INDUSTRY CONNECTIONS IT’S A
SMALLER
tablet WRITTEN BY ART GISSENDANER
S
tudent transporters agree that of all the routes their buses travel, the most unpredictable are those involving special needs students. No
one knows this better than transportation officials in Virginia’s Loudoun County Pub- lic Schools, where officials say special needs routes can change up to six times a day. “Tere are so many different factors
why special needs routes change so much,” explained Loudoun Operations Supervisor Tisha Austin, who coordinates bus routes. “Special needs students change schools, their parents aren’t happy with the pick-up times or they may go home early or late.” Loudoun County spares no shoe leather
ensuring students are where they’re sup- posed to be and when they’re supposed to be there, which is no small task. Te district comprises 515 square miles of some of the busiest urban and rugged rural terrain in the state. Tat includes 350 miles of gravel roads. Te district transports more than 50,000 students to 84 schools in 850 buses that travel 8.5 million miles annually. “We have students that we pick up at a
mailbox alongside a gravel road, and then we have students we pick up in neighbor- hoods,” added Al Hampton, director of transportation. Hampton said while transportation
operations are efficient, he knows they can always improve. Tat’s why he and his staff took a “Quantum Leap” into the future this year and opted for a state-of-the-art GPS system that took them beyond standard GPS technology. Tey selected the GPS/AVL system with
a Windows-based tablet platform developed by Quantum XXI, an industry provider of fleet management solutions. Te system comes with a touchscreen tablet that is capable of two-way data transmission. Traci Kubo-Carrera, the district’s GPS admin-
£ Above: Loudoun County (Va.) Public Schools’ Alvin Hampton, GPS consultant Rebecca Peters (middle) and district GPS Administrator Traci Kubo-Carrerra watch a live GPS feed of a school bus on route. Left: A tablet developed by Quantum XXI that's mounted inside a Loudoun County school bus transmits real- time routing and student-tracking data to drivers via GPS.
istrator, said the tablet solved their most important issue — the ability to transmit real-time information to bus drivers. “Standard GPS units provide one-way
communication from the bus out,” Ku- bo-Carrera said. “It’s never information going back to the bus. Now, we can update our routes and push that data out to the tablets. So, it’s not a matter of printing out route sheets, physically locating the drivers and handing it to them. We can do this while sitting at a desk.” Special needs transportation benefited immediately. Of the 34 buses currently equipped with the tablets, 32 transport special needs students. Kubo-Carrera said it was the best use of the technology, and gave the district “more bang for the buck.” Hampton said the technology stream- lined operations. “We have about 20 parking locations for the buses, and it takes a while to drive out there and back,” he said. “Now, we can use a computer to send the information right to the tablet and we’re done.” Kubo-Carrera said the tablets enable
drivers to manually track students, which is especially important for special needs. “When a driver reaches a stop and opens
20 School Transportation News September 2013
the doors, the (tablet) changes from the routing screen to one that displays the stop listed and images of the students who are supposed to get on the bus,” she said. “You can manually board students by touching their image.” Kubo-Carrera added that the tablet also
displays parent phone numbers and perti- nent medical information about the child. Another benefit of the two-way commu-
nication is if a bus breaks down, officials can identify and notify other buses in the area to lend assistance.
Te tablet is also compatible with other
equipment brands. “With so many GPS companies, you’re obligated to use their equipment,” she said. “And you’re committed to a specific cell carrier because a lot of GPS units have specific modems in them. We can pick any tablet we want.” She said the tablet and software will
eventually allow open communication and sharing of information between the appli- cations for routing, payroll, special needs and GPS. Te district has used the tablets less than a year following a six-month pilot. Plans are to install the tablets on all district buses. “As we see it, that’s the way of the fu-
ture,” Hampton concluded. “And why not head in that direction when every school has got Wi-Fi?” —
WORLD Virginia school district takes ‘Quantum Leap’ in GPS technology with
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