ARTICLES

Company Profile: RoutePointe

MP2K presents a company that has developed a vertical-market school bus routing application using MapPoint

Robert Hutchison writes: "RoutePointe is a web-based application that enables school bus transportation administrators and staff to easily manage the complex problem of routing children in school buses to school.  It manages not only students, schools and buses, but allows administrators to effectively plan bus routes based on constraints such as time, cost, driver skills, and specialties such as the need for wheelchairs or additional aides.  RoutePointe has five major components:

1. Student Administration:  RoutePointe maintains detailed information on each student whether walking to school, being transported or being a cash payment in lieu of transportation.  It also manages information about each school in the district (or districts), bus contractors, routes and the district itself (where policies are established).  For the physically challenged, it keeps track of the special requirements needed by the student.
2. Bus Stop Planning and Routing: RoutePointe provides facilities for determining who is eligible for transportation, planning bus stops and building routes.  It uses MapPoint^® technology from Microsoft^® to graphically represent routes, optimize routes, and produce detailed driving instructions and maps.
3. District Billing:  RoutePointe is designed to handle the needs of multi-district transportation departments.  Typically, special needs, vocational and non-public students are managed through countywide organizations due to the high cost and low capacities of the busses and because there are so many specialty schools to which students are transported.  A single bus route can transport children from several school districts or can be used to transport to more than one location.  RoutePointe handles each variation with ease.
4. Contract Accounting: RoutePointe is designed primarily for districts and organizations that contract for bus services.  It provides complete facilities for bidding and contract accounting once routes have been awarded.
5. Document Management:  RoutePointe contains a full-functioned, integrated document management system.  Users can attach scanned records, photographs, word processing documents or any other type of document to student, school, district, contractor or route records.  From any computer on the network (assuming you have been assigned a login and password), users can access data and attached documents through a standard web browser."

RoutePointe is a product of Visual Software.

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