Interstate Bus Lines

Transports over 50,000 passengers daily

The Company

Transports over 50,000 passengers daily

Founded in 1975, Interstate Bus Lines has grown to become a leader in the public transportation sector in the Free state and operates in the area that includes Thaba Nchu, Bloemfontein, Botshabelo, Soutpan and Brandfort. The operation comprises a fleet of 253 commuter buses and 32 luxury coaches through Big Sky Coaches and employs 800 people. The company transports over 50,000 passengers daily and its buses travel more than 17 million kilometres a year.

Interstate’s primary business is providing public transport services to commuters in and around Bloemfontein on behalf of the provincial government.

The Challenge

Interstate looked to boost productivity by introducing new fleet management systems

When Imperial Holdings acquired a majority stake in Interstate Bus Lines in December 2016, the operation was already one of the best in the Free State transport industry. However, with the new acquisition, Interstate looked to boost productivity by introducing new fleet management systems based on the most modern, innovative technology. With a growing fleet, Interstate urgently needed a system that would also improve its passenger engagement and gather detailed insights on customer satisfaction. Previous tracking systems were failing to support the company’s objective of safe, efficient and prompt delivery of passengers. For instance, faulty tracking devices meant drivers were at risk of getting lost and controllers couldn’t identify drivers or the status of vehicles. Furthermore, the company was unable to access historical data so it could plan for the long-term, improve its service, and allocate resources daily. We’d had a lot of problems with drivers telling us that the batteries on their tracking devices had died, which is unacceptable for us, says Robyn-Leigh Hudson, planner at Interstate Bus Lines. From a safety and service delivery perspective, we need to know exactly who is in which vehicle and where they are at all times.

Interstate also operates in rural areas where maps weren’t previously available. This presented a challenge as Government needs companies to account for every vehicle, prove they were at a specific location at a specific time, and adhere to public transport schedules.

The Solution

WEBFLEET was the only system to meet each of our specific requirements, which included accurate tracking, updating locations every minute, and a driver identification system that doesn't rely on battery power

According to Hudson, it took eight months for the company to interview and find the right telematics company. When Interstate finally met with Webfleet Solutions for a demonstration of the WEBFLEET fleet management and vehicle tracking system, the choice was easy. Before we worked with Webfleet Solutions, we struggled to access our data, which meant that an open API system was extremely important to us, Hudson says. Also, we wanted a company that would be willing to work closely with us and take the time to understand our needs in a real partnership. Following a full diagnosis of Interstate’s operation, Webfleet Solutions compiled a comprehensive plan to meet the company’s unique requirements. As Interstate has its own workshop, Webfleet Solutions conducted extensive training to ensure that its team of skilled technicians and artisans were well-versed in the system. It was refreshing to find that the system doesn’t restrict how the devices are installed, Hudson says. Webfleet Solutions supplied the hardware needed to manage our business, along with the administrative passwords to access the system from the cloud, so we can fix any problems immediately as they arise. This has minimised delays and ensured our operations run at optimal levels. Additionally, the system was fully integrated with Interstate’s existing fuel management system, which yielded substantial cost savings. Ultimately the choice was an easy one to make, as WEBFLEET was the only system to meet each of our specific requirements, which included accurate tracking, updating locations every minute, and a driver identification system that doesn’t rely on battery power, she says. WEBFLEET updates every 20 seconds using a card identification system for drivers, significantly surpassing Interstate’s requirements. Whether used in a single car or a national fleet of hundreds of vehicles, Webfleet Solutions’ WEBFLEET system leads to improvements in driver behaviour, substantial fuel savings, and enables seamless connection to an ecosystem of third-party solutions, such as office applications, Bluetooth® wireless technology devices*, temperature sensors, tyre pressure monitors, barcode scanners, printers and various display terminals.

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Kentwood Public Schools

Daily safe transportation for 6,100 students

The Company

Daily safe transportation for 6,100 students

Kentwood Public Schools Department of Transportation provides safe daily transportation for 6,100 students via 48 school buses.

The Challenge

Our priority is the safety of Kentwood’s students

The transport of ‘precious cargo’ is an awesome responsibility Kentwood’s Department of Transportation takes very seriously. Our priority is the safety of Kentwood’s students. When parents entrust us with that responsibility, we need a way to communicate where their children are, and who they are with during that 10-15-minute bus ride, says Todd Bell, Executive Director of Finance and Operations at Kentwood Public Schools.

While Kentwood Public Schools knew it operated safely, it had no data to show parents. Transportation of students was not tracked and staff couldn’t easily answer questions about the location of buses and passengers.

The Solution

The answer was to implement WEBFLEET

In the fall of 2018, Bell sat down with managed IT provider Moss to brainstorm a solution. The answer – implement WEBFLEET, a robust fleet tracking solution to provide the school’s transportation office with precise, near real-time knowledge of bus and passenger locations and fleet safety performance.

The full solution provided to Kentwood Public Schools

The full solution provided to Kentwood Public Schools includes:

LINK 530 for GPS-enabled vehicle tracking;
PRO 8275M TRUCK for turn-by-turn route navigation plus built-in camera support;
OptiDrive 360 for driver behavior monitoring;
Input/output cables for bus light integration;
Integration with school district mapping system and student information system (SIS)

Phase one, implemented for the Winter 2019 semester, focused on GPS tracking and driver familiarization with the WEBFLEET system. A new flat screen monitor installed in the Department of Transportation’s renovated offices allowed staff to visualize the position of buses on a map of the district and quickly and easily respond to parent inquiries.

Phase two, which went live with the start of the 2019 school year, incorporates route navigation and driver behavior notifications.

Integration with the school district’s mapping system pushes routes to drivers via WEBFLEET. Input/output cables and onboard cameras allow staff to correlate stops with bus light activations and capture video of route locations. This information assures parents that stops (pickups and drop-offs) are performed as scheduled. OptiDrive 360 provides drivers with in-the-moment feedback and predictive driving advice.

OptiDrive 360 provides drivers with in-themoment feedback

In just one semester, WEBFLEET was able to demonstrate Kentwood Department of Transportation operates a safe and responsible fleet. There were no speeding events and no harsh braking incidents recorded. The school board was able to cut $35,000 in fuel costs from its expenses by optimizing bus routes. Says Bell, We spend $380,000 annually in diesel fuel. If we can bring that down we can put those resources into the classroom. He also expects to see additional cost savings in vehicle maintenance and tire wear. When you have 48 buses each with 6 tires and those tires cost $600 each, the savings can add up fast.

WEBFLEET is so user friendly. The mapping is obvious and the graphics are perfect, says Bell. It’s been a wonderful tool and it has done exactly what we hoped it would do. It provides us with crucial data to communicate with parents about the safety and well-being of their children.

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Priority Patient Transport

20 vehicles making 15,000 trips per year

The Company

20 vehicles making 15,000 trips per year

Priority Patient Transport, headquartered in Harrisonburg, Virginia, provides patient transport services – from emergencies, to regularly scheduled transports, to transfers from one healthcare facility to another. The company’s vehicles travel throughout Virginia, and in some cases, across the East Coast. The company has three offices and more than 50 employees in the field, driving 20 vehicles, transporting over 15,000 patients each year.

The Challenge

Managing a complex dispatch process

Because Priority Patient Transport provides a mix of scheduled and emergency services, planning and dispatch can be complicated. In addition to managing the general logistics involved in transporting patients for previously scheduled trips, dispatchers must also balance ever-changing schedules and emergency transports that arise.

Steve Higgins, executive vice president at Priority Patient Transport, knew he needed a better system for dispatch – and a way to gain more visibility into where his vehicles were and what they were doing.

Dispatch can be challenging for us. We needed a system that could accommodate both repeat trips and real-time scheduling, explains Higgins. And once our vehicles were on the road, we really needed to be able to track them in real-time. What we really wanted was a solution where dispatch and telematics could work together.

The Solution

Efficiency and visibility

Medical transportation brings with it specific challenges – both the healthcare facilities and the patients’ families want to be sure the transport is handled on-time, and in the quickest and smoothest fashion. Priority Patient Transport turned to technology from MedaPoint. MedaPoint integrated their EMS dispatching solution, AdvanceDispatch, with WEBFLEET to ensure that they work seamlessly together.

The integration enables us to view real-time vehicle location on our dispatch screen and send orders directly to the vehicle. Once drivers are on their way, we can see exactly where they are, how they are driving and when they will arrive, said Higgins. The integration eliminated all the calls that were coming into our dispatchers from drivers, and gave us peace of mind knowing where all of our vehicles were at any given time. Now we can always give accurate ETAs and communicate effectively with our drivers and customers.

Prior to implementing AdvanceDispatch and WEBFLEET, dispatchers communicated with drivers mainly by phone. This resulted in a lots of time spent talking to drivers, and necessitated additional staff. Now, with integrated technology in place, dispatchers can handle three times as many calls.

During our early days, we used one full time and one part time dispatcher in the office to handle volumes of about 5,000 calls per year, said Higgins. Now, we use the same staff to handle more than 15,000 per year. Eliminating all of those phone calls has had an enormous impact.

Hospitals and health centers want to work with an ambulance company that is at the top of their game, continued Higgins. Facilities like working with us because we’re able to give extremely accurate ETAs, know just where our crews are, and send vehicles where they need to be quickly.

Higgins also reports that being able to track the vehicles – and integrate that information with dispatch – keeps the crews honest. People don’t like to talk about it, but this is a business with unsupervised time. We want to be sure that drivers are doing what they are supposed to be doing with our vehicles. This is critically important for a medical service where time can be of the essence.

Finally, greater visibility has resulted in critical, life-saving capabilities. On a recent trip, transporting a transplant patient from UVA to Pittsburgh, the patient went into septic shock on the road, explained Higgins. With the crew working to save the patient, dispatch was able to find the nearest hospital and divert the ambulance there, getting the patient the help he needed in time.

Overall, Higgins believes that MedaPoint’s integration with WEBFLEET has had a lasting, and measurable impact on his business. In this business, performance is non-negotiable. With all the information we need, at our fingertips, we’ve decreased costs and increased peace-of-mind for us, our drivers, our customers and the patients. We couldn’t ask for more than that.

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Fleet management for passenger transport companies

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What can WEBFLEET do for your passenger fleet?

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Take care of regulations

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Power your existing systems with partner apps

Power your existing systems with partner apps

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Fleet management for passenger transport companies

Take care of regulations

Take care of regulations

Cut delays for passengers

Cut delays for passengers

Make driving safer

Make driving safer

Power your existing systems with partner apps

Power your existing systems with partner apps

Boost your fuel efficiency with Webfleet Solutions and Bridgestone

Associ­ations

Integration partners

Return on investment in 6 to 9 months on average

Associations