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Case Study: Sarasota District Schools Transportation Department

Trapeze MapNet Helped Sarasota District Schools Transportation Department Increase the Number of Schools Serviced

Snapshot

Ridership: 20,000 students per day
On time performance: 97% on time arrival
Total number of busses: 252
Miles traveled: 5 million per year
Total number of schools: 49
Total number of charter schools: 7
Number of operators: 330
Number of operators assigned to road: 252

Background

The Sarasota District Schools Transportation Department provides school transportation services to the students in Sarasota County, Florida. The organization currently develops over 1000 individual routes, over 9,000 stops, and transports over 20,000 students per day, to 49 schools, including seven Charter Schools. There are 252 buses on the road that travel approximately 5 million miles a year.

The department employs 330 operators, 252 of which are assigned to the road.

Challenges

In 1991, Sarasota Transportation Department was looking for ways to improve and automate their scheduling and routing process, with technology that could deliver the data analysis and management tools a busy planner requires.

The organization wanted to pay detailed attention to student distribution, eligibility rules and safety policies, all while balancing expenses, optimizing routes and helping to guarantee the safety of students.

Solution

After a review of the available options, Sarasota Transportation Department selected Trapeze MapNet as their automated scheduling and routing software, along with a Web component that addresses common customer inquiries. MapNet was able to deliver advanced tools for better planning, efficiency, productivity and reporting.

“Trapeze MapNet simply provided us with the functionality we needed at the time” said Barbara Matteson, Supervisor of Routing for the Sarasota Transportation Department. “It promised to be of great value financially speaking, and also in regards to the safety of our students. I have been with the program from the beginning and am very pleased with how the support offered by the implementation team, and the upgrades they provided for us throughout the years.”

Results

According to Matteson, the implementation of MapNet has been a “tremendous help w/ planning and route building. The useful data provided by the system allows us to estimate different ways to save money, and even reduce the number of busses on the road.”

“Our ride times have greatly improved and we have constantly served more and more schools and programs with the same number of busses. Trapeze technology made it possible for us to help open a new school in Sarasota County every year, for the past six years.”

“With the addition of the MapNet Web module, one of the biggest savings we’ve experienced has been the reduction in the total number of phone calls by 80%, and even the cancellation of our Hot Line this year! MapNet Web continues to be a huge help to our schools and our dispatch office, who use it on a daily basis” she continued.

Next Steps

Sarasota has expanded their system with the Trapeze Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) solution, which will be fully operational by the end of 2009.

“Even in its initial stages, AVL has helped us build better routes, locate time for adding stops and even move off stops off of a bus” explained Matteson. “It has helped us locate a driver in distress, who did not give an accurate location over the radio. Our Dispatch office is already using it daily.”