Tracking Buses Doen’t Cost, It Pays and it Saves Lives

This is aprevously published post from my former blog at www.gpsbus.com.  I’m closing that blog and moving any of the still interesting/relevant articles here.  Enjoy.

Ever since the 9-11 terrorist attacks, airlines have been beefing up security. Now, one local bus company is going high tech to keep its passengers safe by using GPS or Global Positioning Satellite system.

Over a year ago, a woman hijacked a passenger bus in Minnesota, holding the driver at knifepoint and leading law enforcement on a wild ride through two states. Despite a call from a cell phone inside the bus, authorities weren’t sure of its location for several minutes until one of the passengers spotted an identifiable landmark.

But now with GPS onboard as a special passenger, travelers can ride and rest a little easier…. Full Article Here:

It’s been nearly 5 years now since the tragedy of 9/11, yet so many agencies and commercial companies are just now waking up to the fact that it happened, it could happen again, and we need to do things to avoid or mitigate a repeat.  We beat ourselves up deciding if we should allow cigarette lighters or matches on airplanes, we operate under alw so secret the citizens it applies to can’t see it, we label prominent senators as security risks, but we haven’t done a damn thing except put up som eposters to keep city transportation safer.  It’s sad, sad indeed, like “Brownie” emailing about shirt cuffs buttoned or rolled up while New Orleans drowned.

Perhaps the recent excellent wok by the RCMP in Toronto may have woken a few people up. This article, though, seems to have been prompted by a few folks who were already awake. My hat’s off.

A bus is a large vehicle that must, by necessity, must be open to the public. It makes a lot of sense to monitor where busses are, what they are doing, and who’s doing it.  It’s also a concentration point for passengers and avehicle easily capable of carrying heavy weights of explovises into sensitive ares.  It cried out for GPS monitoring.

The part that seems very hard for some operators to realize is that GPS monitoring doesn’t cost, it pays. It pays in at least three ways:

1. Fuel Savings: If you think there isn’t a lot of waste … especially idling in the average transport organization, then you have never looked very closely. City buses routinely idle at stops at the end of the route or when they start running ahead of schedule and need to kill time. Charter busses idle (Personally I have seen an hour or more) while their passengers are off on tours. School buses idle outside school building not only wasting fuel but breaking Federal law.
2. Labor costs: So far I am 100% with installations of GPS tracking technology in finding at least enough mistaken or “phony” labor time charges t pay for the units on time and accounting savings alone. 100%. Think that can’t be the way it is in your organization? Want to call my bluff?
3. Safety and Risk Management. One of the hidden and potentially huge costs in public transpo is liability. No matter what happens that injures a passenger it seems the government agency or commercial company is at fault. GPS can’t stop accidents nor can it eliminate claims but companies in the transportation business have reduced claims to the tune of four times the cost of their GPS systems.
4. 
   

It pays, there’s nothing else to say.