engine and transaxle are folded into a snug compartment in the rear, rather than the old-style straight line of an engine, transmission and driveshaft, all easily accessible for maintenance under the hood.
Not true for all areas. Here in Austin we use the engine in front buses exclusively. I know there are a few older flat front buses and some of the other local school districts use them, but AUstin doesn’t. However, I don’t know why. I wish you had asked this question yesterday as I just had lunch with the Austin School District director of transportation and I could’ve asked him. I’ll ask him next time I see him what the rational is.
Good info here but I have to ask…
Where is** BusGuy**?
tsfr
Thanks for all the good info and ideas so far, but don’t forget that the difference between the hood front and the flat front is not the only issue. Another issue is the difference between flat front with front engine and flat front with rear engine.
Do you have a cite for this (the US rules thing)? I know that I have driven buses from the 80’s here in my school district. The out-of-town buses are all <5 years old, but some of the buses we use for short hauls in-town are pushing twenty plus years. They’re just as safe, just a bit less comfortable.
Where does the engine go on a flat front with front engine bus? I can’t visualise it 
Many school boards now specify flat-front buses because it is easier for the driver to see if a child is in front of the bus. The long-hood models have major blind spots which have contributed to a number of cases of children hit by school buses. Buses often also have a swing-out bar on the front bumper which forces children to move even further into the driver’s view to cross in front of the bus. (Note that operators want the children to cross in front of the bus as it is generally safer.)
In my search, I saw a photo of that. It looks like a 3 or 4 foot pole coming straight out of the front of the bus, pointed to the front, from the bumper on the right side. I couldn’t figure out what it was. I thought it was some sort of spear to give kids an extra incentive to move out of the way of a moving bus or a lance for secret school bus jousting tournaments. Rule #1: Nobody talks about school bus jousting.
I don’t know. I guess there is an engine compartment down low that protrudes into the passenger space with a cover over it. From exterior photos of each kind of bus, I can’t tell the difference between the two models.
You can see where the engine goes in these flat front schematics
I’ll break rule #1:
Once upon a time when I was a little boy, my school bus driver was late deploying the flexible plastic pole in question. I got whipped across the shins, which smarted.
What’s the penalty for breaking the rules of Bus Jousting club again?