MIT BUS HACKATHON COULD SAVE BPS $$
Route efficiencies will lead to layoffs
A new school bus route plan could save the city millions of dollars a year by taking dozens of buses — and potentially dozens of drivers — off the roads in an effort to bring students to school more efficiently, the school operations chief said.
A Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor and doctoral students have come up with new routes to bus more than 30,000 students by finding better connections between schools. Boston Public Schools Chief of Operations John Hanlon said the new system is projected to remove 77 of the fleet’s current 650 buses and decrease daily trips from 3,000 to 2,700, saving the district between $3 million and $5 million a year in transportation costs.
“We’ve heard time and again from families and other stakeholders in the system that they’re tired of seeing buses drive by with one or two students in them, tired of the district sinking so much money into transportation when it should be going to the classrooms,” Hanlon said, referring to BPS’ $116 million transportation budget. “This is in direct response to those concerns.”
But the reduction in buses also means driver layoffs, Hanlon said. He said BPS and union officials, as well as school bus contractor Transdev, were still discussing how many drivers would be affected but said it could be between 40 and 50.
“There likely will be the need for staff reductions among the bus drivers,” Hanlon said.
The new routes stem from a hackathon earlier this year in which academics and private companies used BPS data about school bus routes, trips and times to come up with their own plans and compete for a $15,000 prize from private donors. Hanlon said creating the BPS bus route schedule involves organizing three start and end times for 200 different schools, as well as accounting for issues such as door-to-door bus stops and special education needs.
The MIT team said it created a computer model that takes in all of that data and creates the best routes, using buses for as many trips a day as possible — finishing early routes where they can immediately start later routes.
“The system looks at billions and billions of permutations,” said MIT professor Dimitris Bertsimas. “Only a computer model is capable of that, humans are not capable of doing these computations.”