Solving Municipality Challenges with Telematics

Bringing the “Smart City” to Life

Technology has taken society leaps and bounds ahead of where it was a few decades ago. From the rise of smartphones, drone deliveries, to self-driving cars, a lot has changed in a short time.

For municipalities, the rise of “smart city” infrastructure has been a significant influence in the adoption of fleet, transportation, energy, and other technologies across their operations. The trailblazers of “smart government” recognize the possibilities of a technology-based infrastructure to optimize the efficiency of city operations and services to connect with their citizens and solve overlying issues.

This includes the collection of carbon measurements, fuel usage, and other metrics that can be used to support better urban sustainability. As telematics continues to play a role in the expansion of smart cities, the technology is being used by municipalities to solve many other challenges facing their fleet operations. It provides the information needed to improve fuel efficiency, resource allocation, and route optimization.

How Telematics Impacts Fuel Use

Not only does improving fuel efficiency limit the harmful effects of excessive Green House Gas (GHG) emissions, it can significantly reduce costs. While fuel is a consistent overhead cost that is likely to fluctuate, how much we use is certainly within our control. An important fact worth noticing about fuel is the worst mileage a vehicle can get is during idle times. Reducing excessive idle time is the fastest way to improve fuel economy with telematics. Vehicle idling can be reduced by using idle metrics received through reports and alerts and taking action as soon as vehicles surpass acceptable idle time thresholds. Another way telematics measures and reduces fuel use is by correcting inefficient driving. In addition to the safety implications of monitoring driver behavior, municipalities use telematics to review use attributed to inefficient driving. Access to this data allows for coaching opportunities to improve behavior while reducing excessive fuel use in the process. Telematics can also send alerts directly to drivers when their vehicles are speeding, harshly breaking, or rapidly accelerating to proactively correct these behaviors.

Not only does improving fuel efficiency limit the harmful effects of excessive Green House Gas (GHG) emissions, it can significantly reduce costs. While fuel is a consistent overhead cost that is likely to fluctuate, how much we use is certainly within our control. An important fact worth noticing about fuel is the worst mileage a vehicle can get is during idle times.

Reducing excessive idle time is the fastest way to improve fuel economy with telematics. Vehicle idling can be reduced by using idle metrics received through reports and alerts and taking action as soon as vehicles surpass acceptable idle time thresholds. Another way telematics measures and reduces fuel use is by correcting inefficient driving. In addition to the safety implications of monitoring driver behavior, municipalities use telematics to review use attributed to inefficient driving. Access to this data allows for coaching opportunities to improve behavior while reducing excessive fuel use in the process. Telematics can also send alerts directly to drivers when their vehicles are speeding, harshly breaking, or rapidly accelerating to proactively correct these behaviors.

Fleet Rightsizing

Examining resource allocation is an important focus for fleet management, which often leads to fleet rightsizing. This ensures the maximum use of municipal vehicles. Monitoring utilization reports allow fleet managers to identify if vehicles are being under or over-utilized. If vehicles are used less frequently, then fleet managers can decide if they should eliminate these assets altogether, or come up with a plan to get them into circulation. Maintaining a fleet of vehicles that are under and over utilized increases fuel, maintenance, and several other expenses. Evaluating fleet utilization is one way for municipalities to ensure that they are making efficient use of their city’s budget. It’s important to constituents that municipalities spend their tax dollars wisely, and identifying areas to eliminate unnecessary spending helps positively affect the public opinion.

Fleet Rightsizing

Examining resource allocation is an important focus for fleet management, which often leads to fleet rightsizing. This ensures the maximum use of municipal vehicles. Monitoring utilization reports allow fleet managers to identify if vehicles are being under or over-utilized.

If vehicles are used less frequently, then fleet managers can decide if they should eliminate these assets altogether, or come up with a plan to get them into circulation. Maintaining a fleet of vehicles that are under and over utilized increases fuel, maintenance, and several other expenses. Evaluating fleet utilization is one way for municipalities to ensure that they are making efficient use of their city’s budget. It’s important to constituents that municipalities spend their tax dollars wisely, and identifying areas to eliminate unnecessary spending helps positively affect the public opinion.

Increasing Route Optimization

Municipalities are utilizing telematics to improve route efficiency to provide better service to citizens and ultimately decrease miles driven on the vehicles. Telematics systems automatically determine the fastest routes, taking current traffic conditions and roadwork into account, to dispatch more efficiently. Route inefficiencies can also be addressed by looking at the historical routes of vehicles. By looking at the routes of multiple vehicles on any given day, inefficient route overlapping can be identified and eliminated. Doing this improves fleet efficiency and reduces fuel costs.

The Smart City Future is Here

We stand on the verge of a future dominated by technology that will improve the lives of citizens in countless ways with universally networked devices and smart vehicles and transportation. Telematics is already being incorporated by municipalities to influence their smart cities infrastructure while solving a variety of other issues in the process.