Wichita Slashes Costs with New AVL Contract

The City of Wichita, Kan., council has approved a change to a new AVL/GPS contract that will cut costs by two-thirds. The city has been using GPS services since 2012, and now has the devices on about one-third of its fleet — about 420 vehicles.

In 2018, city staff members evaluated 16 proposals for a new AVL/GPS solution, demoed six systems, and chose the T-Mobile Sync-Up Fleet Solution. The monthly service charge will go down from $30-33 per vehicle, per month, to $12.30 per vehicle, per month. Hardware costs are included. This would mean annual costs would be reduced from $180,000 per year to $60,000 per year, Troy Tillotson, superintendent of fleet maintenance, told city council members.

Tillotson attributes this price decrease to advancing technology and increased competition in the past seven years since the city began piloting GPS.

“We obtained our current GPS service as an add-on to another contract that we had. We never had an official contract for GPS units,” he added.

The devices will be installed on all non-public-safety vehicles maintained by the fleet that have elected to opt in for GPS service, including light-, medium-, and heavy-duty vehicles. The technology will be used for location tracking and possibly also for event-based tracking such as excessive idling and speeding instances, Tillotson said.

He anticipates that more customers will opt into the service due to the reduced cost.

Tillotson expects rollout of the new system to be completed in the next few months.