The complexity of
today’s school bus routing, as shown by Clark County School District that serves the Las Vegas area.
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“We also use GPS that feeds into Versatrans Onscreen,” adds
Burr of St. Paul Public Schools. “Tis creates positive customer service when parents call and ask where the bus is and if it’s running late. In an instant, we can respond with an answer. One thing I would like to see in the school transportation industry is automated passenger counter. Te transit industry uses this technology extensively, but no one to my knowledge uses it for school buses. Currently, we manually count students on the bus monthly; with APCs, we could do daily counts and develop accu- rate trends of how many kids are actually riding the school bus.” Not all school districts are candidates for sophisticated applica- tions. Tat is the case at the Delaware County Schools in Ohio. Jason Sherman, director of facilities and transportation, said the district also uses Versatrans, but has yet to further optimize routes. Doing so will depend on budgets, as well as student transport volume and future schedule needs. As at many districts, staff manually compute optimal allocation of routes and student assignment to buses, then plan according to such need. “Budgets, actual ridership, and schedules, drive any adjustments,”
notes Sherman. “Our buses are full but not overcrowded. As the district has grown, we’ve been able to adjust the afternoon bell times to keep up. However, we will need to add routes in the future to accommodate additional students. We have consolidated our more rural routes to include high school and middle school students, so that one bus instead of two travels the more remote areas. We then shuttle students back and forth between buildings. We also use a shuttle system for private school students for whom we provide transportation. Tis eliminated eight afternoon bus runs and improved on-time performance.”
SLOW, STEADY RESULTS AT THE SPEED OF NOW Route optimization through technology can bring some at-
tractive results that may require patience and flexibility, and that must be weighed against parent expectations to have constantly updated information at their fingertips. A measured approach with a sense of urgency may win the optimization race. One of the main factors motivating districts to improve
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