Overview

Stratix helped equip buses carrying students to and from school every day with connected tablets, giving districts real-time visibility and safer, smarter routes.

The Challenge

School buses make up the largest mass transportation network in the country, with roughly 55 percent of the nation’s student population and 480,000 buses on the road daily. Yet until recently, the technology on board those buses lagged well behind other transit fleets, leaving districts with limited visibility into where their buses were and how their drivers were performing.

Districts wanted more than just basic GPS tracking. They needed real-time visibility into bus locations and arrival times, the ability for drivers to push out delay notifications on the fly, and intelligent routing with live traffic conditions displayed right on the dashboard. Many districts had the appetite for this technology but not the internal resources to source, configure, and roll it out at scale.

The Ask

As part of their push to modernize student transportation, several school districts partnered with a software company providing transportation management technology, along with Stratix, to build a connected device program that would:

• Get devices into buses fully configured and ready to use, without adding to internal IT workload
• Give parents and administrators real-time visibility into bus locations and arrival times
• Let drivers push out delay notifications and access live traffic conditions on screen or through voice guidance
• Monitor driving behavior, including hard braking and cornering, to support safety and accountability
• Manage ridership with photo-based student rosters and barcode scanning at boarding and departure
• Deploy devices rugged enough to handle vehicle vibrations, drops, rain, dust, and extreme temperatures

The Solution

Stratix partnered with a software company to design and deploy a mobile program that brought together every piece of the puzzle: purpose-built software to power the safety and tracking features, Verizon’s network for fast, reliable connectivity, and Stratix to handle everything else, from procurement to logistics to ongoing support. Specifically, Stratix:

• Packaged and configured devices before they left the warehouse, so districts received technology that worked right out of the box
• Procured the rugged tablets, powered by Verizon’s 5G network, and built to withstand the daily wear and tear of student transportation
• Paired each tablet with a mount, customized for the specific bus it’s installed in and available with hard-wired or cig-plug charging
• Provided full device lifecycle management from procurement, free warehousing, and provisioning so every device arrived loaded with the required applications

The Result

With tablets now on the road, districts have real-time insight into where their buses are, how drivers are performing, and whether every student made it on and off safely. Parents get more accurate arrival information, dispatchers can respond to delays as they happen, and administrators finally have the data they need to keep improving safety and efficiency across the entire fleet.