City school buses to get GPS tracking systems

City school buses to get GPS tracking systems
BY CARRIE MELAGO

DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Friday, September 28th 2007, 4:00 AM



City school buses will soon be outfitted with Global Positioning Systems as part of a pilot program designed to track their routes and stops, the Daily News has learned.

The city Education Department plans to launch the program this winter in hopes of creating better routes and tracking travel times.

Officials said the program eventually could be expanded to include all school buses, and may possibly become sophisticated enough to allow parents to track their children's buses online in real time.

"I think GPS will have a tremendously positive effect on the bus service this city gives," said Richard Scarpa, director of the Office of Pupil Transportation.

The GPS system could help address parents' complaints about buses by identifying those that are frequently late, travel the wrong routes, or fail to show up at all.

GPS also could settle disputes that arise between parents who say a bus never showed up and drivers who insist they covered all the stops. "Right now, it's largely a 'he said, she said' investigation," Scarpa said.

Officials have been mulling the use of GPS on buses since 2005, well before last winter's chaotic reorganization of bus routes that sparked a public outcry. Officials would not estimate the cost of the venture and said they're unsure how many buses will be included in the pilot program. The city plans to select three vendors this fall through a competitive bidding process.

Bus operators believe the GPS systems could help them fix scheduling problems and locate breakdowns faster.

"They fully support it, and they know that it will help their jobs, too," said Carolyn Daly, spokeswoman for the School Bus Contractors Coalition.

Tommy Mullins, a trustee of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1181, which represents 9,000 Education Department drivers, said GPS can be useful for drivers, as long as the devices are not used "simply as Big Brother."

Several parents said they hope GPS will ease some of their concerns. Amy Scordino hasn't let her 4-year-old son, who has special needs, ride a school bus since his trip to school on the first day of class took three hours. It should take 10 minutes.

The bus company wouldn't tell her where her son was, and staff at the pupil transportation office didn't know. Now, Scordino drives her son to his program at Tutor Time in Bayside, Queens. She said she would reconsider if buses had GPS.

"This way, you could keep track of where these buses are," she said.

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it's always to help the children, isn't it?