Seattle Public Schools is scaling back its student bus service for the new school year, cutting 80 buses from its fleet and redrawing routes as part of a two-year cost-cutting transportation plan. The changes mean that thousands of Seattle students will have to rethink how they get to school.

The district will provide alternative transportation options for the next two years for these students.

In addition, some schools will start later and others earlier to accommodate the new route schedules.

"With more efficient routing, buses are less likely to encounter the traffic delays that occur on longer routes, so families will find departure and arrival times to be more reliable," said Tom Bishop, the district's transportation manager. "In addition, the more streamlined routes will also benefit the environment by taking up to 80 buses off the roads and reducing the district's carbon footprint."

The district's new transportation zones will provide bus services to students who live within the attendance area of a school and students who live within a 1-¼-mile radius from their middle-school area. Under the new plan, buses will now cover three routes in the morning and afternoon instead of two, and multiple stops will be consolidated into central locations called "Community Bus Stops."

District officials say the changes are meant to reduce the time that students spend on buses to 25 minutes or less and to give bus drivers the ability to add one more route each day.

The changes come as the district is steeling itself for a steep round of state funding cuts to its bus services in September. Bishop said the district's transportation plan will save $4 million by using fewer buses and less gas.

According to Bishop, the 3,600 students no longer covered by the transportation plan will be most impacted by the change.

Students who live within a half-mile from the transportation-zone boundary can walk to a yellow bus stop within the zone and get a ride to school, or can request a guaranteed assignment to a school closer to home. The district will also create community stops so that students can catch a yellow bus near an attendance-area school and take it to another school.

This year, 200 district buses will shuttle students to and from school, said Bishop, but plans call for downsizing the fleet by 80 buses by 2013.