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Case Study: Pembrokeshire County Council

Business Problem

In 2003 Pembrokeshire County Council in Pembrokeshire, Wales underwent a rationalisation of its education services to make better use of its resources. As part of the initiative, the County decided to close one of its primary schools, and reassign the pupils to three other area facilities. This had a significant effect on the transportation component as many more students would now require home-to-school transport. To accommodate the additional intake of students at the other schools it was necessary to review the bus routes and look for more efficient ways to provide transport.

Goals

Throughout the process, the first priority of Pembrokeshire Local Education Authority (LEA) was to ensure that all pupils entitled to home-to-school transportation were safely transported. Beyond this objective, the Council sought to improve transport services wherever possible. They recognised that this could be partly achieved through a more efficient use of existing resources.

As well, the Council hoped to be able to reduce the cost of transport, despite the fact they were transporting more pupils, some of them across longer distances. “We hoped to lower transport costs to some extent by making better use of our vehicles and by creating more efficient routes,” explains Brendan Griffiths, Transport Scheduling Officer at Pembrokeshire County Council.

Solution

Pembroke had earlier investigated computerized routing and transport management applications as a means of improving and achieving efficiencies in their school transportation.

Following a comprehensive review and competitive evaluation, Pembrokeshire had selected the Trapeze education transport software. “We chose Trapeze because they were the technology provider that could best deliver the planning, routing and reporting functionality and results that we were looking for,” Mr. Griffiths recalls.

The Trapeze software features integrated, multi-layered maps used for service planning and stop and route generation. The software also enables quick, accurate reporting on ridership, routes, costing and more.

Pembrokeshire used Trapeze to re-route all eligible pupils to other schools and optimised routes throughout the catchment area. “The software used eligibility criteria such as a child’s distance from the school and whether they were within the school catchment area and highlighted instantly whether they were eligible for transport,” Mr. Griffiths says.

For its social services and other special needs transport operations, the Council also uses the Trapeze demand responsive transport management solution. This application provides automated client management, journey booking, scheduling and dispatch for the organisation.

Results

Following the redesign and optimisation of the routes, Pembrokeshire’s services are now transporting more students than ever before, while transport costs have decreased. “Within the catchment area represented by these three schools we have actually seen an 80% increase in the number of passengers carried and a 30% reduction in our costs,” Mr. Griffiths points out. “That is money that can be put to good use improving education transport services in the community.”

The new routes in the catchment area are saving the Council around £230 per day, or roughly £44,000 over the course of a 190-day school year.

The Bottom Line

Doing more with less is a challenge facing most education transport organisations. Pembrokeshire County Council credits the Trapeze system with helping it solve the logistical problem of re-routing a large number of children in a relatively short time, while also taking some of the pressure off already stretched transport budgets. “When we purchased the software, we did not know we would have to reassign these students, Mr. Griffiths remembers. “Happily, we chose the right tools for the job and are seeing benefits we had not anticipated.”