Supersized Technology
Dispatcher Lisa Stallins works with Zonar Ground Traffic Control to monitor buses operated by Gwinnett County Schools in Georgia.
portation at the school district, one year ago a driver did not show up for a midday meeting that was called by her supervisor. Such behavior was unlike that driver, which triggered concern. “We used GPS to locate her bus. It was in her normal
parking space, so they went there and found her passed out on her bus,” Moore recalled. “She had some type of medical emergency, a seizure. Our dispatchers just punched in the number of the bus and got an exact location.”. Moore said the district has 1,900 buses, 1,636 of which
are on routes. The GPS equipment by Zonar has been installed on all of the district’s buses. In addition, the Zonar telematics details feed into the Bus Planner routing software. Moore reiterated the compatibility caution that was voiced by Katrina Falk and acknowledged the same benefit. “It’s interesting, because GPS [solutions] are a dime a
dozen,” Moore said. “We wanted to make sure we integrat- ed it into our routing software. It’s more than knowing where a bus is, at a particular time.” Moore explained that the district has been working
58 School Transportation News • SEPTEMBER 2019
to estimate the amount of times that routes are going to take. “Our GPS data gets uploaded daily with our rout- ing software,” he continued. “The morning traffic might average 25 miles per hour, while the afternoon traffic might average 35 miles per hour. This makes us a little more efficient by having more accurate information on all of our roads.” Moore said the school bus drivers are performing their
pre-trip and post-trip inspections using tablets. But he is waiting for the parent app that tells parents when the bus is coming, for fear that it might be abused. “My biggest fear is that we’ll have kids running to the bus stop at the last minute,” Moore said. “I want to see if school districts that have that are experiencing kids coming to the bus stop at the last minute, because of that technology.” Synovia Solutions, which was acquired by CalAmp
earlier this year, is the GPS provider of choice for the Centerville City Schools in Dayton, Ohio. “With that technology, we can monitor our buses in real time and if we need to, [we can] send another bus to assist,” said Andrew Grasty, assistant director of transportation. Grasty described that at their operation, “We always
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