Global positioning systems (GPS) technology is becoming increasingly common in everyday life. Motorists, hikers and boaters are using it to determine their exact position and direction. Car-rental agencies, in particular, have embraced GPS technology, which can help navigationally challenged customers find their destinations. GPS is also making inroads into the mass transportation industry. For example, the transit authority in Mannheim, Germany, tracks light-rail cars using GPS and relays that information to touch-screen displays at tram stops. Passengers can get real-time information about the location and arrival time of any train along the length of the line. In the United States, some transit agencies are using GPS for automatic vehicle location (AVL), which allows them to track buses in real time. In Santa Clara County, Calif., a paratransit agency called Outreach uses GPS to track its fleet of minivans. The agency reportedly saved $500,000 the first year the AVL systems were installed. But will this technology ever make the leap to school bus fleets as a management tool? The answer is "perhaps," depending on the potential applications and the cost barriers. At least one school transportation director believes GPS systems will play a prominent role in fleet management in the next century. "I don't think there's any doubt that GPS is a technology that we'll be using in the future," says Pete Thompson, transportation director at Coweta County Schools in Newnan, Ga. "It's going to happen. I don't know how or when, but it's going to happen." Thompson tested a GPS tracking system for two weeks earlier this year. The system, developed by Worldwide Notification Systems in Atlanta, allowed Thompson to track one regular-route bus, two special-needs buses and two other district vehicles. "Basically, it did everything it was supposed to do," he says.
Bus locations pinpointed
"We could pinpoint where a bus was at any specific time and that helped us clear up some of the radio traffic," Thompson says. Moreover, the system included an emergency alert function that allowed the driver to immediately report violent incidents, medical emergencies, accidents or maintenance problems. This feature, he says, was tied into a cellular phone system for greater response capability. Thompson says he would like to buy some of the GPS receivers for his fleet of 150 buses, especially the special-needs vehicles, but cannot afford the cost, about $1,000 to $1,500 per unit. "We're still trying to make sure that we have new school buses, two-way radios and video cameras," Thompson says. Although real-time tracking makes the best use of GPS capability, there are applications that use the technology in a different fashion. For example, some systems use GPS to intermittently compute a school bus' location, speed and heading. The information is stored in a recording unit for eventual downloading and review. Although this is not real-time tracking, it can help to re-create a driver's route. Dave Jones, transportation director at Leon County Schools in Tallahassee, Fla., uses the Sidekick system, which was developed by Savannah River Technologies (SRT) in Aiken, S.C. The Sidekick unit, which includes a GPS receiver and event recorder, costs about $1,200 to $1,500 and records data points every 15 to 30 seconds along the route, according to John Anderson, director of engineering at SRT. He adds that data points can represent events such as complete stops, door activity and stop-arm usage. Jones has installed Sidekick's GPS receivers in four of his 240 buses, mainly to verify that drivers are sticking to routes and not using the vehicles for personal errands or other unauthorized uses. "My drivers now know these units are out there, but they don't know what buses they're on, so there's more of a tendency to be accurate with the routes they're running, the times, etc., than they have been before," Jones says. When a supervisor wants to review the data, he pulls the memory card out of the recorder and inserts it into his computer for uploading. "This lets him see the trip on a map that shows a little arrow for every data point that was recorded," Anderson explains. Although drivers have complained about the monitoring device, Jones says parents have had the opposite response. "I'll guarantee you that for every driver who didn't like it, I got 10 phone calls from parents saying 'That's what we like to see,'" he says.
