Improving Operations and Efficiency with

GIS:Orange County Public Schools

Overview§ Brief overview of Orange County Public Schools

§ The OCPS Routing Process

§ Using GIS to Improve Routing, Safety & Reporting

§ The Opportunities and Challenges Down the Road

OCPS: A Brief Overview

§Orange County Public Schools is the nation’s 10th largest school district by enrollment.

§OCPS Transportation provides bus service to over 70,000 students daily.

§The fleet of 1,200 buses is larger than many public transportation operations.

OCPS: A Brief Overview

§ Buses travel Over 16 Million Miles Annually§ Employs Over 1,600 People§ 933 Buses on the Road Daily§ Approximately 22,000 Field Trips Annually§ Consume 14.3 thousand gallons of diesel

fuel every day school is in operation

OCPS: A Brief Overview

§ Orange County operates more buses per day than the State of Hawaii and Washington, D.C.§ According to Automotive Fleet’s 2009

survey, OCPS is in the top 300 largest commercial fleets in the nation.§ OCPS operates more than 3 times the

amount of buses than Lynx in their tri-county service area.

OCPS: A Brief Overview

§ Number of cars needed to Transport students currently on 1 bus……....48§ Number of cars needed to replace OCPS buses

per day (1-way)…45,057§ Total community savings in fuel cost per year

with students on buses……………..18.8 Million Dollars§ A 10 percent fuel savings through a 1 percent

improvement in routing efficiency can lead to a $3,900 per day or $732,000 per year cost savings.

The OCPS Routing ProcessAR

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RECEIVE TRANSPORTATION WORKSHEET VIA EMAIL FROM SCHOOL REQUESTING BUS SERVICE

IS SCHOOL CREATED? IS ACTIVITY CREATED?YES

NO NO

IS STUDENT REGULAR ED? YES

NO

IS THERE AN EXISTING ROUTE?

NO

YES

VIA EMAIL, SEND TRANSPORTATION WORKSHEET AND ROUTE/TRIP SHEET TO THE ROUTING COORDINATOR AND AREA

MANAGER NOTIFYING THEM OF ASSIGNMENT

FOLLOW TRIP/ROUTE SHEET TO PICK-UP/DROP- OFF STUDENT

RECEIVE EMAIL NOTIFICATION OF ASSIGNMENT

NOTIFY DRIVER/MONITOR OF ASSIGNMENT

A

EMAIL THE APPROPRIATE ROUTER THE TRANSPORTATION WORKSHEET REQUESTING BUS SERVICE

VERIFY STUDENT INFORMATION

CREATE A SCHOOL CREATE AN ACTIVITY

LOAD ROUTE MAP TO CREATE A STOP/BUILD A RANGE

CREATE NEW ROUTE

ADD STUDENT TO THE STOP

YES

STUDENT CENSUS

ASSIGN STUDENT

A

ASSIGN A STOP

A A

A

RECEIVE EMAIL NOTIFICATION OF DRIVER/MONITOR OF ASSIGNMENT

ASSIGN DRIVER/MONITOR TO A BUSVIA EMAIL, NOTIFY MANAGER OF ASSIGNMENT

The OCPS Routing Process

Student download from SMS to Trapeze MapNet NT.

Student information to assigned schools.

School maps and attendance zones.

Establish 2-mile walkout zone.

Assign eligible ridersto a route.

Piedmont-Wekiva

W

Walkout Area

Attendance Zone

Walkers

S Bus Stop

Legend

The OCPS Routing Process

General Steps in Developing Routes

§ Determine stop locations within DOE criteria.

§ Determine number of students per stop.

§ Create route to match capacity of bus.

Measure January 2011School Buses On-Time 99.2%Average Student Ride Time 46 Min.Average Bus Occupancy (ABO) 72.7Routes Per Day 933Fleet In-Service Rate 89.6%Accident Rate .25Staff Availability 87.5%Bus/Mechanic Ratio 23:1

OCPS Routing Process

OCPS Routing Process

OCPS Transportation has begun to use GIS-based routing to accurately assign students and create efficient routes.

An independent report recently found a 97 percent routing efficiency.

OCPS Routing ProcessThe district’s original routing base map was incorporated from a Orange County Fire Rescue map in 1997.

As new neighborhoods were added, routing staff would manually add streets to the map based on field measurements and information from different agencies.

With growth and changing development patterns in the county, OCPS Transportation looks continuously for ways to improve routing and other operations.

OCPS Routing Process

The route map was overlaid with the ESRI streets layer maintained by Orange County Public Works in ArcMap to identify addressing errors, broken blocks, missing streets, unassigned students, etc.

§ Cartographer and Routing staff uses GIS resources to help improve the routing process:

qOver 1,000 maps edits have resulted in a 97% improvement to address-matching process.q This has reduced unassigned student errors from over 14,000 to around 1,000 at any given time.q Work with County and City agencies to integrate map information.

§ New fueling location at East River HSq Reduces deadhead miles by an estimated 194,000 milesq Estimated savings of $600,000 in fuel, labor and other costs

Using GIS to Improve Routing, Safety & Reporting

Using GIS to Improve Routing, Safety & Reporting

Automatic Vehicle Locator (GPS)

§ Updates every 10 seconds.§ Shows stop times

and routes§ Communications

Center can locate buses quickly.

OCPS was one of the first school districts in the Southeast to utilize an Automated Vehicle Locator System.

A new base station and antenna was added to improve coverage in western Orange County.

Using GIS to Improve Routing, Safety & Reporting

Using GIS to Improve Routing, Safety & Reporting

§ The new base station eliminated ‘crow flies’ and other coverage and reporting issues.

The new AVL antenna has increased coverage to 90 percent of the fleet.

This has improved tracking for safety and allowed the district to use AVL and routing data for electronic reporting, saving OCPS time and money.

AVL is now used by the Warehouse and Food Nutritional Services divisions as well.

Using GIS to Improve Routing, Safety & Reporting

The Department of Transportation requires an annual survey of school buses that traverse rail crossings in a typical day.

It took OCPS staff two weeks each year to perform, tally and report the survey results.

Formerly, this was a manual process using paper survey sheets which often led to inaccuracies due to driver interpretation and reporting errors.

Using GIS to Improve Routing, Safety & Reporting

OCPS Transportation used the functionality of GIS-based systems to improve data accuracy and reporting time:

§ Checked rail crossing coordinates with hand-held GPS.

§Verified crossings were active through site visits.

§Geocoded the new coordinates using GIS.

Using GIS to Improve Routing, Safety & Reporting

Using GIS to Improve Routing, Safety & Reporting

Projecting Future Bus Needs Using GIS

§ OCPS sought a new to project bus needs and capacity for each school over the next 10 years.

§Transportation Services worked collaboratively with the district’s demographer and Planning & Governmental Relations Division.

§ GIS was used to help properly identifying student locations and future growth.

Using GIS to Improve Routing, Safety & Reporting

§ 2009 – 2010 eligible riders were geocoded in GIS.

§ Planning & Governmental Relations computed the percentage of eligible ridership to total enrollment for each traditional elementary, middle and high school.

§ These percentages were then applied to the district’s ten-year growth projections to predict school-level bus needs.

Using GIS to Improve Routing, Safety & Reporting

In the next year, Transportation Services will take this project one step further to predict bus needs and capacities at the bus-stop level.

This can help better identify bus sizes for each run and route.

The analysis will be based on indicators such as:

§ Eligible vs. Actual Ridership percentages.

§ Growth projections and student/stop densities.

§ Land uses and growth patterns.

The Opportunities and Challenges Down the Road

§ Multiple sources and the different data usage/priorities of other agencies makes data streamlining and accuracy difficult.

§ New GIS technologies will continue to improve analytical capabilities, electronic reporting and operations.

§ Further integration of GIS into routing and vehicle tracking will improve routing efficiency, data accuracy and a better customer experience.

Orange County Public Schools Transportation services

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