Ashland Bus System
New Technology Solution Increases Ridership
Located in Ashland, Kentucky, the Ashland Bus System (ABS) provides over 1200 door-to-door paratransit trips per month for elderly and disabled passengers in the cities of Ashland, Cattlesburg and Westwood, Kentucky.
Challenges
As a relatively small, but growing, agency with few employees, ABS wanted to improve efficiency in scheduling and dispatching while reducing paperwork in the office to free up dispatcher time for other tasks. ABS also wanted to increase the number of rides they could accommodate each day and provide better, more accurate service for their customers.
Solution
To meet their needs, ABS choose a technology solution from Mentor Engineering and Engraph Software. Mentor provided Mentor Ranger® rugged in-vehicle computers which automate data collection, streamline communication between drivers and dispatchers, provide on-screen navigation, and support electronic manifests and instant trip updates. Ranger is programmed and upgraded over-the-air.
In the office, Engraph’s ParaPlan GPS 4.0 software was selected to help ABS increase scheduling and dispatching efficiency. As an upgrade from their previous ParaPlan Lite system, ABS now benefits from live trip status updates, easy trip additions and deletions, and automatic generation of dead-head and revenue miles reports.
Results
ABS has noticed many improvements to their operation since the implementation. "As a result of their recent upgrade to our new ParaPlan GPS 4.0 software, ABS has been able to greatly minimize errors and save time," says Kyle Archer, Principal at Engraph Software. Additionally, ABS has experienced a 7 to 10% increase in rides provided each month.
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Scheduling and dispatching trips is very easy and simple. It has freed up time for us to do many other things because we know we can send a trip in five seconds then go back to what we were doing. 
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