Placing traffic signal priority technology on school buses seems to come with on-time arrivals, significant fuel savings and even better behaved students.

These were some of the findings in what has been described as the first major look at the benefits of connected vehicle technology applied to school bus fleets. The pilot study was conducted by Fulton County, Ga., in the city of Alpharetta, a part of the Atlanta metro area…

Two buses were equipped with the connected vehicle radio equipment, which communicated with 62 signalized intersections along the bus routes. As the bus approached, those intersections reviewed real-time activity like pedestrians in the crosswalk, and then made decisions around whether the signal can safely give the school bus a green light, with minimal disturbance to the rest of the traffic. In most cases, it did.