Here Comes the Bus® app for Vendor Transportation

Based on feedback from parents receiving Vendor Transportation Services, Wake County Public School System will pilot the Here Comes the Bus® mobile app for all students receiving Vendor Transportation Services starting on November 18.

Here Comes the Bus® app is a school vehicle tracking app that can provide the location of Vendor Transportation Services to parents via text, email alerts, or mobile application.   

Here’s how it works:

1. Your child is assigned to Vendor Transportation Services through your child’s IEP or 504 plan. 
2. WCPSS Vendor Transportation Services shares that information with one of our vendors, who then assigns your child to a route. This process can take up to 8 days.
3. The vendor will call you when your child is assigned to a route to let you know when service will begin. On the first day of service, you can log into Here Comes the Bus® to see the location of your child’s vendor vehicle . Technical instructions below for logging into the app are below.  
4. You may see information about your child’s route in Here Comes the Bus® or PowerSchool® before a vendor has called you with information about your child’s first day of service. This information will not be correct until the first day your child is picked up by Vendor Transportation Services. 

As we move forward in the pilot, please note that if your child’s vendor vehicle is being reassigned to a new vehicle or has a substitute driver, Here Comes the Bus® will not work. You may not know if your child’s vendor vehicle is being reassigned to a new vehicle or has a substitute driver. In these instances, you may notice that Here Comes the Bus® is not showing any information or is showing incorrect information.

Students receiving Vendor Transportation Services experience changes to their route more often than other students, and therefore, we can expect you may experience more changes in service on Here Comes the Bus® . 

Because Here Comes the Bus® uses cellular service to send data about your child’s assigned vehicle, you may not get information in real-time if your child’s vendor vehicle travels in areas with poor cellular reception or if your phone has poor cellular reception.  

In fact, you may be familiar with these issues if you have used Here Comes the Bus® for yellow bus transportation, as it works in a similar manner. 

For these reasons, we do not recommend that you rely on Here Comes the Bus® to plan your morning and afternoon routines. Please note that no vehicle tracking service is 100 percent accurate. Do not assume the vehicle is not coming just because the app did not notify you.  If in doubt about the arrival of a vehicle, please contact your child’s vendor directly. 

How to Get Started

Get started with Here Comes the Bus® at https://herecomesthebus.com/parents/get-started/. You will need the district code and your student’s ID number to sign up. The WCPSS school code for Vendor Transportation Services is 67501. Your child’s school can provide a student ID number.  For your smartphone or tablet, download the Here Comes the Bus® app from the App Store or Google Play. 

When entering your student’s last name on the app, spell it as it appears on your PowerSchool account.  If there is a hyphen in the name, make sure you include it. Only enter the first 18 characters of your student’s last name.  If your name is, Yellow-School Bus Wake, you will enter Yellow-School Bus in the last name field. 

Once activated, you can customize or edit features, including how the app will communicate with you and the size of the notification radius.

If you already use Here Comes the Bus® for WCPSS Yellow Bus Transportation you’ll need to log out of your Yellow Bus Transportation Services account (code 67500), and log-in to Vendor Transportation Services (Code 67501). You'll need to create an account for Vendor Transportation Services using the same username and password. 

Share feedback

Again, due to the wide interest in the Here Comes the Bus® for Vendor Transportation Services, this pilot will include all students receiving vendor transportation. As a pilot project, we will be gathering feedback and making adjustments to the service during this trial phase. You can provide feedback on our online form.