Optimize every school bus fleet using GPS & vehicle data.
“One of the fundamental barriers to making the fullest use of any school bus fleet is not knowing how it actually operates.”
– Kent Orr, General Manager, Chatham-Kent Lambton Administrative School Services
To be an outstanding student transportation service provider, you need to know (with certainty) what each fleet asset does every day. You can’t ride along to see what happens moment by moment, but core GPS and telematics technologies do—and data doesn’t lie.
Read this complimentary white paper, Optimize every school bus fleet using GPS & vehicle data, to learn how properly configured telematics show your fleet’s daily operations, in detail. And what to do with the information.
- Improve your planning process based on actual vehicle performance.
- Support and build trust with drivers, contractors, administrators and the public.
- Justify funding, contract negotiations and resource requests based on actual KPIs.
- Enhance driver recruitment, confidence and retention, as well as ensure fair pay.
CLASS shares some of their strategies.
Chatham-Kent Lambton Administrative School Services (CLASS) is a shared services organization equally owned by the Lambton Kent and St. Clair Catholic District School Branch. Since 2016, CLASS has used fundamental GPS and telematics data to reduce their fleet by a little more than 10% through efficiency planning and working on route designs. For this paper we sat down with their general manager, Kent Orr, and transportation planner, Pat Teahan, to learn how they make the most of CLASS’s fleet data.
Proactively enhance operations based on real-world data.
Routes and buses sometimes need adjusting during the school year for new schools, new stops or changes in ridership. Or just for a certain timeframe, such as with road construction. As you fine-tune your operation, use fleet data to uncover inefficiencies and identify more possibilities for optimization.
- Enhance fleetwide performance by planning based on actual, real-world usage.
- Improve route planning based on more than speed, stop locations and map views.
- Optimize vehicle and route utilization as needed with passive, ongoing audits.
Optimize vehicle, driver, route and stop utilization.
Ghost stops, traffic patterns, empty rider seats, underutilized buses: Maps can’t tell you everything for making the most of a route. Fleet data shares more details. Read uses cases for understanding vehicle activity and optimizing operational performance down to each stop and seat.
Example: CLASS’s team learned drivers were turning around to arrive at the stop with students on the door side. Each turnaround set the bus behind schedule. Adjusting routes kept students safer and drivers on time. Read the white paper for more.
Enhance relationships and communication.
Fleet data enables transparency, which builds trust. Learn about using GPS and telematics data to be more transparent and better navigate contract negotiations and calls from concerned community members. As well as enhance driver exoneration, retention and accountability.
One case in point: CLASS applies fleet data to ensuring drivers are paid fairly based on actual trips. Teahan shares, “Drivers are the ones who know the roads. If I see them doing something that adds distance to a route because it’s legitimate, I put those kilometers in, and they get paid for it.”
Time for your next step.
Even if your fleet is already a streamlined, optimized operation, you’ll still uncover inefficiencies that would otherwise go unnoticed. Regardless of fleet size, geographical area, ridership demographics, and most other factors, any student transportation fleet can employ the same strategies using fundamental GPS and telematics technologies.