20
Jul
Wicomico Schools Saves More Than $45,000 with Transfinder
- Category Featured,
School Bus Routing Goes Digital
Delmarva Daily Times – MD
By Greg Latshaw - Staff Writer
July 19, 2009
SALISBURY, MD – Until recently, school officials charted school bus trips in Wicomico County the old-fashioned way.
On a paper map, they affixed pins to represent bus stops and drew color-coded lines for the routes.
Now, Transportation Director Dave Reeve said his office does more work on computers, using digital maps that are easier to read and update. It helps reduce bus route overlap in the far-flung county – an important cost-saving measure when applied to 133 buses logging more than 7,000 stops on a typical school day.
"Can we do more without putting additional buses on the road?" Reeve said.
By increasing the efficiency of bus routes by 1 percent, the Board of Education will keep a bus off the road – a savings of more than $45,000, said spokeswoman Tracy Sahler.
High-tech software mapping school bus routes is becoming increasingly popular because planners need access to more information than can be stored on a paper map, said Antonio Civitella, CEO of Transfinder in Schenectady, N.Y.
His company is the provider for the program used by Wicomico schools.
"We design our software as an assistant – not something that will do all the work for you," Civitella said.
Somerset County schools, despite there being little residential change in the county, use a computer routing program similar to the one in Wicomico schools, said Transportation Director Rodger Daugherty.
"Most of our changes and adjustments are made by knowledge of existing routes and determining the safest and least costly manner of making route changes," Daugherty said.
However, in Worcester County, school transportation officials still manually chart bus routes, said school spokeswoman Barbara Witherow. They plan routes for 73 bus contractors, who travel 8,211 miles each day on 148 routes.
"Safety, accommodating the needs of our children and efficiency continue to be top priorities for our bus operations," Witherow said.
This week, Reeve demonstrated one application of the high-tech bus-routing software.
Reeve used the computer mouse to draw a polygon around several bus stops in Nanticoke. The program calculated the number of students boarding buses in that area, which helps Reeve meet bus capacity targets. Additionally, the data also included the names and addresses of the students living in areas serviced by those stops.
"We have huge amounts of information," he said.
Wicomico schools also have data stored on the approximate bus route times. To gather the information, bus drivers took turns with RouteBuilder, a GPS transponder. The device, about the size of a wallet, recorded the time and coordinates of a driver's scheduled stop. That information was automatically uploaded to a remote server operated by Transfinder.
"Updating, instead of creating, is a lot easier," Reeve said.
While Reeve is a big proponent of the routing software, he said there's no substitute for traveling to a bus stop and making sure it's safe.
"You still need feet on the ground to make sure it works the way it's supposed to work," he said.
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