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MIT team’s school-bus algorithm could save $5M and 1M bus miles

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Re: MIT team’s school-bus algorithm could save $5M and 1M bus miles

#61

Post by com2kid »

mck- wrote: post #46

Given the scale of the problems they are tackling, I'm quite surprised how little they are saving. $5m over $120m is only 4%. I would imagine municipalities' manual route planners wouldn't be that great. We have found with many real-world scenarios, that at a much smaller scale we could save easily up to 40% in driving time and fuel costs. When we studied cases of 20+ vehicles and ~1000 stops, sometimes the savings w…

> I would imagine municipalities' manual route planners wouldn't be that great.

Depends. If the same routes have been in use for a long time, odds are they are already really optimized. Bus drivers will take the same route year after year, and make suggestions to optimize it (often times by "going off route" now and then, which is very much against the rules, but at times very much needed), and those suggestions will get rolled in next year.

5 or 10 years of incremental improvements add up.

Re: MIT team’s school-bus algorithm could save $5M and 1M bus miles

#63

Post by jbob2000 »

payne92 wrote: post #23

I worked with a startup years ago that did these kinds of optimizations (for deliveries). The logistics & transportation market in the US is about a TRILLION dollars -- small optimizations can make a HUGE impact. The challenge for practical implementations is that there are lots and lots and lots of optimization factors that are very hard to account for. Often, you don't even know what they are until you try to autom…

You're all neglecting the biggest problem of all - the driver. All of this work is moot if Dorthy, who's been driving the same route for 40 years, will not change the route. And you can't get rid of Dorthy because there's nobody to replace her in Dinkysville, Flyoverstate.

Re: MIT team’s school-bus algorithm could save $5M and 1M bus miles

#65

Post by zentiggr »

chrisallenlane wrote: post #38
dclowd9901 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't work either: you get situations like the TSA artificially backing up airport security lines to "necessitate" budget increases. They should incentivize efficiency. In government, it would be citizen impact per employee. If you have more, you make more money, if you have less, you make less.

> citizen impact per employee. Do you think it would actually possible to quantify this in a way that: 1. Accurately represented "reality"? 2. Couldn't/wouldn't be gamed? Seems challenging to me.

I've never seen any metric that can't be gamed somehow.

Choosing metrics to represent practical value, rather than let them be decided by profit-seekers, that's the real trick.

Re: MIT team’s school-bus algorithm could save $5M and 1M bus miles

#66

Post by oddlyaromatic »

bluGill wrote: post #52
TAForObvReasons wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think of the budget as a multi-year allocation. If Budget A from 2 years ago was "$500 this year, $600 next year, $700 the year after that" and now you reduce the allocation to $610, that is a budget cut from the original Budget A.

Only if the budget was reasonable in the first place. All too often they "budget" far more money than is possible and then celebrate the cuts.

This is two different things, not helped by the multiple meanings of the word budget. If the organization makes the budget (i.e. a spending plan) without confirming the funds (or knowing them through, say, a long term understanding), and don't get what they seek, of course that's not somebody else "cutting" their budget. That's just a budget you made up not being agreed to.

But this is more about having an expectation of funding at a certain level from whatever source, and knowing that that will be your "budget" (now meaning a spending _limit_), then having that amount come down. You now have a smaller limit.

Re: MIT team’s school-bus algorithm could save $5M and 1M bus miles

#67

Post by eagletusk »

trendia wrote: post #28
payne92 wrote: post #23

I worked with a startup years ago that did these kinds of optimizations (for deliveries). The logistics & transportation market in the US is about a TRILLION dollars -- small optimizations can make a HUGE impact. The challenge for practical implementations is that there are lots and lots and lots of optimization factors that are very hard to account for. Often, you don't even know what they are until you try to autom…

Another example: a lot of rural areas have patches of gravel roads. It's not obvious from Google maps where the roads go from paved to gravel (and they sometimes do it in random sections). Naively looking at a map, you'd think a roundabout route had potential to be shorter, but not realize the road was gravel.

In Colorado this has been mapped https://coloradogravelroads.com/

Re: MIT team’s school-bus algorithm could save $5M and 1M bus miles

#68

Post by conductr »

jbob2000 wrote: post #63
payne92 wrote: post #23

I worked with a startup years ago that did these kinds of optimizations (for deliveries). The logistics & transportation market in the US is about a TRILLION dollars -- small optimizations can make a HUGE impact. The challenge for practical implementations is that there are lots and lots and lots of optimization factors that are very hard to account for. Often, you don't even know what they are until you try to autom…

You're all neglecting the biggest problem of all - the driver. All of this work is moot if Dorthy, who's been driving the same route for 40 years, will not change the route. And you can't get rid of Dorthy because there's nobody to replace her in Dinkysville, Flyoverstate.

I get the point you're making, there's always some human resistance to new systems but it's something you manage through. It's not a show stopper.

Re: MIT team’s school-bus algorithm could save $5M and 1M bus miles

#69

Post by conductr »

drej wrote: post #15
chrisbennet wrote: post #10

Since this forum for founder/entrepreneur types, let me inject a bit of caution from my own experience with dealing with government organizations: If you save a business organization money, they appreciate it. If you save a government organization money, the next year the "savings" is likely to be deducted from their budget. They don't get to benefit from the savings and thus their motivations aren't what you might e…

> If you save a business organization money, they appreciate it. Is that based on past experience?

Yes it's how an expense becomes viewed as an investment with an ROI.

Actually most non-VC startup companies are heavily focused on opportunities to reduce their spending so long as it does not effect their ability to grow revenue

Re: MIT team’s school-bus algorithm could save $5M and 1M bus miles

#70

Post by jacalata »

chrisbennet wrote: post #10

Since this forum for founder/entrepreneur types, let me inject a bit of caution from my own experience with dealing with government organizations: If you save a business organization money, they appreciate it. If you save a government organization money, the next year the "savings" is likely to be deducted from their budget. They don't get to benefit from the savings and thus their motivations aren't what you might e…

Plenty of business organizations behave exactly the same way, which is one reason for sales cycles in b2b services. Departments are willing to spend money at the end of a budget period on things they otherwise wouldn't have, divisions unwilling to reduce staffing because they may not get approval to hire more people later...
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