One City Saved $5M by Routing School Buses with an Algorithm
Interesting - so is it "a thing" in the US that the city runs a dedicated bus service for all schools/students? Quite a surprise for me considering how poor people say public transport is in general in the US?In the UK some schools run their own bus things (in the same way that Goolge, Facebook et al do in San Francisco), but most of the other schools just get by with the public buses.There is often some coordination to make sure buses stop at/very near schools, and they may send extra ones at certain times - e.g. there were often several buses parked up and waiting empty at my school so they could be filled at the end of the school day, but any member of the public was then able to get onboard once it was on its usual route after that, and if you were late getting out (e.g. detention/sports etc) you'd just wait at the stop outside the school for the usual bus on its usual route to come by.What do the US school buses and their drivers do for the rest of the day and on weekends? Just sit idle?