How Can School Districts Save Money with GPS Bus Trackers?

These days, global positioning system (GPS) technology is seamlessly integrated into smartphones. While paper maps are nice, it’s easier to check your phone for directions, not to mention more perks like viewing your time of arrival and getting notified of traffic delays along your route. Unsurprisingly, school districts are taking advantage of this technology for very similar reasons: convenience and extra benefits.

Take, for example, Rutherford County schools in Tennessee. This school year, Rutherford equipped their fleet of 250 school buses with GPS tech. The growing school district moves more than 25,000 students each day, and purchases newer school buses each year.

Using GPS trackers, the Rutherford County transportation director estimates their district has saved more than $100,000 this year alone.

This Tennessee school district is just one illustration of the proven success of bus trackers, which grows when combined with the capability to account for children on their way to and from school.

GPS and bus trackers keep your child safe, keep you informed, and save money

Proving to be an essential tool in transportation administration, GPS trackers deliver an invaluable service to parents, students, and school districts. SafeStop is a premier bus tracker tool that works with your bus’ GPS tracker. Designed with your child’s safety in mind, the app gives users capabilities that include:

• Peace of mind: While your child may have a smartphone, it cannot deliver the information and features of an app designed specifically to give you the real-time location of your student. A cellular phone with a weak battery, poor signal, or one that is simply turned off, eliminates your needed connection. Most parents have already experienced the frustration and panic of not being able to reach their child via their cellphone.

SafeStop gives you information straight from the vehicle carrying your student to and from school. In the morning, our SafeStop bus tracker will inform you when the bus will arrive to pick up your child. Delays are sometimes unavoidable, but your child will never be left standing by the street waiting for a late bus! Afternoons, you can know exactly when the bus will round your corner to bring your child home. 

• Alerts: SafeStop gives school transportation administrators a secure platform to send real-time messaging to parents to keep you informed when there’s a delay or breakdown.
• School districts save money: With the data provided by GPS bus trackers, school districts save money. Our data platform, SafeStop Analytics, allows school officials to create and monitor the efficiency of routes and their ever-changing ridership. School districts are no longer in the dark about a bus’ on-time history, for example, and can act quickly to address problems within the system.

Metrics provided by SafeStop Analytics also give administrators information about daily adherence to designated bus routes along with the amount of time a bus spends idling at a bus stop.

With bus trackers on board, each school bus is on the virtual grid, constantly monitored for performance by transportation staff — and for arrival by parents waiting for their children.

GPS trackers are a technology that boosts school bus operational efficiency and reduces transportation costs. Bus trackers also create more points of contact for parents and administrators to communicate efficiently about their biggest concern — the safety of their children.