A
fter Peter Simonsen met representatives of the route optimization company AlphaRoute at the Texas Association for Pupil Transportation confer- ence last year, he took a hard look at routing in the
Leander Independent School District near Austin, where he serves as transportation systems specialist. The district’s school buses carry more than 14,000
students to 49 schools each day across 200 square miles northwest of Austin, Texas. As Simonsen looked closer, he realized that the bus routes had largely been rolled over from one year to the next for almost 20 years, even as the student population changed significantly. “Nobody ever took a holistic view of the whole school
district and said, ‘Are we as efficient and effective as we can be and should be with our routes?’” he recalled. “I had a gut feeling we were not, but I had no data.” He decided to turn to AlphaRoute for help.
With algorithms and increasingly artificial intelligence,
the company analyzed Leander’s needs and designed the most efficient routes to serve students. Simonsen gave the company two “hard no’s.” Leander ISD would neither change bell times nor the existing 5,000 bus stops. Simonsen suspected those factors were why the routes had never been overhauled in the past. “We didn’t want to have a parent revolt on our hands,” he said. AlphaRoute offered the district several alternatives based on the latitude and longitude of all bus stops and school sites, the typical run time of Leander’s existing 172 routes, and local speed limits. Simonsen and his team examined the proposals, adding their own intri- cate knowledge of the local area, like unpassable gates. Thanks to the proposals, Leander ISD will be able to serve students next school year with 150 routes. The bell times
Continued on pg. 28➥
www.stnonline.com 25
PHOTO COURTESY OF PETER SIMONSEN.
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