t Embracing It? timization:
tells you, ‘Tis is the way we have always done it,’ doesn’t mean it’s an efficient
practice,” she explains. “District leaders should not hesitate to compare their operational practices, costs and key performance indicators with the private sector and other pupil transportation operations.”
She advises researching other operations, regardless of size, to
identify creative solutions and more efficient practices. “Often, staff will push to stay within their comfort zones, because change is not always an easy transition for some people,” she adds. “If the majority of our time and money is invested in people, turning to them for efficiencies, cost reduction and better procedural ideas is the key to making successful changes.”
Kerry Somerville is a product manager for routing products with Seon, which provides bus
surveillance systems and fleet management technology for Clark County. He says each district the company works with has its unique set of challenges. State reports, vehicle maintenance, budgets, and even parent complaints or preferences are all part of their equation. “Smaller districts approach routing and optimization completely different than large districts,” explains Somerville. “Small districts often use the paper-and-pencil method, simply because they don’t have the funding or expertise to run large optimization software. Tese districts often use operational optimization: Tey rely on drivers to provide input on what roads the bus should take.” Larger districts, however, are able to employ specialists and resources, such as modern
technology, to optimize the transportation operations. “Route optimization algorithms use complicated mathematical equations and a great deal of data, to come up with the best paths for a school bus,” Sommerville adds. “When used properly, however, a district can realize up to a 25 percent reduction in overall cost. Districts of all sizes want to be more efficient and use a variety of methods to do so, but having the resources to actually run the technology they buy is critical.” Tere are many variants of technology that help optimize pupil transportation. Both its
capabilities and implementation present some challenges to those who develop it and to the school districts that are considering or using it. “Over the years, we have created a system that has provided great accuracy, as far as active students and geographic location,” says Tom Burr, director of transportation at St. Paul Public Schools in St. Paul, Minn., which uses Versatrans RP for daily routing. “Te exchange of student information is a nightly process between Versatrans and our student system, Campus. I have great faith in the system. It allows us to accurately predict student assignments on school buses.” Te district backs up this data with manual student-load counts, and bus drivers count kids on a monthly basis. Over the past five years, Burr says the practice has resulted in removing 43 unneeded school buses from the fleet and an average savings of approximately $500,000 a year.
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