Why isn’t the bus at your stop yet? Let Elyria Schools check that GPS real quick …
Lisa Roberson | The Chronicle-Telegram
ELYRIA — When the Elyria Schools’ buses rolled Monday morning — transporting students to class for the first day of school — neither the students nor the buses were out of sight or out of mind.
First Student, the transportation provider for the district, is keeping an eye on buses and riders in a way that has never been done before, using the same device avid drivers would attest to not being able to live without.
This summer, First Student mechanics outfitted all buses with the Zonar System, a computerized network that not only checks safety and equipment systems daily but also allows central dispatch to locate any bus with a built-in global positioning system.
Elyria Schools, which benefits from the added safety features, did not pay for the upgrades.
“Now, we can pinpoint almost exactly where every bus is located, whether they are running and if they are, how fast they are going,” said Bernard Whatley, safety coordinator.
With 45 different bus routes that crisscross the city for approximately 2,800 miles per day, finding a particular bus can be done with just a few clicks on a computer keyboard. In no time, a satellite image pops up on the screen showing the location, delayed by only 30 seconds, of the bus and the route it took to get there.
Whatley foresees the system solving a lot of the day-to-day issues that will arise when transporting approximately 2,300 children is combined with the stresses of city travel.
Parents who complain that stops are missed will be able to get answers immediately as to why, he said. More importantly, anxious parents fretting about late buses can be told where their child’s bus is and when it is expected to arrive.
“We even used this system when one of our buses went out of state this summer,” Whatley said. “We were able to track it there and back, knowing where it was at all the time.”
The Zonar System is also a fully inclusive safety system that encompasses everything from the bus drivers’ morning inspections to checking for children left on the bus, said Darlene Blythe, transportation trainer.
Drivers can activate the Zonar System with a handheld device that looks similar to an old-fashioned video game. Information is input into the device by drivers who are asked a series of questions as they walk every inch of the interior and exterior of their buses. It takes only seconds from the time the handheld device is placed in its dashboard cradle for the information to be sent to the maintenance garage and the bus cleared for travel.
“Failures are detected as soon as they are found, and a bus can be pulled out of service before a driver even thinks of gassing up to leave,” Blythe said. “The bus is either fixed on the spot or taken out of service.”
Zonar also makes checking the bus for forgotten children a more thorough process.
Another component of the system requires drivers to press a button at the rear of the bus at the end of their route to ensure they passed and looked in each seat before leaving. If they don’t, lights flash and the horn blares until they do so.
“This system really forces us to go through this bus every day with a fine-tooth comb and walk it from front to back at least three times,” Blythe said. “You don’t now how many times in this country a child is left on a bus. We just want to do what we can to make sure that doesn’t happen here.”
Contact Lisa Roberson at 329-7121 or lroberson@chroniclet.com.
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Filed by Lisa Roberson | The Chronicle-Telegram August 26th, 2008 in Top Stories. Popularity: 3% |
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