Latest News | Trimble MAPS

A Safer Commute for Students Thanks to Integrated Mapping & Navigation

Written by Gaby Cifuentes | 15 July, 2019

With school bus carriers being the largest mass transportation fleet in the United States, mapping and navigation technology is crucial to get students to and from school safely and on-time. On any given school day, the K-12 industry transports 26 million students all across the US. This results in millions of miles logged annually for drivers. 

In addition to a high safety demand, there are many other daily challenges school bus fleets and drivers have to face:

  • Specific pick-up and drop off time windows
  • Need for efficient routing for bus utilization and quick, real-time route recalculation if a detour is required
  • Quick response when a maintenance issue or emergency arises
  • Staying on-time by avoiding traffic and unsafe road conditions
  • Substitute driver learning curve
  • Parents or guardians requiring current location information or school arrival confirmation for their child(ren)

What can be done to help reduce driver stress while ensuring a safer commute for students?

Our interactive mapping platform not only provides access to real-time fleet visualization, but also accurate ETA updates. Additional features include:

  • Easily track buses on high quality maps, including street-level satellite imagery 
  • Geofence boundaries and locations and notifications when a driver enters or exits those areas
  • High volume batch and reverse geocoding
  • Quickly obtain dynamic ETAs based on a vehicles location and distance to destination, along with real-time traffic congestion and weather conditions
  • Identify speed compliance issues with post-trip analysis

Vehicle-specific navigation is also vital for safe and efficient guidance before and after the school bell rings. A companion solution to our web-based mapping and routing platform, CoPilot, provides turn-by-turn, voice-guided GPS navigation and includes the following:

  • Safe and accurate directions and navigation
  • Navigation takes into account road restrictions based on vehicle dimensions and current traffic conditions
  • Offline navigation for reliable routing and maps in out-of-coverage areas
  • Quick re-routing of vehicles or send support if a maintenance issue or emergency arises
  • Improvement of driver adoption and overall safety with a familiar, driver-friendly interface that reduces driver distraction
  • Posted speed limit display and audio speeding alerts
  • Over 250 API function calls to pass information between applications

Visit our Trimble MAPS booth at our upcoming K-12 events and get a guided tour of our mapping and navigation solutions! Or learn more about our solutions by clicking the banner below.


  
Source: https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/nsta/6571/Yellow-School-Bus-Industry-White-Paper.pdf