Brad Hayn leads the Hoover City Schools transportation department, where he noticed an old way of doing things worked but could be vastly improved upon.
kids with special needs [to route]. It’s a lot of runs and routes to get together. We have to have software. It would be impossible to do it by hand,” he added. But on-the-ground insight is still crucial. “It will give us an optimized route, but sometimes
what it looks like on paper isn’t what it actually is,” Ellis said. “You can go straight or go left but that light going left is going to catch you. It’s a 5-minute light. We mark off roads in the software to make sure it won’t take you down this little side road even though it’s quicker. A big bus doesn’t need to be on that road. That local knowl- edge has to be applied to the optimization.” Ellis said route optimization saved the district minimal
money. But the software was crucial to keep parents in the loop when a severe driver shortage about two years ago re- sulted in doubled-up routes and buses that were often late. The district is now fully staffed with about 500 drivers.
Adopting AI School bus management company BusRight doesn’t
yet use generative AI, but will be integrating the technol- ogy into services soon, said BusRight senior marketing lead Abby Brookshire. Currently, the company uses telematics to analyze a district’s routes based on the data from on-board tablet systems and suggests changes. “We have historical data, we know how long it took
you to get from place to place and the speed you were going,” she explained. “If you missed that stop for five days in a row, maybe consider removing that one.” AI additions will offer real-time notifications that stops
30 School Transportation News • MAY 2026
have been missed or routes have been late and offer im- provements. But she warned that AI isn’t a panacea. “We find platforms that do use AI-powered route op-
timization sometimes don’t account for the details that are so important, like is there an actual sidewalk there? Or maybe there is, but it’s not a good place to put a kin- dergarten student,” she said. BusRight’s use of telematics and route optimization
saved Poughkeepsie City School District in New York almost a million dollars last school year compared to the previous year, Brookshire said. “They changed routes, combined routes and with his-
torical data were able to see where they didn’t really need to go. We optimized so they more effectively used what they had in their bus yard,” she explained. The company also provides a feature where students can scan a card upon entering the bus to let drivers know immediately if the child is boarding the wrong bus or is unregistered. This is an important safety measure for students and saves on unnecessary delay and driv- ing. This feature also connects data to student profiles, so drivers know about students’ special needs or wheth- er they are on the softball team and need to get on the bus headed to a softball game, for example. Technology coming soon will also let parents self-as-
sign their kids to certain routes, which could also help with optimization and efficiency. “Our main mission is to make sure that students have
equitable access to education,” Brookshire said. “The first way we do that is putting transportation leaders first,
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52
