Managing transportation for school can be challenging. Not only are there is a massive amount of money involved, but also the life of thousands of students is at stake.
Keeping your school’s vehicle best-in-class shape and safe to drive takes an investment of time and resources. And when it is about managing a big fleet can be daunting. Add scheduling, route management, tracking, and reporting to the mix, and it’s easy to see why transportation departments are turning to technology to help them manage their fleets.
Millions of students rely on school buses to transport them to class and on field trips every day. Late pick-ups or drop-offs, unauthorised route changes, and maintenance woes can wreak havoc and leave riders, parents, and school officials demanding change. Through the use of technology, school transportation providers are avoiding common problems and increasing their overall efficiency.
Here are some of the unique ways technology is revolutionising fleet management for schools.
1. Addresses Safety Concerns
Child’s safety happens to be the topmost priority for parents and school authorities.
With a GPS-based system in place, safety concerns can be smartly addressed. One can receive real-time notification and information on each vehicle. This keeps the schools updated on the position of buses and track them. At the same time, parents know where their children are and support concerns like wrong bus boarding at bay. This also enables both the user categories to quickly locate the vehicles under emergencies.
With real-time notifications via a tracking system, you will also be able to know the reason behind the delayed school transportation. Sometimes it can be a traffic jam, unfavourable weather condition, break down, etc. whatever may be the reason, parents and school authorities will know about it instantly.
2. Makes Managing Simple
Managing multiple vehicles spread across the entire city can be tiresome, and when done without accurate systems in place, can result in great confusions. But, the RFID school bus tracking system is convenient for school authorities. The software takes care of routing and scheduling automatically. School authorities only need to review it and make changes for exceptional cases. It saves the time and energy required for re-routing and re-scheduling whenever something goes wrong.
3. Improves Efficiency & Savings
Manual routing and scheduling can be challenging and lead to errors resulting in significant monetary losses. It is a possibility that you might have to run an extra bus just because of some miscalculation. Moreover, without accurate systems in place, you are prone to be misguided by the drivers on distance and fuel.
Such discrepancies can be avoided if you have an RFID vehicle management system in place. Employing such a plan allows you to be aware of the distance covered and the fuel burned by each vehicle. Therefore, it will be easier to streamline payrolls for drivers and vehicle service providers and stay updated on the vital facts.
Also, the school authorities get to know how efficiently the buses are being run, if there is unnecessary idling and if the speed limits are being observed. These help in significant savings for the school over some time.
4. Acts as a Solid Record
Monitoring each vehicle’s activity is essential. Moreover, you need to track of vehicle information such as service routine, the distance covered, vehicle average, and much more. Keeping an eye on these aspects help you make an informed decision about the vehicle requirements and allotment in the school.
By having a GPS vehicle tracking system, a school will be able to monitor and store the activity of each vehicle. Keeping this could also give you an insight into the vehicle’s performance over time. Combined with the RFID tags, it can be instrumental in tracking children if they go missing. The database can also act as evidence when and if accidents happen.
5. Enhanced driver safety
School bus drivers can’t be accompanied everywhere. There’s no way to ensure that they follow traffic rules and not being reckless. By using a GPS tracking system, you get access to details such as speed, acceleration, braking, and turning off the bus. With these data, you will be able to know whether the driver is driving safely and whether he/she is following road safety rules or not.
This will enable you to take vital decisions when needed about drivers’ appointment, work allocation, route allocation, etc.
6. Geofencing
The geo-fencing feature alerts & notifies the users when a vehicle enters or leaves virtually set premises by the users. This fence can be set up in school, and all the stakeholders can be notified about the school bus having had entered the school area, thus giving peace of mind to parents as well.
7. Route Optimisation
Taking into consideration all the stops, the GPS tracking system helps in taking the shortest or the most optimised route for vehicles to save time and follow the timeline consistently. This allows parents as well as schools to avoid confusion and follow a smooth process for transporting students to and fro from school.
8. Vehicle Grouping & Access Management
For smooth functioning of school vehicles & better operations, school admins can divide the operations by grouping vehicles and allotting groups to different sub-admins. GPS tracking system provides access to multiple user/admins for better functioning. Multiple sub-admins can be assigned with functions divided, like, particular areas or several vehicles, etc.
9. Vehicle Management
The GPS Tracking System can save money. By effectively looking after the vehicles, school and college management can save money on fuel, wear and tear on vehicles, record route and distance travelled, make resale price last longer, avoid fines and maintain proper insurance.
10. Paperless filing system
Reports, employee files, permission slips, and route maps were once a filing nightmare. Fortunately, each of these documents can now be stored in the cloud. Not only is this better for the environment, but it also makes it easier to find paperwork when you need it. Having quick and easy access to information from multiple locations saves time and can help your district stay on top of anything that may have otherwise fallen through the cracks.
11. Automate maintenance process
Technology now exists that helps transportation departments to keep up with fleet maintenance tasks quickly. Automated fleet management software can now produce preventative maintenance schedules, send notifications of upcoming maintenance schedules, and produce work orders.
These systems are now so sophisticated that with a few keystrokes you can track inventory, view pricing information, and arrange for the order. You can also quickly determine which parts were installed on an individual vehicle. Specialised meters that are paired with the software send out alerts if any discrepancies in mileage are found, quickly alerting maintenance staff to potential concerns.
Also Read: A Complete Guide on eLearning Software Development
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