BOSTON – A new bus-tracking system did not meet Boston parents’ and students’ expectations, after a 6-year-old was left on the bus for hours and parents are still reporting delays. The Mayor and the Superintendent took a bus ride with students to find solutions Wednesday morning.

Zum bus-tracking app improvements

This new app allows parents to track their child’s bus, get updates on any delays, and collect real-time traffic data. As concerns raise, BPS officials will create new, hoping to have more efficient routes every Tuesday night. “All of a sudden, the app just skipped his stop, I got him there 25 minutes later,” said parent Cheryl Backman. “He was supposed to be home at 5:05, didn’t get home until 6:18,” another parent told WBZ-TV.

Testing new improvements

In order to improve the app, Mayor Wu and Superintendent Mary Skipper took the bus themselves. They arrived at Higginson-Lewis K-8 School about 20 minutes late and six minutes after the class started. Principal of the Higginson-Lewis K-8 says, “When kids get here late, we still need to make sure they get breakfast, we still need to make sure that they’re greeted but that’s harder because our teachers and our students are already upstairs in their classes.” Currently, about 60% of all BPS students are using the Zum app. Now, it has become a rocky ride for families with students taking the bus this school year. Mayor Wu says, “We got lots of notes about, OK, I’m going to move this sign to the end of the curb so that cars can’t park here and block the buses and so there’s little tweaks that we’ll keep making.” She is also asking families to let their driver know at least two hours early if their child will not be taking the bus that day. “That stop will be removed altogether so the driver does not have to drive through it.” Wu’s goal is to get back to last year’s number of 95% of all BPS students getting to school within 15 minutes of the first bell. She said that will require collaboration between drivers, parents, and administrators. Her team will continuously analyze the data collected from the app with the hopes to improve efficiency every week.