Dive into the latest Relief Car updates that help you turn driver travel insight into action, from multi-modal journey planning to advanced fleet optimization.
Optibus, a leading provider of end‑to‑end planning and operations software for public transportation, today announced major enhancements into the latest Relief Car updates that help you turn driver travel insight into action, from multi-modal journey planning to advanced fleet optimization.
In public transportation, getting drivers to their buses on time is just as important as the bus route itself. Relief cars (also called taxis, ferries, or shuttles) are essential for moving drivers between depots and relief points. However, planning these trips by hand can be difficult and takes a lot of time.
Our latest updates focus on exactly that: helping you move beyond manual work by using automation that handles the complex logic of driver pairing and grouping.
We’ll be sharing all of these features during our live Relief Car Scheduling webinar. Sign up at the bottom of this post to see them live!
Here is how these new tools help you take control of your scheduling:
Integrated Multi-Modal Travel
Scheduling relief travel is a complex puzzle where manual calculation often hits a wall. To solve this, we’ve introduced a new capability that automatically combines relief cars, walking segments, and public transportation into a single, seamless sequence.
By letting the system handle the heavy lifting of calculating these intricate connections, we’re removing the mental load of manual workarounds and unlocking more efficient driver rotations that were previously too tedious to schedule by hand.
Optibus Relief Car Scheduling Preferences: New possible combinations option allows seamless integration with Relief Cars and other travel modes for efficient multi-modal driver scheduling.
Previously, these small details had to be added manually, a tedious and time-consuming process. Now, the system is built to recognize the full journey:
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Build better 'Walk + Car' connections: The system now automatically recognizes when a driver needs to walk to reach a car or transition from a car to a terminal.
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Leverage Multi-Modal sequences: You can now create travel chains that bridge relief cars, walking, and public transportation. This ensures your schedules are both realistic and efficient.
Optibus In-Schedule Detail: The Relief Car window shows automatically generated walk segments, displaying the Driver ID, route, and duration.
Improved Support in Chauffeur Relief Car Trips
For certain complex schedules, relief car deadheads (trips without an assigned driver, also known as chauffeur trips) are necessary to achieve optimal results. Schedulers use these to reduce relief cars and find more creative solutions
- Create better chauffeur trips (when needed): We have improved how the system handles relief cars that aren't yet paired with a specific driver.
- Reduced relief car PVR: Better consideration of relief car deadheads allows users to control and minimize the relief car PVR.
Advanced Relief Car Optimization
Planning driver reliefs across a large network can hide inefficiencies, making it harder to coordinate your fleet as one unit. Our enhanced optimization algorithm does the automation of complex tasks that were previously done by hand.
- Improved Grouping: Better support for "unbalanced" passenger complex cases where the number of drivers doesn't match perfectly.
- Improved pairing: Drivers can now wait\hold off for improved relief car pairing.
- Deadhead Control: More precise management of relief car deadheads (aka chauffeur trips)
Want to see these features in action?
We’ll be doing a deep dive into how the Optibus platform now automatically handles combined travel options, like walking, relief cars, and public transit, so you can stop building those sequences by hand. Learn how to automate your shuttles and use these new multi-modal tools to lower your costs and make driver commutes much more realistic.
Sign up for our Relief Car Scheduling Webinar###
About Optibus
Optibus is a unified software platform for public transportation planning, scheduling, rostering, operations, real-time control, and passenger information, powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and optimization algorithms. In thousands of cities worldwide, transportation agencies and operators use Optibus to maximize the positive impact of public transportation on passengers and the planet, improve operational efficiency and service quality, promote transportation equity, reduce emissions and costs, and modernize operations.
