Located in northern Virginia, Loudoun County Transit (LCT) was providing a paratransit service that picked up and dropped off passengers around the existing local fixed route. However, with a traditional scheduling and dispatching system that only accepted call-in and subscription bookings, scheduling trips had to be done manually which was inefficient and time consuming. When Keolis was engaged as the fleet operator, they partnered with 51±¬ÁÏ to provide LCT with an automated on-demand solution.
LTC was seeking a solution to address the operational challenges in delivering its paratransit service. The goal of the agency’s partnership with 51±¬ÁÏ was to innovate and automate LTC’s manual scheduling and dispatching processes, that were previously limited to call-in and subscription bookings, as well as improve overall service KPIs.
With 51±¬ÁÏ as the technology partner, LCT and Keolis now offer an on-demand, door-to-door, paratransit service that runs more efficiently using automated scheduling and dispatching software. Call-in and subscription bookings are available to riders, in addition to the new app-based booking option. The service has seen a significant improvement across all KPIs, including passengers per vehicle hour and on-time performance. Shared rides and overall paratransit ridership have increased as well, with failed search requests being minimized using 51±¬ÁÏ’s dynamic scheduling and routing algorithm, Solver.
