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Case Study: Gwinnett County Public SchoolsSnapshotStudents Transported: 92,000 Business ProblemGwinnett County Public Schools in Lawrenceville, GA, is the 10th largest transportation school district in the United States. The district, in a growing suburb of Atlanta, has 1,100 buses and transports 92,000 students each day. Alarmed by the increasing threat to homeland security, in the form of bus hijackings, and recognizing the need to look for greater efficiencies in its routing, the district realized it lacked accurate real-time information about where their buses were at any given time. "We wanted to pinpoint the exact location of our buses in case of an emergency, and to monitor how well safety restrictions were being followed by our drivers, such as stopping at railroad crossings and not traveling at excessive speeds," says Grant Reppert, Director of Transportation for Gwinnett County, "We also needed to obtain accurate route information and track historical data so we could improve our operations." Gwinnett decided to look into automatic vehicle location (AVL) technologies to achieve its safety and efficiency goals. Though public transit organizations have been using vehicle location for years, the technology, until recently, has not been used in student transportation applications. GoalsSince 1999, Gwinnett had used Trapeze MapNet for its routing and scheduling, and in early 2003 added MapNet Web to deliver up-to-date transportation information on its internal website. In addition to knowing exact bus locations, the district wanted to gather real-time information about schedule adherence, bus loads, safety policy violations, driver attendance and payroll. To extract maximum value out of its AVL investment, Gwinnett also needed to ensure that MapNet could work with the route and location information without lengthy data conversion tasks or manual intervention. By using real-time and historical data, Gwinnett hoped to identify suboptimal routes and to reduce labor costs by deploying drivers more efficiently and reducing dead-head times. With limited budgets, Gwinnett also needed to keep an eye on hardware costs and on keeping ongoing communication costs in line. SolutionGwinnett decided to use a new interface for MapNet that would allow transportation staff to work with real-time and historical geographical and temporal data, along with AVL hardware from Everyday Wireless, a Trapeze partner specializing in affordable solutions for school transportation. "We were already using MapNet software and Trapeze customized the AVL Interface to meet our needs," Mr. Reppert explains, "The system uses radio transmission, instead of cellular phones, so we were able to avoid huge monthly air time costs." ResultsThe system provides real-time location of Gwinnett’s school buses as well as the passenger load on each vehicle. In addition to an accurate snap-shot of daily operations, transportation staff now have real-world data they can use to analyze route mileage, speed, direction, stop status, emergency status, safety policy compliance, ridership trends and vehicle and driver deployment. "Since going live with our initial fielding in August 2003, AVL is proving invaluable to our district," Mr. Reppert says. "Routes are being scrutinized for greater efficiencies and labor costs are declining as drivers reduce idle and stop times." Bottom Line"We are expecting an immediate five to ten percent decrease in labor costs because we can eliminate growth routes through our increased efficiencies," says Mr. Reppert. "Long-term, the system should pay for itself in 1.3 to 2.7 years through optimized routes, a reduction in dead-head time, a better understanding of ridership and, of course, the added safety of knowing exactly where our vehicles are at all times." |
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