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It's one thing to have bus routes that look great on paper - but it's another thing to have routes that actually optimize your transportation system.
Creating solid route maps is only the start of the process of optimizing your school transportation system. To really make the most of your buses, you should be tracking student ridership and seeing who's actually taking the bus every day.
Why Do Student Ridership Reports Matter?
They matter because transportation budgets are tight while expenses keep going up. The more you can optimize your routes, the more money you can save on each run.
For example, not every student rides the bus every day. They might only occasionally take the bus. So by running ridership reports, you might discover that a particular bus typically runs 25% empty and is rarely, if ever, at full capacity. In that case, it would be worthwhile to tweak the routes to even out the rider distribution.
In larger districts with dozens of routes, this sort of optimization could potentially even eliminate entire routes.
Likewise, do you have any buses that seem to be running at 100% capacity all the time? It's usually a good idea to leave yourself some overhead - especially if those buses have infrequent riders who only occasionally need a seat. You don't want to ever run a bus over capacity, after all.
How To Prepare Student Ridership Reports?
Fundamentally, you need two things: a tracking system and software to compile the data.
Student tracking systems are a good idea in general. By having students scan their ID every time they get on/off the bus, or using RFID to automatically track them, you'll know where your
students are whenever they're in the transportation system. This greatly decreases the chances of lost students, or students getting off at the wrong stop.
This also gathers the data you need to understand exactly how students are using the bus.
Then, that data should be fed into a central school transportation software suite capable of producing reports. From there, it's simply a matter of analyzing the data over periods of weeks/months/years and looking for patterns in the ridership.
The initial investment is low, but the potential for long-term cost savings and improved student safety is considerable.
BusBoss can help optimize your routes! We have over 25 years' experience assisting districts with improving their bus system while always protecting the precious cargo onboard. Contact us to learn more!
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PRESIDENT
Sonia has been involved with BusBoss since the late 1990’s, and has personally overseen many projects for various customers ranging from large urban and suburban districts to smaller rural school districts from all over the country.
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