School District Saves Big on Money and Time with GPS and AVL

It’s the year 2005 on a typical school day morning.  John Payne, Routing Manager at Newport News Public Schools in Newport News, Virginia, is on the phone with a parent who’s claiming the school bus didn’t show up for the second time that week.  John follows protocol and reports the incident to his Supervisor.  The following day, the Transportation Supervisor sends the Area Supervisor to the bus stop to monitor and validate whether and when the bus was showing up.  With clip-board in hand, for hours, until the bus runs are complete for that morning, the Area Supervisor diligently writes down bus arrivals and departures on her clip-board and then does it all over again for the afternoon buses.

With 363 buses and a school district enrollment of 30,500, you can imagine how much time and how many resources this process takes. 

By 2007, Newport News decided to find a better way to manage transportation information. The solution to their problem was EveryPoint®, advanced GPS tracking hardware that tracks and captures vehicle data and EveryWhere®Pro, a powerful automatic vehicle location (AVL) application from Everyday Solutions, Inc. the leading provider of GPS-driven Transportation Information for K-12. Together these solutions track each and every bus in Newport News’s fleet giving the Transportation Department complete visibility into their daily bus operations.  Now, “GPS validates bus arrivals in real-time immediately to satisfy parents.  We can prove with accurate reports while on the phone with the parent”, said Mr. Payne.  “It’s been a huge time savings – a lot quicker”.

They’re also using GPS to audit their bus runs.  Mr. Payne said, “We’ll do a detailed audit on a bus run for 5 days to see when they are starting and ending their bus runs.  So far, we’ve saved $9,500 a week by auditing 30 bus routes.  We have 300 bus routes and will eventually audit all of them”.  Newport News could see a potential cost savings of approximately $85,000 a week by the time they’re done auditing all of their routes!

When asked why they chose Everyday Solutions Inc. as their Transportation Information provider, Mr. Payne replied, “We looked at four other competitors.  Everyday Solutions had been around the longest and the cost was competitive”.

What’s next for Newport News Public Schools?  According to Mr. Payne, they’ll be outfitting the rest of their fleet with GPS and AVL.  They currently have 280 buses deployed with the technology and have 80 more to go.

As for future new product initiatives, Newport News is looking forward to installing each bus with EveryRider™, a student rider attendance solution that keeps riders safe and secure.