Why is Technology Adoption in Student Transportation Accelerating?
After years of riding the school bus growing up, I realized how crucial school bus operations were to the success of many k-12 institutions. However, after waiting outside in the frigid winter mornings wondering where my bus was, I realized how much room for improvement there was to the system that mobilizes our future — children.
Both issues presented above are a direct result of paper route sheets and static bus routes — which are starting to become a thing of the past. COVID-19 has put operational and financial pressure on school busses, our nation’s largest mass transit system. Routing software, vehicle tracking apps for riders, and driver navigation technology has already penetrated the ground transportation market. Why do school buses now have to play catch up?
The following article will present both transportation directors and school administrator’s perspectives to explain why technology adoption is accelerating among school buses across the country.
I recently participated in the Hey, Bus Driver! podcast with friends and colleagues Phil Dunn (Cheif Information Officer of Broward County Public Schools), Katrina Falk (Transportation Director at Shelby Eastern Schools), Chris Gregg (Assistant Director of Transportation at Cheney School District), and the host, Jason Nelson (Transportation Supervisor at Kyrene Elementary School District). Each panelist, representing districts in Florida, Indiana & Washington, provided an in-depth look into their school's reopen plans.
It didn’t take long for these student transportation leaders to cite the importance of technology in routing a re-open. Phil highlighted the current demand for solutions that enable contact tracing through student ridership, real-time navigation for new drivers, and route notes to institutionalized local knowledge.
In a separate conversation I had with Katrina, she shared that one of her drivers said, “We just drive the same route every day and if we see a new student, we pick them up.” She began asking herself, ‘What if there’s an accident? How do I account for these students? Do my drivers stop when there is no student present?’ Technology now allows Katrina to answer all of these questions by tracking student ridership, providing a live location of each bus in her fleet, and view the estimated time of arrival to each stop on any given bus route.
Katrina acknowledged that until recently, school bus professionals “…did not think that technology would be necessary to increase bus safety and efficiency.” She exclaimed, “I was one of those naysayers who quickly realized that if you’re not willing to embrace technology right now you’re really doing a disservice to your school district, your parents, and your drivers.” Since her realization, Katrina has been cited in School Transportation News for her ability to utilize bus routing software to create multiple routing scenarios for her district to ensure she is ready to execute on their reopen plan this Fall.
Mike Connelly, Director of Finance and Operations at North Reading Public Schools, also recognized the need to implement cutting edge technology on his buses — especially amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Mike explains how his operation was “…very paper and pencil.” Which prompted him to “look into tools that would automate our bus routing processes and provide real-time communication to parents.” As a parent himself, he doesn’t blame others for wanting to know precisely where their child’s bus is — especially during the upcoming school year when they are running multiple routes with varying schedules. Mike also noted that the extreme temperature in Massachusetts makes it nearly impossible for his students to stand outside in the winter mornings while waiting & wondering where their school bus is. Not only has technology improved the efficiency of his bus routes, but he hopes that next year it will decrease calls from parents and enhance the rider experience.
North Reading Public Schools outsources their bus operations which decreases the amount of control they have on driver training. As Mike explains, “Frequently, we rely on substitute bus drivers to follow our paper route sheets, which present several challenges, especially if they don’t know the area.” He shared that the new BusRight tablets being implemented on their buses will “provide our drivers with dynamic turn-by-turn directions that will adjust based on traffic patterns, student ridership counts, and the appropriate roads school buses can ride on.”
Furthermore, a recent article written by School Bus Fleet, To See or Not to See? Weighing the Benefits of Visual Navigation, states that, “being informed where to turn and where to stop — while keeping both hands on the wheel — can be a significant improvement in safety, compared to trying to read the route from a faxed sheet of paper.” In fact, a driver weighed in on the potential value of this technology by suggesting that he would have been “more focused on safety using the GPS than with the paper in hand and a student telling me where to stop.”
This conversation of visual navigation for drivers has infiltrated papers written by the most influential school bus leaders, industry-leading conferences, and Facebook groups alike. A driver in one of these groups recently posted, “I just found out my district installed these on all of our vans and buses for GPS navigation and route dispatch. I can’t lie I kind of like it especially with all the routing changes for Fall.”
The driver shortage has only increased in severity due to the current pandemic. The upcoming school year will lend itself to arguably the largest school bus driver shortage in history. According to Nicole Schlosser, the executive editor of School Bus Fleet magazine, “Many drivers are in the at-risk category based on their ages or medical conditions. They might not want to continue being a school bus driver, which could inherently make the shortage situation worse.” With new and substitute drivers on the road, Mike can rest easy knowing these drivers are getting real-time turn by turn directions, which accurately mobilizes his students to and from school each day. Additionally, if his buses are ever delayed, all parents and school administrators will be notified at the touch of a button.
Mike and Katrina are not alone in their desire to leverage technology to increase bus safety and efficiency. In fact, in a poll presented in the Facebook group, School Bus Tech Leaders, 70% of responders indicated that real-time driver navigation would be beneficial to their fleet. A school district's core competency and primary concern is the education of its students. Work that falls outside of these efforts should be streamlined to ensure that a school can focus on what they do best, educate.
According to the American Bus Association, school buses are the safest mode of student transportation. The districts that embrace technology in their transportation department will decrease operating costs, improve parent satisfaction, and decrease driver training time.
