Peter Pan launches GPS site for tracking Exchange Bus

Students can now access a website that tracks the Exchange and Senate buses' GPS coordinates and estimated time of arrival at each stop.

"It is very helpful as it will tell students if a bus is running late to a specific stop and they can then plan accordingly," Director of Transportation Peter Eastment said in an e-mail.

The College's website features a link to it within the "About Wellesley" menu's "Visit Us" section, under the "Transportation" heading.  The website was launched Oct. 26.  

The website has been a collaborative project with the College's primary transportation vendor, the Peter Pan Bus Company, over the past year.  "At the request of [the College's transportation department], Peter Pan chose the technology and developed the site with our input," Eastment said. Saucon Technologies Inc, a Mobile Resource Management company headquartered in Bethlehem, Pa., provides the Peter Pan's GPS vehicle tracking and mapping.  

The College's Transportation Advisory Committee (TAC), which consists of five student representatives and the Associate Dean of Students, was involved with the website's development.  TAC student representatives sit on Senate in order to bring student feedback to administrators.

The TAC had discussed the idea of installing GPS tracking before last spring, according to TAC student representative Grace Kim '12.  The reason it hadn't been implemented sooner is a matter of logistics, Kim said.  "Peter Pan is a big company so it may have taken time before it got all the logistical steps figured out," she said in an e-mail.

The Peter Pan bus is a frequent topic in Senate's Open Discussion.  "Most issues students bring up are about late buses," Student Organizations and Appointments Committee (SOAC) Appointments Coordinator and Cazenove Senator Barbara Jiang '13 said in an e-mail. Jiang continued to explain how the  the lateness is caused by factors beyond Peter Pan's control, such as traffic, and that the  idea of a GPS on the Peter Pan has been mentioned several times.

 "We feel that student representation on the TAC is incredibly important since we are the people with the majority of first hand experience with transportation," Jiang said.  SOAC interviews applicants for the TAC.  "The TAC exists to bring issues about transportation forward and find a way to fix them."

The GPS system will provide such a solution.

 "[It will] better meet students' transportation needs," according to Eastment.  The most common need is finding out where the bus is, he explained.

"I definitely think it will be helpful for students in terms of better organizing their travel to and from campus," Jiang said.  "There have been many incidents of students waiting for hours in the cold and rain; now hopefully they will be able to wait inside, do homework while waiting, et cetera."

Many students think the tracking application is a good tool, especially when the bus is held up by unexpected delays, or even ahead of schedule.

However, student concerns also reflected the view that  more work needs to be done.  Students stressed that another issue that can be addressed is communicating with students if the bus is completely filled at the chapel bus stop, so that students waiting at the Alumnae stop can know to wait for the next one.

Students living in the Quint often catch the bus  at the chapel, expressing the desire not to stress about the bus not showing up at all at the campus center pick-up stop. The short distance between the chapel and the campus center would most likely not be captured by the application.