Rural school districts face major challenges each year creating and managing school bus routes and budgeting funds to pay for increasing transportation costs. Currently, many rural schools design their school bus routes by acquiring a school district map, placing a stickpin on the where each student lives, and then creating the bus routes with string connecting the stickpins. In the 1997/98 school year, Nebraska schools spent almost $60,000,000 on transportation costs alone. At the same time that transportation costs have risen, rural schools have consolidated to form larger districts in order to survive and still serve the public. Some of these large school districts require buses to travel hundreds of miles each school day. Phase I research would identify the transportation needs of rural schools and develop a bus routing model for the Geographical Information System (GIS) to meet those needs. This model would allow the schools to design the most efficient routes, thus reduce fuel consumption and emissions. In addition, the safety of the children will be increased because GIS will identify dangerous spots, like railroad crossings, turn-arounds, and hazards intersections. If transportation costs could be reduced, rural schools would save millions of dollars each year. ANTICIPATED RESULTS & POTENTIAL COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS OF RESEARCH Phase I will result in a fully functional rural bus routing model for ArcView GIS. This model would allow the schools to import their student databases, map the students, and then create the routes. Upon completion of a route, a report will give the length of the route, travel time, total stops, total students, fuel consumption, number of railroad crossings, number of bus turn-arounds, number of hazardous intersections, and any additional features that the rural schools identify as a need. This model could then be expanded into a Phase II bus routing website.
