Caught on Tape

Louisiana School District employs digital surveillance cameras to target motorists who illegally pass school buses; student and driver behavior

LAFAYETTE, La. - The Lafayette Parish School System is moving ahead into the digital age, with school bus surveillance cameras at the forefront of a new transportation system expected to be fully implemented around 2010.

After a hectic fall, in which the school district implemented a painful facelift on its school bus operations, things are somewhat back to normal for Transportation Director Daniel Michel, in his first full school year, and his staff of eight. Lafayette Parish School System, the fourth largest in the state by mileage driven, adopted staggered bell times in the fall and combined its high school routes with middle, elementary and private school bus runs. On top of that, it implemented new route optimization software to go hand-in-hand with state-of-the-art digital surveillance cameras onboard its school buses.

In January, the school district installed the first of its new suite of cameras to capture motorists who illegally pass the parish's stopped school buses. Michel said another 50 will be installed by the end of June, with hopes of outfitting the remainder of the district's 318 buses over the few years.

"The original plan was to phase in over three years but we may need to modify that based on budget constraints," he said. "The school board wants to see how well they work. I believe once they get in use, demand for cameras will be heightened and installation rate will increase."

Michel is pleased so far, as the WOW Technologies cameras are "exceeding expectations." Through February, the cameras captured at least eight motorists illegally passing school buses. Local law levies a $300 fine for each offense.

"The very first day, it caught a drive-by right through stop arm," he added. "We took it to the Sheriff and he issued a citation."

Righting the Bus Service

Before Michel and his staff were able to implement the bus cams, a problem of route optimization had to be worked out. At issue was transforming the district from manual to modernized operation of the school bus fleet. Louisiana is a state where school-of-choice is mandated by desegregation rulings, and Michel saw modernization as necessary to ensure that students were adequately serviced, and to cut transportation expenditures.

So, upon begin hired last February, Michel began developing a plan to incorporate trip recording technology with adjusted bell times to streamline service. The problem was, the department failed to plan for the volume of children, which numbers over 25,000 and accounts for 88 percent of the school district's student population.

Michel quickly learned that busing over 51,000 kids a day, an aggregate of morning and afternoon routes, and moving from a three-tiered bell system to a two-tiered system would prove difficult. Not to mention shaving $2 million from the department's $11 million annual operating budget, which was based on the lower number of students transported. As many high schools and middle schools begin offering specialized curriculum, more and more students are electing to attend classes across town.

"To save money and restore value to our cost, it required a bell time change and consolidation of routes," Michel said. "Over 600 routes were completely redone; that's a monumental task."

The Parish was forced to immediately bring in lease buses, hire and train drivers and extend the normal time it takes to open school to manage students criss-crossing the parish between home and school and account for the additional 3,000 students. To this day, Michel said he is unsure of how the ridership numbers increased. But, ever since, things have been going "smoothly."

Immediate Returns

"We now have some great technology in the department and on the bus. The return is immediate," he added. "This is our safest year in the last decade. Parents overall are pleased and the principals, teachers and students are good. Once we got those problems resolved."

The digital cameras can regularly catch vehicles traveling at speeds in excess of 60 mph (one test vehicle was clocked at 105 mph) and still capture the vehicle and the license plate in amazing clarity. It even hones in on the driver's face and the tip of the stop arm to prove that it was extended from the school bus at the time of the incident for "complete identification."

"We're quite proud of our camera system," the transportation director said. "We consider it one of best in country; I'd like to say one of the top in the county namely because the license plate capture is exceptional. With the detail at those speeds, there's no way a car can get around our bus without us capturing it."

In one video taken during a drive-by incident, the bus driver can be clearly heard telling the students on board, "Look at this woman . that lady did not even stop." She and the children proceed to read off the license plate number, which turned out to be incorrect when referenced with the digital video.

What's more, the cameras give the transportation department a front row seat to the happenings inside the bus. Ashton Langlinais, president of WOW Technologies, said a special filter system on all cameras synchronize the audio for the clearest playback. The sound is recorded on tape and backed up on a hard drive, allowing dispatch to simultaneously watch road conditions, monitor student and driver behavior and activity in the school bus stairwell on different channels. The audio is so good, in fact, transportation officials can hear everything from onboard conversations to motorists honking horns within a 30-foot radius.

"Night and day, the children know it's the real thing, not some VHS toy up there," said Michel, adding that he believes the cameras have cut student discipline by 80 percent. "The mannerisms of the children are like a light switch."

The cameras work in conjunction with trip recorder software and a GPS system that allows the district to monitor the bus' speed and its location at all times. Langlinais said his company studied taxi cabs in Las Vegas to develop a trip recorder that could capture all electronic functions, and thus driver behavior. The WOW Technologies trip recorder, patent pending, records the number of steering turns, the amount of braking and even each instance of deploying the stop arm.

And the school system has received approval from the local school bus driver's union. Former president Glen Webb said the drivers support the software suite.

Source: School Transportation News, April 2005. All rights reserved.