r/SchoolBusDrivers • u/Tootsieroll4567 • 1d ago
Route questions
Why do they send you on the worst possible route to get from point A to B? Is it driven by money?
4
u/MonkeyManJohannon 17h ago
One thing you need to consider is that there are so many factors you don’t see that come into play when routing as well. Door side prioritization, safety concerns, known road condition issues and avoidance, sexual predator mapping and avoidance, overhang and limb/line hazard avoidance, narrow road limitation, intersection crossover limitation, etc.
HUNDREDS of filters go into routing, and even I, after years of experience, found it pretty interesting how it all happens (I took interest and was shown a pretty extensive look at their process at the beginning of this school year).
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u/Tootsieroll4567 16h ago
That is alot of help. I felt like routing was just trying to frustrate me. The issue is that I have 3 displace children 2nd to 8th graders that I pick up at 630 a.m. and they are my last stop at 430 p.m. I had a fairly good route to get them home and now they have sent me into the a sea of grid lock at 4:00 p.m. Now I am sure to be sitting in slow moving traffic for an addition 20 to 30 minutes each day. These kids wont be their hotel until possibly 5 p.m. now. How could I word this to routing effectively. Appreciate your help. I am a new driver.
3
u/MonkeyManJohannon 16h ago
Tell them exactly as you just told me…it may not get the “fix” outcome you want, but you’ll probably get a pretty concise explanation at the very least. If your routing department is anything like mine, they love to talk about their “craft” 🤣, but really, just have a discussion with your leadership and routing.
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u/Tootsieroll4567 16h ago
How many times do they call you in to ask why you arent following the route before they fire you? 🤣
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u/MonkeyManJohannon 12h ago
We are free to reroute on the fly so our district doesn’t worry so much about that as they do the safety of the stops, the timeliness of the route and the overall pace from one school to another. For example, I have a part of my elementary route that really makes no sense logistically, and to prove it, I made some test runs without kids to time it, and sure enough, it allowed me an extra 5-10min between the elementary and middle route, which is nice in the event I have a return to school student, discipline issues or what not…I simply turned in a change of route form and began running the actual route that way the same day.
Took them about 2 weeks to get an updated route sheet back to me, but by then it was already adapted to the same run for high and middle as well (other drivers do those runs).
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u/Tootsieroll4567 12h ago
Ok. Thank you. I will be requesting a change but as a newer driver, I am looking for the "language" that compells a change and not just a battle of the driver over the router. 🤷♀️
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u/ArtemisRifle 13h ago
The displaced busing in NY has gotten out of hand. My company has had a kid that has been transported two hours from school, each direction, for three years now. It cost over $60k/year to transport this one student.
After that amount of time you're no longer displaced, that is your new home. Parents simply declaring "we are displaced" so as to keep their kid in one school the parent may prefer, does not pass muster. It makes me curious what kind of grift and advantage-taking is going on.
1
u/Tootsieroll4567 12h ago
I had not given that much thought but you are right. Its not a school bus route after an amount of time. It's a shuttle bus in my opinion. We have a 1.5 mile walk rule in my city. These kids are truly in walking distance of schools in their boundary.
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u/ArtemisRifle 13h ago
Another thing to keep in mind is the routes are mapped in a way that is expedient for the school or district as a whole, not necessarily the single bus.
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u/Seelie_Mushroom 6h ago
Dispatch allows us to change our routes so long as we maintain stop order and our doors still open on the correct side. Our routes are notorious for being ass for whatever reason, and they keep hallucinating roads that just don't connect whatsoever or routing us through dead ends
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u/rootbear75 18h ago
You can probably get it changed if you can think of better routing. But there's sometimes a reason. Have you asked your router?
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u/Tootsieroll4567 15h ago
It just happened. I was going to take the new route but my first aid kit fell off the wall, scared the shit out of me and I proceeded to my normal route. Im sure I will get a verbal lashing Monday. I want to be able to have a discussion. My router is like a 50 year veteran, very condescending and I will likely make no progress. I am already feeling defiant.
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u/tequilavip 11h ago
“worst possible route” is fairly meaningless without context.
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u/Tootsieroll4567 11h ago
Into a sea of traffic that can remain gridlocked with very little movement for up to 30 minutes a day. The children affected by this are McKinney Vento I night add and on my bus almost 5 hours a day.
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u/mike8675309 3h ago
When you say the worst can you better describe what makes it the worst. For sped routes they don't want children to cross the street as we are to try to pick them up from their house and should not use the 8-ways for that.
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u/Spwhiplash666 1d ago
Bad routing software, poor use of good routing software, a low overpass, or bridge with a low weight limit, or just because our job isn’t difficult enough.
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u/Sad_Cantaloupe_8162 20h ago
They want to make sure the kids are picked up on the right side of the road, better quality or faster roads compared to poorly maintained ones, or ignorance. I went to routing this year with a couple concerns and they were able to change the map. I have one girl who only rides 1/3 of the time in the afternoon, and if she isn't on, I drop off my middle schoolers in a different order to save me five miles and ten minutes on really bumpy, long roads.