Standing in the pouring rain, I waited for my daughter’s bus to arrive. I also had my 2-year-old daughter with me. We shivered as time passed. 5 minutes late turned into 10 minutes, which turned into 15 minutes… all while standing in the bitter rain. Along with other parents, we strained our necks to look down the street, but to no avail, the bus was nowhere in sight. Finally, my daughter and I soaked from head to toe stood in the presence of the bus as my oldest daughter stepped off. There was an accident and traffic was backed up, causing the bus to be stagnant. If I would have known the whereabouts of the bus, I could have remained inside my house instead of walking to the bus stop.
What I encountered was nothing compared to what some NYC parents experienced on November 15, 2018. A snowstorm struck the city, and the city was unprepared. Bus drop-offs were delayed all over the Manhattan and the boroughs. Parents were tweeting their children were not home 4 hours later. Some buses did not drop off kids until midnight. Imagine being the parent of a special needs child and being left out in the cold wondering where your child could be. Frantically, parents were calling and tweeting about the whereabouts of their kids.
I often wondered if there was a way to track a school bus to know when my kids would be dropped off or picked up. Cities in Charlotte, NC and in San Antonio already use an app called Here Comes the Bus, which not only helps their family locate the bus, but can also reveal if their child got on the bus or got off on the wrong stop by use of a scanner. The app can be downloaded on iTunes and has a rating of 4.6 out of 5 stars.
In January, legislation in New York was passed to include GPS service to 10,000 busses. The Here Comes the Buss app is a solid contender. With parents being concerned about the whereabouts of their child’s bus, a 4.6 rating is an effective sign that the app could relieve the stress