One of the leaders in wireless fleet management, Networkfleet, has announced today that they have the business of the Palm Springs Unified School District (USD). The school district in Palm Springs, California has chosen to outfit their 100 vehicles in order to fully utilize their vehicles, decrease costs to the districts, and increase safety for kids and parents.

The district is now using the Networkfleet 4200 GPS fleet tracking system.

Palm Springs USD includes sixteen elementary schools, four middle schools and four high schools. The school district chose the Networkfleet 4200 because they felt that it would be the best tracking system for their needs – combining reliable GPS location tracking with a simple, powerful Web-based management system.

Networkfleet also provides support for their end users. Part of the system is that it streamlines the user interface to provide fast and detailed information on each of the vehicles being tracked.

“We needed to manage our fleet more effectively and reduce operating costs. At the same time, we wanted to improve driver safety and increase our response times. This made better fleet utilization an imperative,” said Jim Novak, Assistant Superintendent Business Services for the Palm Springs USD. “By using Networkfleet to observe routing in real time as well as perform post-route analysis, we can significantly reduce the total miles driven and lower fuel usage. We were also impressed with Networkfleet’s work in the public sector and its intuitive, comprehensive online management system.”

“Networkfleet is rapidly gaining a reputation as the system of choice for government fleets, including the local, county, state and federal level,” said Keith Schneider, president and CEO of Networkfleet, Inc. “Facing strained government budgets, the public sector is recognizing the benefits of Networkfleet and the importance of doing business with a long-standing company that is responsive to their needs.”

Cities and schools everywhere are using bus GPS tracking with greater frequency. It is only a matter of time before another announcement will be made that yet another school or municipality will be employing some sort of tracking system to reduce costs, improve effectiveness, and increase usability.

One of the very powerful things that governments can do to improve public transportation is make it more accessible and usable by the public. One great way to do this is to install GPS tracking devices on public transit systems and let users access the information online or from their mobile phone. Bus GPS tracking makes a lot of sense and can really make things easier for everyone who wants to use public transportation to save money and the environment.

Recently, Boston implemented a tracking system for a few lines in their bus system and the folks over at Boston.com decided that they wanted to give it a go around and see if the system worked. According to their results, they got mixed results.

Here is what they said:

First, the automated voice asked me to punch in my bus stop number. This will be a problem for most passengers because the bus stop number is not listed anywhere at the bus stop. Not on the shelter, not on the pole where the schedule is posted. You need to find it online, which I had luckily done in advance.

The voice on the other end of the line told me my bus would arrive in nine minutes. And it was right. (Actually two buses came at that time.)

I stayed at the bus stop, and tried T-Tracker again. The second time, T-Tracker said my bus would arrive in nine minutes, at 1:56 p.m. As I waited, I got impatient, so I called again. This time, it said my bus would actually arrive at 2:01, about five minutes later. I’m guessing my bus got stuck in traffic or the driver took a quick break. The second bus arrived at 2:01.

According to the same article, the phone updates for the bus GPS tracker gets about about 35 callers a day while the online version gets around 1,670 visitors per day. To this writer, that seems like a wild success.

The system is still in its early testing stages, but it looks promising. If costs can be contained and use can increase then Boston just might get some bus tracking from T-Tracker.

Here is a video from the folks over at Boston.com when they tried to use this new system: