News & Events

Transfinder system helps disability center

Transfinder CEO Antonio Civitella, left, and Center for Disability Services asst. director for transportation Bill Garrison review bus routes at the center's dispatch office Friday April 25, 2014, in Albany, NY. (John Carl D'Annibale / Times Union)

 

 

 

When Transfinder of Schenectady decided to expand its transportation routing software business beyond the school district market, it didn't have to look very far to find its first customer.

Transfinder serves 1,500 school districts in North America and the Caribbean that use the company's route scheduling and mapping software systems to keep fuel and operational costs as low as possible.

Transfinder is now jumping into the adult care market, with its first customer the Center for Disability Services, the Albany-based nonprofit that serves 15,000 people with disabilities and chronic diseases across a nine-county area.

The Center for Disability Services' transportation needs are both daunting and complex. The center's transportation department, which has its main hub on South Pearl Street in Albany, provides rides to as many as 600 people a day — about 264,000 riders a year — and its vehicles travel more than 1.75 million miles a year.

Scheduling transportation routes can be challenging, especially since many clients use wheelchairs and must be strapped in for rides, a process that can take up to 10 minutes.

Bill Garrison, assistant director of transportation for the center, said Transfinder's software will replace overlapping systems it used to get people from their homes to appointments, a system that relied upon paper map books in many cases.

"There's never been a routing system for transporting the disabled," Garrison said.

He wouldn't say how much the Transfinder routing system will cost. 

Transfinder, which had $8.6 million in revenue last year, said districts only need to shave a mile here or there off their routes to have the system pay for it self.

"It's all data," said Transfinder CEO Antonio Civitella.

The Center for Disability Services, which has a $100 million annual budget, said it believes the Transfinder system will increase its routing efficiency so much the center can offer open seats on its buses to people normally served by other transportation services, reducing overhead.