School districts across North America are employing several transportation management solutions to increase fuel efficiency and cut costs, especially given the recent spike in gas prices. Investing in fuel-efficient tires for their buses is one chosen strategy. The question is, do tires designed for fuel efficiency really work? The short answer is: they do, but they don’t necessarily save districts money.
We bill our BusBoss software as bus routing software, but the truth is, it goes far beyond simply scheduling buses. As more schools move towards entirely computer-based solutions for running their operations, there's a real need for software that performs more than one task. The more functionality a piece of software can provide a district, the more value it provides.
In transportation management services, sometimes popular belief might be easier to accept than fact, especially since the services are directly related to the safety of children, a top agenda for the country. In appeasing the public perception, situations are often mitigated in light of such beliefs, entire budgets and strategies can be altered to protect the myths in transportation management services. While many of the myths are based on some element of truth, they might prove unreliable in certain situations when you need to make decisions, or when faced with a challenge concerning the safety of your students. Here are a few of the myths that may lead to decisions or strategies that may not necessarily add value to the district transportation management service:
As transportation systems become more complex, handling their management and oversight similarly becomes a more complex task. In the past, you may have done well enough scheduling and routing your vehicles with strings and pushpins on maps, and using simple radio (or cell phone) contact to keep in touch with drivers on the road.
Many states have laws that prevent registered sex offenders from living too close to schools and parks, but I am not aware of any that restricts their residence based on bus stop location. Given that suburban and rural America is splattered with bus stops, it is extremely likely that there are registered sex offenders that live near school bus stops. Registered sex offenders can move just like anyone else. When was the last time you checked for registered sex offenders near your child’s bus stop?
School buses are truly the country’s largest public transportation systems. In recent years, incidents around the country have forced the important issue of student safety to the forefront. As parents, teachers and administrators advocate for increased security for school bus riders, equipping school buses with monitors is on the rise.
Transportation companies around the world have been slowly awakening to the power that modern computers have to optimize and streamline their businesses. Numerous processes relating to the management of your fleet and your route planning can now be automated through software, resulting in large cost decreases.
A great group of bus drivers means that you can have one of the best fleets to manage, making it easier for you to do your job and stay on route with schedules and plans. However, being able to create that group and find those highly professional bus drivers that can handle the stress and responsibilities of being a driver can take a little time to put together. Usually it means looking at resumes and credentials and other such things, but there are also some personality characteristics and other things that can't be found on a resume that need to be addressed, too.
The ways to harness technology to make your school run more smoothly and more safely are expanding quickly. Just a couple decades ago, it was still standard to see school districts doing most of their record-keeping by hand: drawing bus routes with lines on a map, doing attendance on paper, and still keeping class scores in physical grade books.
The school bus pass is not normally considered by most administration, especially when they have so much to worry about and take responsibility for. However, school bus passes are quite important for their highly simple way of making sure that no student is forgotten during the transportation process and is safely taken to their destination with ease.
