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SEARCHBoston MBTA’s The Ride pioneered the use of TNCs in paratransit back in 2016. Since then, the agency has been a reference nationwide on how to efficiently use non-dedicated service providers.
In 2023, the MBTA selected AlphaRoute’s innovative tool, NDSP Optimization, to daily optimize trips across multiple transportation options.
Photo: MBTA
Last month, Boston MBTA’s The Ride paratransit service hit one million optimized trips in 2024, thanks in part to a partnership with AlphaRoute.
Boston MBTA’s The Ride pioneered the use of TNCs in paratransit back in 2016. Since then, the agency has been a reference nationwide on how to efficiently use non-dedicated service providers (NDSP).
As NDSP options and NDSP ridership grew for paratransit riders, the MBTA continued to search for tools that could help its scheduling and dispatch teams optimize paratransit service across different transportation options.
In 2023, the MBTA selected AlphaRoute’s innovative tool, NDSP Optimization, to daily optimize trips across multiple transportation options.
NDSP Optimization looks at all trips scheduled for tomorrow to define which trips shall be kept in the dedicated service and which eligible trips shall be outsourced to each NDSP provider. It also assigns eligible NDSP trips to the most cost effective NDSP provider available for that trip.
The company’s web-based optimization tool augments the performance of legacy paratransit scheduling systems to improve service, maximize efficiency, and generate substantial cost savings. It is also fully customizable with local operational parameters and contractual requirements.
So far in 2024, AlphaRoute has optimized, on average, over 100,000 trips per month with extremely low errors and very high availability — over 99.9% of all trips are optimized.
The implementation of the NDSP Optimization tool saved hours of work per day for the scheduling team. Before utilizing the company’s tool, MBTA would have to manually look for the best trips to outsource.
Now, they can have the best trips available to them in a click of a button, optimizing more than 4,000 paratransit trips in just over a minute. The financial benefit of this tool for the MBTA is estimated to be several million dollars per year. The average net savings per trip outsourced using NDSP Optimization is around $22 dollars
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