If you have a fleet of school buses, it’s important to efficiently and safely move your students from their parent’s homes to the school. A late or otherwise detoured school bus can affect the rest of a student’s day. As the world is moving toward modernization, you must keep up. Check out our essential tips for optimizing school buses below.
Understand Bus Route Optimization
There are many best practices for school bus fleets, but the first is making optimization effortless, whether that’s from measuring fuel usage, maintaining your fleet, or knowing student data. Before you can optimize your bus route, you have to know what bus route optimization is. It helps drivers develop economical and practical routes.
Luckily, this isn’t something that you have to do all on your own. AI is making great strides in creating a special algorithm that makes this process effortless.
How Many Children Need Transportation?
You should know how many children you’ll be transporting and the locations each kid needs for pick up and drop off. School districts need to know this information before the school year starts. Children enroll and leave school each year, and families sometimes relocate, so getting an annual handle on these figures is important to keep your data up-to-date. Scheduling software makes tracking this process far more efficient.
Student Data
You must ensure that your data analysis and records are accurate; otherwise, the process won’t turn out as planned. You need the students’ addresses, bus stops, and routes. Additionally, you need to have medical information and emergency contacts.
Pay attention to custody information. The last thing you want is to be responsible for accidentally dropping a child off at the wrong parent’s house.
Reduce the Number of Stops
Minimizing the number of stops is an essential tip for optimizing bus routes. Your drivers will use less gas, transport students quicker, and stop the engine less frequently. Some students may need to travel further on foot to get to the bus, but you can’t beat this method for efficiency.
