Zonar Expands Availability of MyView School Bus Tracking App in Canada

Amidst school bus driver shortages, parents and guardians gain peace of mind with real-time bus location tracking capabilities

SEATTLE, Wash. – March 13, 2024 - Zonar, the leader in fleet health and safety, today announced the launch of Zonar MyView™ in Canada. MyView is an innovative app that provides parents and caregivers with real-time location updates and details about the school buses transporting their children daily.

Increased visibility into bus locations and transparent communication with parents and guardians is more important than ever given the chronic bus driver shortage and the disruption it causes to school operations. High turnover rates for school bus drivers can result in inexperienced drivers and delayed arrivals, leading to an increase in dispatch calls from parents inquiring about bus locations. MyView’s GPS tracking integration provides timely and accurate updates to bus assignments and pickup times with a ping rate every 10 seconds, minimizing interruptions and enabling efficient transportation management. The app also has a Support Assistant to help answer parent questions to reduce call volumes to the district.

MyView prioritizes safety for students on the bus and the security and privacy of their information in the app, requiring a secure district-provided access code, a school bus or route number and student’s external ID number to access data in the app. For Canadian users, data is securely stored on cloud-based servers within Canada. The app does not access student records or capture personal information.

"The safety and security of school-aged children is our top priority,” said Tim Ammon, vice president and general manager of passenger services at Zonar. “Zonar MyView serves the four most important transportation constituencies: students, parents, schools and transportation staff by optimizing the distribution of critical school bus information directly to parents and caregivers, while serving as a district dashboard for all bus changes, delays or breakdowns.”

Recognizing the diverse needs of families, MyView helps parents easily manage their child’s bus information all on one platform with an option to grant shared access with other caregivers and create alerts and custom zones for each stop and facility, such as daycare or sports fields. Knowing where a bus is and when it will arrive makes planning and scheduling activities easier for schools, parents, caregivers and children, while maintaining the safety of students.

“MyView is a gamechanger and has helped provide peace of mind,” said Jane Breckenridge, a parent user of MyView. “I can set my phone on the windowsill while I’m cleaning up in the morning and watch the bus move or get an alert from the app when it’s close. I know when the bus is en route and what zone it is in – it’s very seamless. My kids never miss the bus and they’re never waiting very long.”

MyView is now available for school districts and parents in the U.S. and Canada on iOS and Android smartphones, tablets and computers. To learn more, visit: https://www.zonarsystems.com/solutions/myview-bus-tracking-app/.

About Zonar

Founded in 2001, Zonar has pioneered smart mobility solutions throughout vocational, pupil, mass transit, and commercial trucking industries. The Zonar mission is to enhance the safety, performance, and success of our customers by transforming the delivery of innovative insights for commercial fleets. Zonar achieves this by helping fleets of all sizes maximize the use of their assets with solutions dedicated to improving compliance, efficiency, maintenance, ridership visibility, safety, and tracking. Cloud-based services with open APIs drive Zonar smart mobility solutions by making it easy for fleet owners and managers to stay connected to their fleets and drivers and operators to dispatch. Headquartered in Seattle and part of the Continental family, Zonar also has a distribution center in West Chicago.

About Bytecurve

Bytecurve enables transportation companies to improve safety, reliability (on-time) and efficiency (cost effective) by providing technology solutions which are driven by telematics data and connected services. Our leading product Bytecurve 360 is a school bus operating platform which offers scheduling, dispatch and time management function by utilizing real-time integration to routing and GPS systems. Our leadership team brings 50+ years of combined student transportation experience both in operations and technology. For more information about Bytecurve, visit us at www.bytecurve.com