The Fairbanks North Star Borough School District has a contract with Durham School Services to cover the nearly 100 bus routes in the borough. Those busses are all equipped with a GPS location system. That’s one of the reasons Alaska DOT picked this district to pilot this smart-phone alerts.
“The Fairbanks North Star Borough School District buses are equipped with this technology already. And so, we're able to really leverage what it is that they have into our 511 system for the alert,” said DOT spokesperson Danielle Tessen.
Drivers can now use the 511 Alaska mobile app to receive audio alerts to let them know they are approaching a school bus. The project’s tech lead, Isvan Gomez says you download the app, and put it in “Drive Mode.”
“The system knows the geolocation of the bus and the geolocation of the device. And so, when you're driving in drive mode, the app keeps track of your location. And once you get to the geofence of the school bus, it will alert you saying, ‘Hey, school bus ahead’,” Gomez said.
Gomez says it’s a robot-like voice. Want to hear it? I downloaded the 511 Alaska app onto my phone, agreed to obey traffic laws, and selected some settings, before putting the app into "Drive Mode," and heading to where I know there will be school buses -- outside of a school.
As I approach on the expressway, I see a bus ahead in the right lane, and as I pass it, I get the alert.
Alert voice: “School bus. Caution. School bus ahead.”
Gomez says there’s another reason Fairbanks was picked to pilot this project.
“We do have a lot of bus stops that are on high speed roads,” he said.
Tessen says the project was driven by a study DOT has been doing to look at the 250-mile Alaska/Richardson/Steese highway corridor being used by ore-hauling rigs and other industrial transport, that found 86 school bus stops along the corridor.
“It also comes after the corridor analysis that has been going on for the past year and a half, and it indicated that we have, uh, bus stops on highways and, and, and so bringing a greater attention to that, it, it made for the perfect partnership right here in the Interior,” she said.
Gomez says there’s a masking feature that doesn’t share exactly where school busses are, so you can’t stalk them.
“And that's kind of, I think, where the genius came in from the team was that they figured out how to let people know that there is a school bus ahead, but not give the actual location of it,” he said.
Gomez says the AK 511 app is still new and he’s keeping track of any glitches or nuisance features. He’d like to hear driver feedback. If the app works for Fairbanks, it may be introduced in other school districts.
