CATS Vanpool Participates in NC Smart Fleet Technology

The Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS) has installed and implemented a new technology into their Vanpool fleet designed to help identify opportunities for fuel savings, unsafe driver behavior and opportunities to be more environmentally friendly. The telematics system was installed into all vehicles in the Vanpool fleet and it will measure speeding, vehicle idling, seatbelt use, harsh breaking, hard acceleration and hard turning.

“Our main concern in the CATS Vanpool Program is the safety and well- being of our customers when utilizing our equipment and services,” says Dietrich Brown, assistant general manager for CATS Special Transportation Services.  “This program provides us with valuable information about Vanpool commutes such as how much fuel is being used in vehicles in order to identify potential fuel savings.  This new technology will allow us to identify unwanted driving behavior in an effort to try to reduce our insurance cost, resulting in the optimization of planning within the vanpool program to positively impact our operating expenses.”

Each Vanpool vehicle will be labeled with an NC Smart Fleet sticker decal. The decals were provided by the NC Clean Energy Technology Center. CATS is one of several entities participating in NC Smart Fleet and data collected will help aggregate and quantify all that services, like Vanpool, are doing for air quality and fuel efficiency.