GPS Fleet Tracking Improves Fleet Management in Chicago
GPS fleet tracking systems are successfully being utilized in the largest cities in America for good reasons. According to Helen Rane Carbone, Chief Programmer and Analyst for the Chicago’s Department of Transportation “Before we implemented GPS, our fleet managers and dispatchers had virtually no real-time information on the whereabouts or activity of our fleet vehicles. We relied on very basic communication using two-way radios and hand-written reports. This was never able to provide the type and depth of information we needed for real performance monitoring, improvement, and accountability, which is expected of all city departments.”
According to Carbone, “before implementing a vehicle tracking system, simply keeping track of mobile resources from a dispatcher’s perspective – vehicle and driver scheduling, routing, call response, location in the case of emergencies – was a very difficult daily task. Truly measuring fleet and mobile employees’ productivity was practically impossible.”
Cities like Chicago are also using GPS fleet management systems to enhance their efforts to go green. Fleet managers are using real-time vehicle location data to optimize routes and reduce excessive idling in an effort to reduce gas consumption, CO2 pollution and other hazardous greenhouse gas emissions. According to Ms. Carbone, telematics plays a big part in many of Chicago’s environmental initiatives in becoming a true green fleet. “Fleet GPS management systems help with everything from the number and type of vehicles we’re using for a particular task, how they’re being used, and the amount of CO2 emissions they’re producing. Everyone is looking to big cities like Chicago to lead the way in this, and remote fleet management has gone from being a valuable tool to an absolute necessity.”