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FWCS Plan is Ahead of most Schools, Equipping Buses with GPS Tracking 12/12/05 |
This article highlights the benefits of installing
GPS Vehicle Tracking Systems on buses to ensure the wellbeing of children riding them.
Safety is the easy and obvious sales pitch for equipping Fort Wayne Community Schools buses with
GPS Logging and Tracking Systems, but knowing where every bus is through every minute of its route will help the schools in many other ways, too. Knowing exactly where all its buses are at all times may allow FWCS to redesign its routes to save time and money, too.
If the
GPS Tracking System works as administrators there hope, it ought to inspire more companies, institutions and units of government to investigate how this technology could make transportation more efficient and more secure.
In the next few months, FWCS will finish equipping its 300-bus fleet with hardware that uses the GPS, or Global Positioning System, to report the location of every bus. Lynn Hower, director of transportation at FWCS, said the buses should all be equipped, at a cost of roughly $1,000 each, no later than the first week of April.
The fundamental arguments for installing the
GPS Tracking System revolve around security. “We want to be able to give the public, parents and schools the reassurance that we know where buses are at all times,” Hower said.
The possibility that a criminal or a demented person might hijack a bus is remote but not unthinkable. (In 2001, Carly Rinearson of Fort Wayne was among the passengers hurt when a man on a Greyhound bus in Tennessee slit the bus driver’s neck and caused the bus to crash. Rinearson suffered only minor injuries, including a broken wrist, but six people on the bus died.)
In a worst-case circumstance, having
GPS Locators on a bus could help authorities locate a bus and, ideally, rescue innocent people aboard. But the tracking would improve security in many less-dramatic ways. FWCS buses carry children as young as 3 or 4; if one falls asleep and escapes a driver’s notice,
GPS Tracking would tell the school system exactly where the child’s bus is.
A likely advantage of the new system will come when it is paired with the software FWCS uses to plan its bus routes. Using satellite locators to track vehicles has helped trucking firms for 15 years or more. But FWCS is ahead of most school systems in exploring the uses of GPS to keep tabs on buses and to help plan routes. (East Allen County Schools equips eight of its buses with
GPS Locators).
Hower sees several likely benefits. For one thing, the routing software the district now uses assumes a steady speed for every bus. Analyzing months or years of real data on bus speeds should help plan routes more realistically. Suppose the school system integrates railroad schedules into its route-planning; avoiding more long trains could save fuel, shorten routes and improve safety. Seeing hundreds of buses’ progress through city streets could identify choke points to avoid in coming years. Creative people could mine the trucking industry and other schools’ experience for benefits that haven’t occurred to FWCS administrators yet.
Source:
fortwayne.com
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