The who’s, when’s and why’s of some of the biggest
GPS implementations

By Stephane Babcock

They say you have to spend money to make money. But, sometimes, you have to spend money to save money. For school districts and contractors this can be a lot easier said than done. But in a time of quickly rising fuel prices and mounting fears concerning school bus vulnerability, many are finding ways to keep their buses and students accounted for and their fuel-related costs at as much of a minimum as possible.

New York City: A Beast of its Own
Described by some in the industry as a categorical nightmare and a situation that one company said it wouldn’t even touch with a 10-foot pole, installing GPS on the more than 8,000 school buses that run students through the congested streets of the Big Apple and its boroughs is something that is becoming more of reality that just a suggestion. The New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE) is currently reviewing answers to a request for proposal (RFP) that was put out earlier this year.

“We received eight proposals,” said Olga Nieves, chief administrator of student support services procurements for the NYCDOE’s Division of Contracts and Purchasing. “It’s a system that all the contractors know we will be putting on the buses and that’s our decision not the contractors.”

Although the logistics involved with communicating with the more than 50 school bus contractors had some GPS vendors on the run, Nieves said this would not be a problem. But for a district that had some issues relating the route changes last January to its more than 85,000 general education students and 61,000 special education students, communication might look less complicated on paper than it is in reality.

“There could be a lot of complications,” said David W. Schmauk, manager of the fleet management business unit of Macro Corporation, a company that has been working with the NYCDOE to spell out the specifics of this project. “If a district is only interested in doing nothing more than putting GPS on a bus, that’s a relatively simplistic thing to do. When you start interfacing different data systems together, the systems then start to become more complicated.”

According to Schmauk, Macro helps school districts with the planning for these types of technological implementations. It writes the specifications for procurement and assists in both proposal evaluation and the project management aspects of implementation in terms of technical advice.

As part of the NYCDOE RPF evaluation process, selected proposals will be required to complete a one-month pilot demonstration program. But to even be considered for the pilot, vendors must have successfully completed at least three GPS projects of more than 100 monitored vehicles over the last three years. At least one of these projects must have been with a fleet of at least 500 vehicles.

“It’s a qualification item because in reality when you’re evaluating something like that, price always comes into the picture and you always get a newcomer to the market that might be very qualified, but if they don’t have a track record, it’s hard to understand whether they’re going to meet the requirements or not. They like them to have some experience dealing with this before,” said Schmauk.

GPS for Contractors: Is it Worth the Costs?
Like New York City, Chicago is also currently in the midst of finding and implementing a GPS system on its 2,600 buses spread between 52 different companies. But what does this mean for the individual contractor that has yet to perform a fleet-wide GPS install?

“The difference with a contractor is that every dollar I spend has to make another dollar to be able to stay in business,” said John Benish Jr., chief operating officer of Cook-Illinois Corporation, located in the Chicago area. “In the state of Illinois, it’s a closed-bid situation, and usually it always goes to the lowest bidder. So if I bid a contract and I’m $3 per day per bus higher than someone else, I’m going to lose that bid.”

“While the technology is definitely coming down in price, it is still something to consider,” added Joe Faessler, vice-president of development for Petermann Bus, located in Cincinnati.

For Benish, the only way it can be used efficiently is if it is a bid requirement. With more and more districts requiring GPS in their contracts, they generally understand if the bids are a little higher than normal.

“Ten years ago, we had about 10 buses running with cameras. Now we have at least 700 or 800. Most schools are requiring them these days, and I think GPS will soon be the same way,” said Benish.

John Jakob, special projects manager for WE Transport, Inc., agrees.

“You can guarantee going forward that the installation of additional units will increase,” he said.

With 210 GPS tracking units installed in its over 1,100-bus fleet, the Long Island, N.Y. company thinks future GPS system upgrades will depend ultimately on the needs of the particular company who is using the technology.

A Requirement by Compliance
Last year, one driver was able to not only give Columbus City Schools a black eye, but the state of Ohio as a whole. In January 2007, Lawrence Battle was found carrying a syringe half-full of liquid cocaine while on his way to pick up students. The incident caught the school system off guard and led to new compliance requirements, which then led Columbus City Schools to reconsider the use of GPS on its buses.

“Because of resulting compliance, pre-checks and post-checks are all done electronically, so we have literal proof of how long it takes to do something,” said Director of Transportation Services Steve Simmons. “The GPS component of the system we use is just something else that helps our accountability for routing, parent calls, and so on.”

The installation on the district’s 543 school buses and 200 support vehicles was completed last December. Since then, Simmons has felt a sense of relief, both mentally and financially, from the information the system compiles for his department.

“It makes me just as happy to tell a parent that they are correct or incorrect that a bus missed their stop. It’s also saved me a fortune in fuel,” said SImmons.

Before the systems were installed, 72.5 percent of his fleet was exceeding the district’s five-minute idle limit; now it’s been cut down to about 40 percent. Drivers have gone from idling an hour or an hour and a half a day to eight or nine minutes. Simmons also uses the system to run speed reports. One time he posted the reports by the time clocks at the department’s four satellite locations, and in one day, it went from over 500 buses speeding to less than 100.