School Bus Routing Research Project
Deciding on bus routes and extending public transportation means always seemed to me as merely a job for the executive branch of the government. But as a leader and a founder of YISS's School Bus Routing Research Project, I was able to sense the immense impact that things that public services have on people's lives and their lifestyles.
Not only does it endow convenience and comfort, but it also acts as an implicit drive that propels them to change for the better. But simply setting the objective as extending the lines to reduce carbon fumes and augmenting the quantity of school buses was not an efficient solution. It was inefficient in the way that there were so many routes that resulted in more energy usage, pollution, and time consumption than necessary. Therefore, by keeping all students in YISS aware of our current bus system problems and devising alternative solutions to address them, my ultimate goal for this project was not only to benefit the YISS community but also a wider community by saving time and the environment.
Starting off the project, I first conducted a student and parent survey to identify the problems that students have been facing in our school buses and why many students haven't been riding the school bus lately. In order to collect a wider range of data and more specific responses, not only did I survey the students but also their parents, and those who didn't register for the school bus. Then, based on the survey result, I came up with the idea to find out which route is the most efficient by sorting them by distance. I used the 2021-2021 bus routes provided by the school's transportation office and listed down all the stops to easily identify the distances between each stops later on. Next, by using the macro program, I transformed the data of locations to distance in N*N array format. Because I coded a program that calculates the distance between home and school, I could easily compare how long each route took.
The following pictures are a visualization of the overall process.
Email:
Survey:
Project Codes:
Project Inputs & Outputs:
However, not everything went smoothly throughout the entire project. I faced several technical issues here and there, but managed to resolve them after all. For example, because most of the map applications in Korea (ex. Google map, and Kakao map) did not have the option of a personal vehicle and only had public transportation and walking options, I used Naver map instead, as they supported all of the options above. Also, due to privacy issues, I was not able to access the exact location of bus stops. So for each stop the bus has to pass, I added ±50m of error bound. By resolving these issues, I was able to get derive a more accurate outcome overall.
After finishing the project, I presented the results to the high school principal and the school's transportation office. We also discussed other methods to further enhance our school bus systems and engender more students to take the school bus. To me, this project was such a grateful and meaningful experience as I actually got to take an action for the school and devote myself to making a better community.
Now, I am looking forward to taking a further step and extending this project. By gathering information from students on whether or not they are going to ride the school bus based on the results above, I would like to support the 2022-2023 YISS bus contract and try to change the routes with the program I created, if possible.