12 School Transportation Trends to Watch out in 2018

In the past few years, educational field has greatly been influenced by Information technology. School transportation management is an area where a number of IT companies focus on.

Most of the entrepreneurs consider this as a good opportunity and thus, make innovative products to solve the school transportation issues.

Some key trends in school transportation management that captured the attention are as follows:

1. Route Optimization

Now, it is not difficult for us to think about organizing school bus routes, bus stops and then, allocating students to their respective bus stops.

One can automatically build optimized routes, resolve the most appropriate bus stops and match students to those stops based on their addresses.

2. School Bus Tracking

Now, people are more interested in keeping track of school buses during their movement. Many schools have started implementing the school bus tracking software for effective school transportation management.

The software helps transport managers to effectively manage fleet of buses, tackle emergency situations properly and create weekly reports regarding school transportation management.

3. School Bus Attendance

Due to working hours and tight schedules, parents will have great concern about their child's safety in transportation. In order to put a stop to this worry, schools have implemented software that provides instant notifications to parents whenever their child gets on or off the school bus.

With apps like driver console, drivers are able to know whether any particular child is missing from the bus or not. The app will have details regarding each student and their assigned stops which help the drivers to instantly recognize them. Thus school management can guarantee a secure and risk-free transportation to students.

4. Tracking App for Parents

From morning to evening, parents will be worried about their child and eagerly wait for the school bus to arrive. When there are unfavourable weather conditions, the situation gets worse. School management can tackle such situations by providing an app that enables the parents to track their child's school bus in real time and thus, reach the bus stop in time.

Once a child boards the school bus with tracking, parents are able to see the real-time location along with route which helps them to plan accordingly. They are also able to manage more than one child with a single app.

5. Tracking App for Transport Managers

With the help of the transport manager app, transport managers are able to have exclusive control of the school bus. With this app, even minor possibilities of accidents or mishaps that can happen in the school transportation services can be avoided.

Transport managers are able to communicate with the driver whenever they feel a need for that. Using the app, they are able to schedule school bus trips easily. New pick up points can be built and assigned. Also, it is possible to update bus stop locations if any relocation needed.

6. Tracking App for Bus Attendant

This app includes a complete attendance management system which helps to reduce attendance flaws. Manual way of collecting attendance is usually a tedious task and is prone to errors. Each and every minute detail is considered in the attendant app.

Drivers are able to instantly get notification, along with the contact details and a picture of the child. They get exact direction of the trip and the confirmed trip paves way to trip history.

7. Alternative Fuels

Many trends are coming in many areas of school transportation, one such is in fuel. As we all know gasoline is used in buses which have volatile prices and low efficiency level per gallon. Today worldwide we are draining petroleum resources which are forcing us to go for alternatives. There are many alternatives such as compressed natural gas (CNG), propane, electricity, and much more.

8. Live Camera Feed

With the help of cameras, drivers obtain live camera feed of students inside the school bus. Drivers can view this feed via their own console. This helps them to save time, thereby adding comfort, convenience and safety.

9. Geofencing

Parents as well as school authorities can restrict the movement of school bus to a particular area. They will get instant notification if any school bus enters the restricted area. Parents can also set their own boundary by using the geofencing feature of parent app and receive alerts when the school bus approaches near to their child's pick up point.

10. Manifest Feature

Produce routine school bus passenger details like pick up details, route diagram indicating pick up location, list of students present inside the bus etc. If a student applied leave on a particular day, his pick up details will not appear in that day's stop list in the app. This saves valuable time of the driver as well as the students by not having to stop at unnecessary points. It is a useful feature that is going to be a trendsetter in the future.

11. Alcohol Detection

It is not a pleasant thing to discuss but still we have to. There are certain cases when drivers are under the influence of alcohol while driving which they hide it. But it is not possible now as there is a sensor which detects alcohol in driver. This sensor can be installed into steering wheel which helps it to stop any unsafe driving as it locks down the bus before it reaches the road.

12. Auto Routing

School bus routing is quite a difficult job for transport managers as well as fleet managers as they have to optimize bus routes, check the seating capacity and much more. But now routing is not a problematic task as school transport software has auto routing feature which does the routing automatically with the use of its smart routing algorithm.

These are trends that have revolutionized the school transportation management. They not only help the new drivers to have better control of the school bus, but also give parents peace of mind. With the advent of various technologies, costs for fuel can also be significantly reduced with the facility of route optimization.