Get Started With Bus Compass
Bus Compass: What Is It
Bus Compass is a smartphone app for guardians and students. It provides information about the location of the bus as well as when and where the student boarded and exited the bus. School districts that have implemented Bus Compass have found that guardians and students appreciate this information.
Without Bus Compass, neither the guardians nor the students know where the bus is or when it will
arrive. Studies have shown that waiting for a late bus, compounded by uncertainty and a lack of
information, often leads to heightened frustration, increased perceived waiting time, and potential
negative impacts on well-being and productivity. For students this is made worse because they may
need to wait outside in inclement weather for a school bus, not knowing when it will arrive.
In addition, guardians that work and have older students responsible for getting on or off the bus on
their own don’t know if they made the bus or where they have gotten off. Bus Compass can fill this information gap.
What You Need to Successfully Enable Bus Compass
To make sure that the information provided by Bus Compass to the guardians and students is accurate, key data and performance must be accurate. If the data or performance is inaccurate, it will send bad information to the students and guardians, frustrating them more than having no information.
Input | Requirements | Why |
Cellular connection | The bus needs to have a consistent cellular data connection in order to update
the location of the bus on the
app. | If there is inadequate cellular coverage along the route, Bus Compass
would be unable to provide students and guardians with timely notifications. |
| Routes need to be in
Transportant and have each student assigned to the correct stop. | If the stops or students are incomplete or inaccurate in the system, then students and guardians will receive erroneous notifications or none at all. |
Routes driven accurately by the
drivers | Stop accuracy should be 90% or greater for every stop on every route. This can
be seen under Route Runs by
selecting a route and looking to
the right. | If a driver does not stop at every stop, students and guardians might not receive adequate notice of an approaching bus. |
| To indicate that the student has
boarded and exited the bus, each
student needs a form of ID
assigned. This can be set by the
school. | For guardians to see when a
student has boarded or exited
the bus each student must have
a form of ID to inform the
Transport system that they are on
the bus. |
Before turning on Bus Compass, your implementation specialist will review your performance in these areas with you as you contemplate a go/no-go decision on Bus Compass.
Next Steps
Once you and your implementation specialist agree that you are ready to roll out Bus Compass, consider what
bus pass,
app display, and
app notification options make sense for your school district.
Related Articles
Bus Pass Options
A bus pass is a fob, RFID card or sticker, barcode, or some other means that a student uses when boarding to indicate when and where the student has boarded which bus. Then the bus pass may be used again upon leaving the bus, for the same purpose. ...
App Notification Options
There are multiple options for the Bus Compass notifications that a parent will receive. Your school should consider which of these options you would like to enable: Option Description Notes Base – Bus approaching Bus Compass will notify when the bus ...
App Display Options
Transportant has provided various options to display information on the Bus Compass app. The following are the items that you can configure for parents and guardians to see: Feature Options Notes Bus visibility Base case: Bus is visible within a set ...