News & Events

Bus Routes Go Digital In Washington County

WMBB.COM – Panama City, FL
Posted: May 14, 2013 8:04 PM EDT Updated: May 14, 2013 8:04 PM EDT
By Kelsey Peck

 

Washington County, Fla. – "When you take and mess with this route," said Transportation Secretary Dawn Spooner, "It's a domino effect. This one affects this one affects this one. "

With 2,400 students, a fleet with 40 plus buses, and 800 square miles of territory to cover, making changes to bus routes take time and patience for Washington County transportation officials.

 

"We always did it by hand," said Transportation Director Mike Park. "We had incredible people doing a great job but we felt this would be a more efficient system."

 

Parkis talking about their brand new $10,000 software, "Transfinder," that's making its way into the Washington County School District.

 

"It will make our transportation more efficient and save more money, and make it more safe because bottom line that's what we want it to be," said Park.

 

Spooner is in her third week of training with the new software which she says they'll use to evaluate their bus routes electronically.

 

"It's hard to do manually," said Spooner. "With this system, I'm able to look and see well this one is going this many miles, and has this many students [and] this one has a little less [so] we can pull from here to go to there."

 

Not only will it help them do their job more efficiently, they're expecting to make their bus routes more efficient, which in turn Spooner says will cut fuel costs.

 

The new software also shows how far away students are from school which is an important indicator when it comes to state funding.

 

The school only receives funding for the students who live more than two miles away.  Before officials calculated that distance themselves and now with this software they are able to get a more accurate calculation.

 

"The routing software automatically lets you know when someone is outside the zone to typically get funding for," said Park.

 

They also plan to use the new system to find ways to shorten some bus rides that are extremely long.

 

Parents won't see any changes made to bus routes from the new software until at least the beginning of next school year.