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Free Transportation Maps

 

The T.O.M. GIS Routing software product is built around E.S.R.I.’s ArcView GIS mapping software. By using this GIS technology school districts many times can use detailed and accurate street maps for FREE from local cities and counties. STN Magazine says “over 2/3 of the approximate 3,500 counties in the U.S. have adopted the ArcView format” making ArcView “the defacto standard nationwide in the field of GIS”. Because T.O.M. GIS Routing uses ArcView you know that if your local city or county government has a GIS map, T.O.M. will probably be able to use it.

 

View an excerpt of the quoted STN article.

Contact your local city or county street transportation department, water department, assessing or planing departments today and ask them if they have a map of the city / county in an ArcView shapefile or .shp file format that your school district can use. You will probably be pleasantly surprised!

Click HERE to visit the City of Phoenix's Online Map - which is offered FREE to local school districts

 

What if My Local City or County doesn’t have a street map we can use?

No Problem!

 

ESRI has over 300,000 customer organizations world wide using it’s software on millions of desk tops. Many of these users are looking for good street maps. As such a healthy industry of commercial map data companies has grown over the past twenty years. If your local city or county doesn’t have a street map you can use there are many commercial companies that do, allowing you to ‘shop’ for the best one. The competition between these companies is heavy giving you great maps for very competitive prices. Usually a detailed street map for a county is priced from one to two thousand dollars. The main idea here is choice. With T.O.M. GIS Routing you have a lot of choices as to where your school district can get it’s street map from.

Below are just a few of the companies that offer detailed street maps in an ArcView format. Click on their logo to visit their web sites. Many of these companies allow you to ‘test drive’ their maps by typing in street addresses and having their web page show where on their map that location is:

 

Geographic Data Technology

Tele Atlas

NavTeq

 

Excerpt from 2/2002 School Transportation News Magazine article on GIS technology in schools

 

"...Fortunately for school administrators, state and municipal governments have seen the benefits of the technology too. Most standard GIS area maps are now available for free from municipal or county governments. Environmental System Research Institute, better known as ESRI, has become the defacto standard nationwide in the field of GIS. At the heart of the ESRI technology is geocoding, the process of assigning latitude and longitude coordinates.

ESRI surged to the forefront in the mid-1990s when the U.S. Census Bureau adopted ArcView, the company's non-proprietary data structure based on worldwide latitude and longitude coordinates. All 50-state departments of transportation, and an estimated two-thirds of the 3,500 county governments nationwide, have adopted ESRI's GIS protocol.

Moreover, key federal agencies - among them the U.S. Geological Service, Census Bureau, Department of Transportation, Department of Defense - utilize digital mapping for an array of applications. Map files are available for transportation planning, 911 emergency systems, crime data, ethnic and racial demographics, flood areas, aboveground and underground utilities, railroad tracks, indeed virtually any conceptual or physical item on the planet. By viewing data in layers within a student transport service area, school transportation departments can avoid dangerous routes while simultaneously building digital efficiencies into the routing.

No Cost Maps

That means school administrators can combine their database of student information with existing digital map files supplied by government..."

Testimonials

 

"The TOM WebTrips program has been hugely successful for our district. We have 107 schools, 14 approval paths, and the capability to directly export billing data to our district's accounting system. And, on top of that, Gecko's commitment to technical support is the best that I have experienced. Our district's field trip system has become a model of accountability, efficiency, and performance.

Thanks!"

 

Jim Faron
Coordinator for Scheduling
Austin ISD
Austin, TX

"WebTrips has simplified the paperwork required for all field trips and made scheduling MUCH easier. It has also speeded up the approval process for field trips since we do not have to depend on the mail courier service."

 

Dan Davis,
Transportation Director
Bowling Green School District
Bowling Green, OH

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