Bedford utilises Qroutes software to boost transport efficiency

Bedford Borough Council has used Qroutes' route planning software to reorganise the home to school transport network. The solution Is said to have saved over £200,000 ($140,000) a year in transport costs and has helped plan transport for 3,000 school children. Additionally, Bedford has used the cloud-based service to plan transport 700 special educational needs and 1000 social care users. The council manages a fleet of approximately 50 in-house vehicles which mainly transport the most vulnerable people.
April 16, 2018 Read time: 2 mins

Bedford Borough Council has used 8661 Qroutes' route planning software to reorganise the home to school transport network. The solution Is said to have saved over £200,000 ($140,000) a year in transport costs and has helped plan transport for 3,000 school children.

Additionally, Bedford has used the cloud-based service to plan transport 700 special educational needs and 1000 social care users. The council manages a fleet of approximately 50 in-house vehicles which mainly transport the most vulnerable people.

The product is also said to have helped the council remove eight buses from the network through improved vehicle utilisation.

Chris Pettifer, chief officer for transport, Bedford Borough Council, said: “With council budget restrictions and policy changes we knew we had to review the council’s client transport network significantly. We needed software that could support this process of the best routes and vehicle suitability in view of all the complexities of school, special needs and social care transport. Over the years we have tried different systems but none really delivered what we needed and were also costly. Qroutes has conversely been fantastic in providing an easy to use interface that cannot only re-plan our network in minutes but was also available as an affordable solution over the web.”

“It used to take days or weeks to re-plan routes, but with Qroutes we can run a new plan for 3,000 school bus children literally in minutes. We manually intervene sometimes as some individual requirements can be very unusual, but the system saves a lot of time and we can run different ‘what if’ scenarios to work out the best options”, added Pettifer.

Qroutes is available as a Software as a Service subscription. Subscribers have access to new functionality as releases come online, without having to update versions locally.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • The future of mobility: designed for life
    August 16, 2019
    The future of mobility…sounds exciting, doesn’t it? But try to define it and you soon find it’s like putting a fence round a cloud. What will it look like? When will we get there? Who decides? And why are we still not wearing jetpacks? Maybe next year. The Royal College of Art in London does not seem like the most obvious place to look for hard-headed thinking on these things. But it has a long heritage in designing beautiful cars – and it is also home to the Intelligent Mobility Design Centre, which is lo
    Read More
  • Transportation industry challenged by urban congestion, says IBTTA president
    January 8, 2019
    Road congestion and lack of infrastructure funding are among the main issues facing the transportation industry, according to the new president of the IBTTA. Chris Tomlinson, who is also interim executive director of the newly created Atlanta-region Transit Link Authority, suggested an absence of technological standards, particularly in the US, is also a potential problem. But along with “continued increases in congestion in our urban areas”, he points to opportunities. “We can see a convergence of t
    Read More
  • Xerox’s mobility app offers Mobility as a Service
    June 1, 2016
    Andrew Bardin Williams looks at a new mobility app in Los Angeles and Denver that brings Mobility as a Service one step closer. Commuting today doesn’t have to require a single modal route. You can take Uber to the nearest light-rail station or a bus to the commuter line. Then on the other end of your trip, you can book a bikeshare the rest of the way to your office. For many who live in major metropolitan areas around the US this is a distinct reality as new ways to move from Point A to Point B continue to
    Read More
  • Inrix upgrades Road Rules platform
    July 22, 2019
    Inrix has updated its Road Rules solution aimed at helping cities and road authorities digitise, manage and communicate local rules on the roadway, kerb and the pavement. Inrix says the platform now supports guidelines that enable other mobility options such as loading zones and parking restrictions for transportation network companies, dockless bike/scooter zones as well as electric vehicle charging stations. Road Rules is expected to help cities digitally manage their data in one place, share informatio
    Read More

Highlighted Content