In a matter of weeks, the question, "Dude, where's my bus?" will finally be answered.
Beginning the first week of June, UF students will be able to view the location of their buses online, said Bob Miller, associate vice president of UF Business Affairs.
The project has been pushed back a number of times and was last scheduled to be finished by May.
Global Positioning System units will be installed on 50 Regional Transit System buses that run on 29 different routes, including the Later Gator and Lake Wauburg routes and two new routes that will debut in the fall, Miller said.
Except for the Lake Wauburg route, all the routes will be city routes that go from on-campus to off-campus locations, Miller said.
UF Transportation and Parking traffic court reserves will cover the cost of the first year - $204,000 - which includes installation and maintenance, he said.
The UF transportation access fee will fund $110,000 of the $143,000 yearly cost after that, he said. RTS will cover the remaining $33,000.
Although it has been previously reported that students will be able to track buses by sending a text message to a number, Miller said that sort of initiative is not in the works at the moment. It may be added later on, he said.
Also planned for some future bus stops are LCD screens that will display the locations of the buses and features that will notify students if a bus is full.
The GPS units will allow officials to analyze bus flow data so that they can tweak the routes and make them run more efficiently, said Kevin Reilly, Student Body President.
TransLoc, the company providing the GPS service, also provides similar services for other universities, including Auburn University, the University of Alabama, Harvard University and Yale University.
On its Web site, www.transloc-inc.com, students can view the bus tracking maps for these other universities.
A link to the site will likely be posted on the UF Student Government Web site once the UF GPS units are functional, Reilly said.
