Williamsburg-James City County Schools believe a software upgrade will turn the morning school bus ride from a waiting game into an exact science.
Beginning next year, the school division will begin using Transfinder, new bus routing software that administrators hope will simplify route mapping and student transportation.
WJCC currently uses Edulog as its bus routing system, but Senior Director for Operations Marcellus Snipes said advances in technology made the system unwieldy and outdated. The current system has been in place since 1985, and has been updated once — in 2000 — since that time.
Director of Transportation Earl Tyler said one of Edulog’s major shortcomings was it did not work with the school division’s new GPS service.
“We were led to believe it would, but it doesn’t,” he said.
Snipes said Transfinder had several advantages over the previous system that would make bus route management and transportation more efficient.
Edulog used simple property maps for drawing routes. The drawback was the software visually displayed each stop at equal distances from each other, rather than showing the actual space between them. Tyler said this made route mapping difficult and inexact.
The new software uses GIS maps with true-to-life property boundaries to map routes, paying heed to the geographic location of each stop.
“This software will put the stop right where it is,” Tyler said. “Other systems use an estimate.”
Tyler said the Transfinder software would also be useful to parents. The new software includes an app parents can download to track the location of buses on their routes in real time.
Snipes said all of the school division’s existing data, including its current routes and student information, would be compatible with the new software, allowing a smooth transition from the old system to the new.
The software will cost $40,945 to install initially, with an annual licensing fee of $9,300. The funds were already marked in the school division’s transportation budget, and the school board approved the contract Nov. 11.
While the new software would make WJCC’s transportation services more efficient, Tyler said it could have a positive impact on future developments in the school division.
The Transfinder software allows the school division to plot bus routes for hypothetical situations, including population increases and declines, and the appearance of new housing developments.
Tyler said that ability to create hypothetical bus routes would also be useful if the school division wanted to explore changing school start times by allowing staff members to see how different start times would affect different routes.
“It would help drastically,” he said. “We can manipulate bell times [with the software]. We can do it for one student [on a special education program] or for the whole school. We can run a ‘what-if’ schedule, give a bit more time between building openings.”
Tyler said the process of finding suitable software and a vendor that could provide it had taken a long time, but was worth the wait.
“It took some time, but we ended up with exactly what we wanted,” he said.
