University ID card programs come with significant benefits for students. The University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota has come up with a new way to protect one of those benefits, university sponsored transportation, using already existing student ID cards.

The university uses a bus system to transport students back and forth between the school’s two campuses. The university’s intercampus shuttles are now all equipped with wireless card readers, which connect to various access control panels around campus. When the bus pulls up at a stop, the wireless reader verifies the student’s identity by reading the student ID card. That information is relayed to one of the access control panels and verified in real-time against an online database. When the bus pulls away, it disconnects from the system until it pulls into the next stop.
The University of St. Thomas uses the system to keep track of students getting on and off the bus and make sure that it is St. Thomas students who were using the bus service and not unauthorized users. The new ID configuration increases the safety of the service as well. System administrators and bus drivers can use the identity verification system in the event of an incident on the bus or at one of the bus stops.