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.

Related Content

  • April 1, 2019
    Houston hurricane prompts TranStar warning
    Hurricane Harvey led to the creation of the Houston TranStar flood warning app
    Read More
  • November 23, 2018
    Milwaukee’s bus service offers jobs lifeline
    A bus-to-jobs project in Milwaukee provides a useful service for low-paid workers. A new report shows the economic impact of potential closure on local employers - and demonstrates the importance of public transit networks for disadvantaged communities The city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has a problem. Getting people into out-of-town districts for work is an engine of economic growth, but it costs money. The Milwaukee County Transit System (MCTS) bus routes 6 and 61 - also known as JobLines - provide acces
    Read More
  • August 5, 2016
    Hartford’s tailors winter maintenance on Esri’s GIS platform
    The in-house winter maintenance and vehicle tracking system built by the Public Works Department in Hartford, Connecticut, coped with record snowfalls and cut costs too. When it comes to dealing with the effects of mother nature, transport agencies can find themselves in a lose-lose situation: criticised if the roads or rail lines are disrupted by snow, ice or floods for more than a few hours and lambasted for wasting money if the equipment and stockpiles put in place for a hard winter remain unused.
    Read More
  • February 19, 2024
    Don’t look at the jigsaw pieces – see the whole puzzle, says CCTA
    There are three main barriers to taking transport ideas from the pilot stage to real-life usage: incompatible technology, local control and limited funding. Tim Haile of California’s Contra Costa Transportation Authority has some thoughts on how to overcome them
    Read More

Highlighted Content