New GPS-Equipped Buses Ready for Back-to-School Roll-Out

Besides that "new car smell," the 14 shiny new yellow buses bringing some 1,500 Middletown students to school and home in the coming school year will each sport a custom feature—GPS tracking systems.

The Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) technology, included in the lowest priced package that was presented and selected during last year's competitive bid process, will enable the Middletown Public School District to immediately indentify the exact whereabouts of any bus at any given time, said Edward Collins, Middletown Public Schools director of facilities. Such capabilities will enable the school district to determine which buses are running behind schedule and better predict arrival times, which are most commonly communicated to inquiring parents as well as school administrators, he said.

"When buses run late, parents have questions, and speaking as a parent too, the last thing I'd want to hear is 'Hold on, let me put you on hold for 10 minutes while we try to figure out where your child is,' " said Collins. "The GPS can help us answer this question almost instantly. We can tell if it's running late, where it is, or indicate if there's some sort of problem."

While no incidents of missing or stranded buses have arisen in Middletown in recent memory, parents and motorists throughout Rhode Island are still reeling from the images of school buses filled with children stuck for hours on Providence freeways while severe blizzard conditions immobolized them one recent winter. 

"Thankfully, nothing like that has happened here, but you want to be prepared as much as possible, so it doesn't," added Collins.

All buses in the new fleet will have the GPS technology. The Middletown district, which serves about 2,400 students in Pre-K through Grade 12, will roll out the new bus fleet Sept. 8, the official first day of school for the district's 2010-11 school year. Approximately 66 percent of the district, or 1,500 students, ride the bus each day, according to Collins.

By late July, all new buses had been delivered to the district and technicians were working to install the last few GPS system, which included an antenna, transmitter box, and small monitor screen. The GPS software offers different tracking capabilities, but at the present time its usage will be limited to identifying the buses' locations, Collins noted.

The buses were purchased from Ocean State Transportation for the coming school year as a result of a competitive bidding process for $6,325,623 which also includes future operational costs for the drivers and administration staff, as well as the GPS technology. Ocean State's price tag came in about $250,000 lower than the next highest bid with First Student Transportation, according to Collins.