SURTC Launches School Bus Routing Program

Every morning and afternoon during the school year, fleets of school buses fan out across the state. Those fleets represent a huge financial outlay for taxpayers and an investment of trust by parents depending on the buses and drivers to get their children to school safely and on time.

The challenge of getting kids to school in North Dakota is growing as the number of school aged children is shrinking while the distance between them is growing.

"With fewer students and a consolidation of school districts, bus routes are getting increasingly complex," says Jill Hough, SURTC director. "But there is continued pressure on schools to provide busing that is safe, timely and efficient."

To answer that need, SURTC is proposing a School Bus Routing Support Program to assist schools in developing and refining their bus routes.

"In many schools, there is a lack of expertise, technology and time to address routing issues. Software is available, but it is also complex," Hough says. "We're proposing that a more efficient approach would be to centralize some of that expertise here and provide it to school districts affordable assistance in addressing routing issues."

The program would:

• Analyze North Dakota school district routing issues to identify widespread problems and opportunities.
• Establish a "help center" to assist school districts with problems throughout the school year.
• Develop school bus routes to maximize efficiency.
• Explore policy issues associated with school transportation funding.

In addition the program would look at ways to use the transportation capacity of school districts to serve broader communities. "As the population ages, transportation is becoming an important issue in rural areas. There may be ways that agencies can partner with school districts to use school vehicles to serve other needs," Hough says. "It may be possible to serve multiple needs in a community with a single fleet of vehicles. That approach may be more efficient for all the agencies involved."

Work on some of the issues has already begun. David Ripplinger, an expert in computer modeling and statistics is evaluating computer routing programs. SURTC specialists are working with the West Fargo School District and are looking for cooperators among the state's smaller school districts to test some of their concepts.

The program will be proposed for full funding to the Legislature next year and SURTC staff members are exploring partnerships with officials at the North Dakota Department of Transportation and the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction.

SURTC Publishes DTA Newsletter

With the spring issue, the UGPTI's Small Urban and Rural Transportation Center began publishing the Dakota Transit Association's quarterly newsletter. The "Dakota Transporter" will highlight opportunities, issues and ideas that will be useful to transit agencies across North and South Dakota. SURTC director Jill Hough and research fellow Gary Hegland are serving as editors. Within the next several months, newsletters will be available on the Web and distribution may eventually move to email to improve timeliness and efficiency.