On the first day of classes, the JCPS school district in Louisville KY did not get some students home from school until 10 pm. Their bus transportation system was, in their words, a complete disaster. They have canceled classes for up to a week as they attempt to fix their systems.
Perhaps there is a clue here:
JCPS recently started using a program developed by a firm called AlphaRoute out of Massachusetts to help with planning routes and assigning bus stop locations. The program — developed by graduates of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — uses artificial intelligence to generate the routes with the intent of reducing the number of routes. JCPS had 730 routes last year, and that was cut to 600 beginning this year.
JCPS hopes to return students to school by the ‘middle of next week’ as it works to fix ‘transportation disaster’ | Education | wdrb.com
According to some quoted in the news reports, the drivers – who know the routes best – were never consulted by the administrators or AlphaRoute – who designed the new bus transportation system.
Advanced routing software. Revolutionary routing algorithms.
Developed out of MIT research, our award-winning technology is designing the future of mobility,
allowing transportation systems to increase efficiencies and provide safe and reliable rider experiences.
Update: The District will be closed through Friday or Monday, a week later – in other words, the start of the school year has been delayed by more than a week. They are redesigning their failed AI-based route system. By the end of the week, they intend to have an app available that will enable parents to track school buses (this is the 21st century, surprisingly). The school superintendent had just received a $70,000 per year pay hike, yet on Thursday, on what would have been the 2nd day of school, he left to take his daughter to college – while the district ended up closed for over a week.
