www.stnonline.com
“Tis project was a two-year endeavor
for the Transportation Division. We dili- gently wanted to evaluate not just a web- based vehicle tracking system, but also the expandability and integration with student, communications and mainte- nance systems,” said Boull’t. Although a large-scale endeavor like
Chicago, the LAUSD project has one ma- jor benefit, but also a drawback. As the buses are owned by the district, Everyday will only have to communicate with one main client. On the flip side, the installa- tion will take place during the school year, and it will be more difficult to access the vehicles since most will be in use five days a week. But Everyday says it is ready to roll with the punches. “We have done many installs of this size
and we do not expect any significant is- sues with this account,” said Bill Wester- man, vice president of marketing for Ev- eryday Solutions. “Te effort could take as little as six to eight weeks.” The LAUSD deal will also have a state-
“We had to take everything we’ve learned all the way since our very first install and bring it to
the table.” — Brad Bishop, Synovia
wide benefit, as Everyday has extended the special pricing that it provided in the contract to any school district in the state of California. “Other districts can leverage the work that
LA put into selecting us and forgo the cost and time requirements,” said Westerman. For Boull’t, the excitement of the en-
tire project can be seen on every level of the district.
“The move to GPS represents a dy-
namic culture change for our organiza- tion. We’re looking forward to meet- ing the challenges mentioned and the opportunities that GPS brings to assist LAUSD Transportation Services Division in meeting the expectations of the stu- dents, parents, schools and communi- ties we serve.” n
Giving Drivers an Audible Helping Hand Drivers of Southwest Transportation Agency, a joint power
authority that operates in the Fresno, Calif., area, will soon be getting help from a little “friend” that is no bigger than a deck of cards. The device, created in cooperation with Southwest’s IT department and ESRI, will give drivers turn-by-turn direc- tions and even tell them how close they are to the next stop. The solution was created in response to a common problem — late buses.
“It’s a lot better than a driver holding a piece of paper while he’s driving,
trying to figure out what he has to do.” — Kerry Somerville, ESRI
“We do late buses, about 15 a day, and they have to be
routed every day because there’s different kids that ride ev- ery day,” said Southwest’s Chief Executive Officer Kirk Hunter. “It’s really an Achilles heel for us because we have to have them done by 11 a.m. so we can get the written copies to the drivers in time.”
Hunter was set to begin beta-testing a routing system that
allows office staff to create a new route and wirelessly send it to a device in each drivers’ school bus that will then audibly direct the driver in real-time through the route, much like a Garmin or Tom Tom GPS device. But, unlike these products, ESRI’s solution includes multiple student stops instead of just an end destination and follows the route as it was set up back at the office. “Garmin doesn’t understand weight, height or road restric-
tions that go along with school buses,” said Kerry Somerville, navigation product manager at ESRI, who explained that the new system will reroute drivers to any missed stops immediately, a possible cost-savings. “I have one trucking company that believes that they had 125 million out of route miles last year. At $2 a mile, that’s $250 million that they could save.” Te pilot is slated for six of Hunter’s buses, whose total fleet
runs 7,000 children over 65 routes daily. But there are plans to equip the entire fleet, and more. Hunter said the system could “revolutionize special needs routing,” as, like his late buses, those routes are constantly changing. IEP instructions for each child can be included in the daily reports sent to the devices, includ- ing medical conditions. Drivers would also be free from reading route changes. “It’s a lot better than a driver holding a piece of paper while
he’s driving, trying to figure out what he has to do,” added Somerville. n
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