Renton School District

“We’re in the customer service business. And Bytecurve helps us deliver better customer service,” 

Key Takeaways

Dispatch Solution Improves Operations at Washington School District 

Gregory Dutton faces many of the same challenges as countless student transportation leaders. 

His district invested in a routing solution to solve one problem: building intelligent routes for his fleet of buses to run while transporting the district’s 12,000 students.

And then a GPS telematics solution to tackle another challenge: better understanding the exact location of every bus in real-time as well as the performance of buses to increase safety and efficiency.   

But something was still missing, he realized after years of leveraging both meet the transportation department at Renton School District ultimate goal: delivering first-class customer service. 

“We’re in the customer service business,” Dutton said. 

He always knew there was a missing piece of technology that could bridge the gaps between routing and GPS systems. 

And maybe even tackle adjacent challenges like driver communication and payroll. 

“I always felt there was software missing for dispatch,” Dutton said.

Enter Bytecurve 360: the simple yet powerful software solution that merges the data between the two systems to create a dispatching system that delivers real-time alerts about vehicle status, increased driver communications and ability to better respond to parents and district leadership.

Dispatching may seem an obvious solution for the industry, but it’s still not widely adopted despite the apparent challenges of working from a spreadsheets and whiteboards to orchestrate the daily challenges of connecting people to buses to routes across a dynamic environment like student transportation.  

Bytecurve 360 is, to date, the only technology solution provider capable of connecting these two disparate system into a seamless interface that makes them greater than the sum of their parts. 

GP Singh, founder and CEO of Bytecurve, built the tool from the ground up with a vision only an industry veteran could acquire.

He and several members of the Bytecurve team spent years supporting operations at First Student.

“We knew first hand the limitations of each system. As innovative and powerful as they were at their introduction, but routing and GPS tracking suffer significant limitations that present gaps, especially for the larger fleets where the gaps present themselves as the potential for dozens of missed stops and unsatisfied parents every day,” Singh said. 

“I’ve sat in the seat of a dispatcher and recongize what each system can and cannot do, so I set out to engineer a new solution that was focused on the tireless work of daily dispatch, leveraging the data from each system to forge a fresh visibility that aims to dramatically improve operations.” 

Exception Management: Enhanced Late Driver Response  

Driver remain the largest challenge for transportation leaders. 

While fuel and maintenance costs can fluctuate widely depending on many variables outside the control of the district, the difference between a superb transportation department and an average one often depends on the availability and reliability of its drivers. 

While the worker shortage impacting so much of the economy has only worsened the driver shortage that has long been the most pressing challenge of the student transportation industry, Dutton said his investment in Bytecurve has helped tackle the challenge of driver reliablity.  

He said Bytecurve displays alerts for immediate issues such as drivers who haven’t clocked in or late bus departures.

Some of the most common features used by Bytecurve 360 users include: 

• Route-based daily driver/vehicle substitutions or assignments
• Paperless absence management 
• Employee absence management 
• Real-time alerts for late check-ins and delayed vehicles
• Real-time access to on-time performance by school and stop   

Dutton said the system has made it easier to identify drivers who need additional coaching or routes that need amended. 

Identifying these issues absent a dispatch system like Bytecurve 360 would prove too cumbersom and time-consuming to pour through the mountains of data. 

With 100 drivers providing multiple different runs per day, Bytecurve helps track driver check-ins and bus departures. 

It also makes last-minute schedule adjustments or driver substitutions quick and easy, if needed. 

In an environment familiar to most transportation department, where widespread absenteeism challenges on-time performance, being able to quickly and seamlessly shift between drivers, buses and routes can be the difference between arriving before the school bell rings.

“This was the challenge that presented the greatest challenge to my team during my service as a student transportation leader: how to efficiently manage the daily, non-stop rescheduling that we had to do to to make the fleet deliver,” Singh said. 

“I wanted to develop a system that made it far simpler to make these on-the-fly changes that were helped us deliver on our commitment. Managing this process from a whiteboard and spreadsheets was fraught with opportunities to make mistakes or miscommunicate between staff and drivers. 

Our dispatching system at Bytecurve 360 organizes it intuitively and lets the dispatcher take better control of their operations.”

Improving Time and Attendance: There’s an App for that