We’re all looking at tighter budgets and ways to better monitor our operations. By effectively managing our resources, we improve our performance.

One of Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County’s (Metro) initiatives for this fiscal year was looking at improving our yard process — the labor and expenses needed to get a bus in service and return it to the yard. The areas of our focus? Pre-trip and post-trip bus inspections.

There were primarily two objectives we wanted to meet — compliance and cost effectiveness.

In addition to federal requirements for pre-trip inspections, Metro has its own check-off list designed to catch mechanical problems that could impact passenger safety and performance on the road.

In the past, operators performed the inspection with little oversight, using a paper system that was inefficient and impossible to monitor.

We needed a system that met pre-trip inspection requirements, without having to increase supervision of the process.

We evaluated an electronic vehicle inspection reporting system from Zonar on one of our buses during the last four months and found we’ve been able to accomplish both.

Radio-frequency identification tags (RFID) tags are placed in safety zones around the vehicle. The drivers do their pre-trip inspection with a handheld reader, placing it close to the tags and indicating the condition of the zone by keying in their responses. After the inspection is complete, the information is sent back to us and we can display the information in customized reports.