Parents in Rock Hill whose children ride the bus to or from school will soon be able to follow the bus in real-time thanks to the latest improvement in district communication, safety and technology.
Rock Hill Schools’ transportation department is pleased to announce the introduction of its newest tool, Versatrans My Stop. This free mobile app to our families, designed for families in our school district, marries powerful GPS data to a web-based software application to solve a universal problem: the arrival time of the school bus.
Using a smartphone, tablet or desktop computer, parents will be able to track their student’s school bus location and estimated arrival times, as well as receive notifications on delays, breakdowns and other pertinent information.
This simple and informative tool gives parents, guardians and students the ability to know approximately where the school bus is on its route. This translates to shorter outdoor wait times in the morning and more accurate afternoon drop off times for our nearly 8,500 daily riders. Further, this system provides transportation staff a tool to monitor the location of our 110 buses that cover more than 600 routes and 10,189 miles each day, which is farther than a roundtrip drive from Rock Hill to Anchorage, Alaska.
“As we enter the coldest days of the year and possibilities for inclement weather increase, we believe the My Stop app will improve our direct outreach with students and families while providing secure-accessed to information that can reduce outdoor wait times on cold, dark mornings,” said Superintendent Dr. Cook. “With the app, if the bus is delayed because of road conditions or traffic, it gives the parents and students the opportunity to see that and gauge when they are going to head out to the bus stop.”
My Stop displays a school bus’s approximate location on a map, as well as the estimated time of arrival (ETA) to a specific student’s bus stop. The school bus’s location is automatically updated every few minutes, and the ETA is recalculated to accommodate any delays due to traffic while the bus is on its way.
To access My Stop, students and parents should download the “Versatrans My Stop” app from Apple or Android app stores, or tap the My Stop icon in the Rock Hill Schools mobile app. After downloading the app, parents are encouraged to log in with information that will be provided by the school district prior to the launch.
The district is currently completing a final test of the My Stop system and expects to roll out the tool districtwide by the end of February. Additional communication will be shared with parents at that time.