Source: The 74 Million
A team from MIT’s Operations Research Center, created an algorithm that saved Boston schools $5 million and 1 million miles driven in its first year. One of the most expensive school transportation departments in the country was able to reduce its fleet by 8 percent, the largest single year-over-year drop in district history. “They were the clear winner,” says Will Eger, Boston Public Schools’ strategic projects manager — and that winning solution, which did in just 30 minutes what used to take a team of 10 staffers 3,000 hours to accomplish, can help districts all across the nation. The best solution turned out to be not the one with the fewest buses per each school, but one that reuses buses from school to school. The ongoing work the team is doing with Boston has led…an MIT professor, to launch Dynamic Ideas, a company marketing the product to other school districts, now in the early stages of adoption.