INDUSTRY CONNECTIONS


£ New Caney ISD’s Josh Rice (seated) shows an associate how the district’s on-board video footage can assist with driver and attendant training. Video is but one of today’s technological advances available to school bus professionals. But what are the right ways to use them?


“Cloud services are easy to maintain,” said Greg Marvel,


president/CEO of Perseus Associates/TransTraks. “It reduces the workload for the district IT department, and transportation managers can access their data from anywhere they have an Internet connection.” Marvel added that 98 percent of his company’s new clients begin


with cloud service. Frank Gazeley Jr., vice president for client relations for Transfind-


FOR GOODNESS


SAKE EFFICIENCY AND STUDENT SAFETY ARE DRIVING TRANSPORTATION TECHNOLOGY INNOVATIONS, BUT BUS OPERATORS SHOULD ALSO HAVE A PLAN FOR IMPLEMENTING AND MANAGING THEM


WRITTEN BY ART GISSENDANER


the bus. Ten the radio went dead. All 100 of the district’s buses were called, as were the district’s police department and the Tyler City Police Department, before the bus was found. Tat’s when Bagert decided the district needed a better way to


T


track school buses in real time. Te answer was to install a GPS and a student tracking system. “We wanted a solution that would give us the best vision of our fleet, and the quickest response time when a school bus was involved in an accident or security incident,” said Bagert. “Live GPS and student tracking provides exactly that for us.” Student safety and operating efficiency remain the top two driv-


ing forces behind the development of new technologies in student transportation. GPS, student tracking, wireless communication and cloud computing are designed to protect and transport students more efficiently.


20 School Transportation News June 2014


he worst fears of John Bagert, transportation director in the Tyler Independent School District in Texas about 100 miles southeast of Dallas, came true when a driver called in saying there was a problem with a student on


er, said mobile solutions are being brought up more frequently be- cause transportation directors want immediate access to information from any location. “Tere are so many things that transportation directors are juggling that they want and need information at their fingertips,” Gazeley said. “Tey need to be able to see routes, drivers, student rosters and emergency operating procedures.” Meanwhile, mobile surveillance providers are also seeing a trend


toward total fleet awareness in real time so information such as bus location, speed, route information and video is available. “What we hear from transportation directors and fleet mainte- nance managers is a need for increased visibility of their fleet, which is driving requests for live video streaming and vehicle tracking,” said Lori Jetha, marketing communications manager for Seon. “Tere is also a lot of pressure to reduce costs and improve fleet efficiency and they are looking for solutions like route optimization software that help them better deal with their budget cuts.” Josh Rice, transportation director in the New Caney Independent


School District that serves a northern suburb of Houston, said one cost-saving piece of technology is GPS that is built into and trans- mitted through a two-way radio system without incurring monthly or annual cellular-based fees. Rice, who is known throughout Texas and beyond an innovator in using new technologies, said advance- ments such as Zonar’s ZPass that allows students to be tracked using an RFID card and the use of onboard cameras for video surveillance have also improved the safety of students. “New Caney ISD is piloting a program called MotoTrax (from


AngelTrax),” Rice said. “Tis allows multiple things to be seen in real time from the transportation department, including where the school bus is located along with live video footage from the bus. Tis could aid the district if it is ever faced with a kidnapping or hijacking situation.” Andrew Johnson, director of marketing for Zonar Systems, said


school districts cannot change what they cannot measure. “(Trans- portation directors) also need information regarding the health of a vehicle,” Johnson said. “Electronic visual inspections and remote diagnostics help identify defects or potentially unsafe problems and provide this information immediately to maintenance personnel. Often, maintenance can detect a problem before the driver is aware of it and make decisions regarding the safety of the bus.” Johnson added that driver behavior can be monitored through the


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