81–90 of 113 posts
$120M budget to bus 30,000 children to school? Does that sound like a lot, or is it just me? That's $4,000 per child per year. At 180 school days per year, that's $22.22 per child per day! At that rate, they could save many more millions by switching to Uber or some other ride sharing service.
Kind of off topic but... why is no one converting school buses to electric? Seems like a perfect opportunity. Lots of space for batteries. High torque. Short runs in the morning and afternoon. Think of how many diesel school busses there are across just the USA every morning.
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I would argue that efficiency is more important in a school bus than safety. Buses are designed for many years of service with long-lived and easy to replace parts. On the safety front they are painted yellow and have some lights. That's pretty much it. They don't even have seat belts. It looks to me like efficiency trumps safety in this case.
It is reasonable to assume that safety is the primary concern for school buses. There are are a lot of safety standards. "Pursuant to these requirements, federal safety regulations applicable to bus manufacturers have been developed. There are a total of 37 federal motor vehicle safety standards that apply to school buses. Many of these also apply to other types of motor vehicles, but several (among them standards 13…
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In rural areas there are a lot of minimum maintenance roads. Legally they are roads and you can drive on them all you want. However if you don't have 4 wheel drive you shouldn't drive on them, even with 4 wheel drive there are times when you won't make it. A bus should never drive on these roads, and google does not know which these roads are - as I've discovered when I had to rescue someone who blindly followed goog…
Sure, I guess I was trying to comment specifically on gravel. You will need accurate maps for this to work, but I think that is basically a given. A human route planner will also need to have accurate maps.
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…
Anyhow, to add to your point, you can model all you want - but some drunk is going to reverse the wrong way down a one way street.
One of these days, maybe I'll get around to putting my experiences into giant walls of text.
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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.
There are any number of reasons for bus drivers to have to change, from route optimization to school redistricting to, back in the old days, having to pick up all the children, not just the White children. People aren't horses. They can accept change.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
There are any number of reasons for bus drivers to have to change, from route optimization to school redistricting to, back in the old days, having to pick up all the children, not just the White children. People aren't horses. They can accept change.
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…
I modeled traffic. I sold my company and retired, years ago. People don't realize how complicated traffic really is. It's a chaotic system, of sorts. You can tease out patterns with some work. Anyhow, to add to your point, you can model all you want - but some drunk is going to reverse the wrong way down a one way street. One of these days, maybe I'll get around to putting my experiences into giant walls of text.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I modeled traffic. I sold my company and retired, years ago. People don't realize how complicated traffic really is. It's a chaotic system, of sorts. You can tease out patterns with some work. Anyhow, to add to your point, you can model all you want - but some drunk is going to reverse the wrong way down a one way street. One of these days, maybe I'll get around to putting my experiences into giant walls of text.
I would love to hear more
It was a pretty wild ride. I have a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics and actually did my research with vehicular traffic because the date was free. I actually expected to remain in academia, but was given the chance to contract with a government agency, even before I'd done my defense.
Basically, I helped take the art of traffic modeling to the computer age. I say helped because I stood on the shoulders of giants.
I'd eventually be able to hire competent programmers and a real IT staff. Eventually we'd model pedestrian traffic, in addition to vehicular traffic. We would also sell solutions that companies could implement on their own.
The recession hit. The US gov announced they were going to invest billions in highway infrastructure. This made the company quite valuable and I was given an exceptionally good offer. So, I sold it and don't regret that decision at all. I'm happily retired and find lots of things to keep me amused.
There is a whole lot more to the story but that's the gist of it. I'm the same KGIII you may have seen on Slashdot.