Student Transportation Tech Solutions

Tyler Tech Podcast Episode 101, Transcript

Our Tyler Technologies podcast explores a wide range of complex, timely, and important issues facing communities and the public sector. Expect approachable tech talk mixed with insights from subject matter experts and a bit of fun. Each episode highlights the people, places, and technology making a difference. Give the podcast a listen today and subscribe.

Show Notes:

On this episode of the Tyler Tech Podcast, we sit down with Ted Thien, vice president and general manager of transportation software at Tyler Technologies, to explore the evolving landscape of K-12 student transportation.

Ted explores the complex challenges faced by school districts as they navigate modern expectations from parents, who increasingly demand an Uber-like experience for their children’s school commutes. From optimizing routes to implementing advanced AI solutions, Ted provides knowledge on how school districts can leverage cutting-edge technology to enhance safety, efficiency, and transparency. He also shares real-world examples of how Tyler’s innovative products are helping districts meet these challenges, including the My Ride K-12 app and Tyler Drive.

We also detail our latest white paper about the five main risks of legacy systems. You can download that here: Is Your Legacy Digital Infrastructure Putting You at Risk?

Learn more about the topics discussed in this episode with these resources:

• Video: Improved Communications for Parents, Students, and Staff
• Video: Take a Tour of Tyler Drive
• Blog: Connecting Vendors: Data Integration for K-12 Transportation
• Blog: Simplify Student Transportation Staff Training
• Blog: Better Communication and Service for Families and Staff
• Tyler in the News: Automotive News: Transportation solutions for school bus drivers
• Blog: Future-Proofing Government Through Technology Modernization

And you can listen to other episodes of the podcast at this link: www.tylertech.com/resources/podcast

Let us know what you think about the Tyler Tech Podcast in this survey!

Transcript

Ted Thien: In K-12 transportation, we have school districts with twenty, thirty, forty thousand riders riding hundreds of buses with thousands of stops, taking kids to hundreds of places every day. That's a much harder problem to solve, and it's more difficult to make sure that all of the pieces and all of the data reflecting that are perfect every day.

Josh Henderson: From Tyler Technologies, it's the Tyler Tech Podcast, your source for insightful conversations with thought leaders addressing the pressing issues in our communities.

I'm Josh Henderson and I'm on the corporate marketing team here at Tyler. Thanks for joining us. In each episode, we dive into the essential topics shaping our society and shed light on the individuals, places, and technologies empowering the public sector.

If you like what you hear, please consider giving us a five-star rating and review, subscribing on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and recommending the show to others. On today's episode, we're joined by Ted Thien, vice president and general manager of transportation software at Tyler Technologies.

Ted shares the latest advancements, challenges, and modern expectations in student transportation, exploring what these developments mean for school districts and parents alike.

With a career dedicated to enhancing efficiency and safety in this crucial sector, Ted offers his expertise and vision for the future of student transportation.

From the rising expectations of parents for an Uber-like bus riding experience to the critical role of AI and modern technology in optimizing routes and enhancing safety, Ted provides practical advice for school districts looking to modernize their operations.

We hope you enjoy the episode.

Alright, Ted. Thanks so much for joining me today on the Tyler Tech Podcast.

Ted Thien: Glad to be here, Josh. Thanks for having me.

Josh Henderson: Of course. Of course.

Now I wanted to start off this conversation with how I sort of start off most conversations on the show and get a bit of your background. So, can you start by telling our listeners a bit about yourself, your career journey, and your current role here at Tyler?

Ted Thien: So, I've been with Tyler 17 years. I came in as VP of sales for the transportation group and then, was eventually promoted to general manager for the transportation group. I've spent most of my career in the software industry, worked at companies, such as Oracle Corporation.

But I’ve got to be honest, working in student transportation here at Tyler's has been a fantastic experience. We have great customers. We have a great team here. We have some really, really cool products that I'm it's really been a pleasure to be a part of.

Josh Henderson: And I know we have a lot to cover, a lot to get into. You mentioned those products, so and those solutions. So, let's, let's just jump right into it. You know, we talk about the importance of modernizing these days, a lot. So, what advice would you give to school districts that are sort of looking to implement new technologies in their transportation systems?

Ted Thien: Yeah. Great question.

I think I would ask them to think about three things. First is, what is the problem that they're actually trying to solve with the new technology?

Are they trying to figure out how to get the same number of kids to school with fewer drivers?

And if so, for example, what are they actually hoping to gain by implementing that new technology?

The second thing that I would ask them to think about is to be realistic about the amount of time and resources it's actually going to take to implement the new technology. We see a lot of times where that is underestimated or really not appreciated, the amount of effort it takes to move from one platform to another. And then the third thing is that I would really encourage them to make sure that they're selecting a vendor like Tyler that has the most modern cloud native technology out there in the offering. So that that's what I would ask them to think about as they're thinking about moving or modernizing their transportation operations.

Josh Henderson: I think that's great advice. And now let's just dive right into the some of the solutions that you're seeing when it comes to transportation services. You know, we've talked a little bit about this, you and I off, off the podcast with parents today. They're expecting an Uber-like or sort of a ride share-esque experience when it comes to their children's transportation. So, can you sort of explain what this means and how it's impacting the K-12 transportation sector?

Ted Thien: It’s really interesting to see what's happened here, in the last couple of years. And what we're seeing is that the parents, when they're putting their children on the school buses, they want to have that same experience that they would be having in an Uber ride.

They want to see where the vehicle is, how far away it is from the stop. They want to know the driver's name, what kind of vehicle they're driving. They also want to know when it's gotten to their destination. They want to be able to track it the whole way.

And that's a relatively new phenomenon.

Parents three or four years ago weren't asking for that, the pandemic aside. They weren't asking for that kind of visibility in the day-to-day transportation operation.

Josh Henderson: Okay. Okay. So then, you know, sort of what you're what you're alluding to is this idea that parents are seeking a technology or a technology solution that provides more transparency in terms of service and their children's safety. So, what would what do you see as some of the main challenges that school districts face in providing that high level of transparency and of service?

Ted Thien: Right. Well so the first time, they're just not used to having that kind of visibility into their operation for years.

K-12 transportation operated based on knowing that that folks are just going to do the right thing and that the routes didn't change a whole lot. Drivers were driving the same routes year after year. And so, through consistency, they were getting the job done. But now drivers are driving different routes every day.

The routes are more fluid and that they're changing more frequently during the year. And then in order to have these applications, like an Uber-like application or in Tyler's case, that would be our My Ride K-12 application, which is providing that visibility into that student's ride, that means a couple of things. We would call it the dispatch logs, but it's really that vehicle to driver to route association has to be kept up to date perfectly every morning. If you think about the Uber problem, you know, so I've got basically one driver in one vehicle picking up one person, taking them to one place.

Maybe it's two or three riders, but most of the time, it's one rider.

Pretty easy problem to solve from a logistics point of view. In K-12 transportation, we have school districts with twenty, thirty, forty thousand riders riding hundreds of buses with thousands of stops taking kids to hundreds of places every day. That's a much harder problem to solve, and it's more difficult to make sure that all of the pieces and all of the data reflecting that are perfect every day.

Josh Henderson: Yeah. So, the with the amount of complexity, you know, in today's student transportation world, a modern tech stack will indeed sort of help solve some of those complex issues.

Ted Thien: Yeah. Absolutely. That's where a product like Tyler Drive comes in. Tyler Drive is our application for the school bus driver that goes into the vehicle. And the driver, when they log in to Tyler Drive, a, so they're saying they're present, so we know who the driver is. They're selecting their vehicle that they want to use.

Then they start driving their assigned run. And all that information that is necessary in order to create that Uber-like experience is automatically created, through the application like Tyler Drive. So, we've solved that problem and all and are allowing school districts to create that Uber-like experience through basically two things. One is a paradigm shift on where you know, what part of the operation is going to be providing that information and doing that through our apple or our Tyler Drive application.

Josh Henderson: And now, of course, it’s 2024, and when we talk about technology solutions, we can't talk about technology solutions without talking about artificial intelligence or AI.

It's such a hot topic in so many industries. But I’m curious Ted, how you've seen AI being introduced or implemented into the K-12 transportation space, and what potential benefits does it offer?

Ted Thien: So, AI is definitely the hot topic right now, and there are some really exciting potential applications of that technology in the industry. The first obvious application is route optimization. We actually have the best AI algorithms in the industry for school bus optimization, and we've continually refined those algorithms over the last two decades.

If you were to go online and look for Harvard has an introduction to AI course, and you can go look at that course. It's ten, 12 hours long. The first two hours of that course are actually dedicated to the routing problem. Generically, it's called the traveling salesman problem.

And so that's what they talk about in their introduction to AI class is exactly what Tyler's been doing for decades.

I will say that what they're talking about in that Harvard class doesn't even cover five percent of the factors that we use in our algorithms to route school buses effectively.

Josh Henderson: Let's dive into the idea of route optimization a little bit further just to sort of clarify for our listeners. What are some tangible benefits of route optimization for schools and parents?

Ted Thien: So, the first and obvious one is to deal with this decade long driver shortage that's been plaguing the industry.

Districts have been really struggling to fill the driver slots as drivers have retired, and then the pandemic only made that problem worse. But our routing optimization or our routing algorithms let the districts run what if scenarios. What if we combine three runs into two runs? You know? What would that do?

And this is actually something districts can do with Tyler Drive right in the field. They can assign half of you know, take a run, take half of it, put it on to one driver's existing run, take the other half, put it on to a second driver's existing run, and everybody will be updated with the right information, including the parents with that app, and the kids will get home. But from a planning perspective, you know, we can do things like, well, what if we lengthen the ride time from, say, four to five minutes to 45 minutes? Would that allow us to get everybody home with fewer number of buses?

Or what if we change the bell time? So, the time that the buses need to arrive at school or the time that they're departing from school. What if we change those and lengthen those so that we could have a little bit more time between runs and get more kids to school with fewer number of buses? Our software allows districts to model all of those what if scenarios using our AI routing algorithms.

Josh Henderson: Really unique and interesting challenges in in the in the world of student transportation, that’s for sure. Now you've touched you've touched on this idea of the of the parent apps, becoming more and more prominent in the transportation sector.

How are these apps enhancing communication and the overall experience for parents and students?

Ted Thien: It that's been really transformative. Ten years ago, a school district would create all the runs, figure out what time and what bus stops students were going to get picked up, and they would mail postcards out. Or some would even publish stop information in the newspapers. But the most common way a decade ago was to mail postcards out to the home. What we see a lot of districts doing now is they're doing all their routing, and then they're telling the parents, log in to Tyler's My Ride K-12, sign up for that, associate your student, and then you will see the parent oh, the student's transportation information in that application. So they're they've gotten out of the business of mailing cards home, and they're telling everybody to go to the parent app My Ride K-12 to get their information.

One of the benefits of that, if you think back to what we're talking about just a minute ago with the routes changing more frequently, is it allows the districts to have to be a little more fluid in in their routes and when they're putting those changes out. So, if they would make a change a decade ago, they would have to allow time to print and mail and then have the card show up in the in the, parents' or the guardian's mailbox just to announce the change. But now they can do that right through the app, and the parent can get that up-to-date, routing information at their fingertips.

We had a school district last year at the start of the 2023-2024 school year who was, if a child showed up at the start of school to to a new school and they weren't enrolled, that district wanted that child to ride the correct bus home in the afternoon. So, we were able to put kids on bus midday, log in to the app, they would get their information, and be able to know exactly what bus to ride on the way home or in the afternoon to get home safely.

Josh Henderson: Stay tuned. We'll be right back with more of the Tyler Tech Podcast.

I hope you're enjoying listening to this episode of the Tyler Tech Podcast.

I'm here with my colleague, Jade Champion, to talk about the importance of tech modernization.

Are you struggling to maintain your legacy systems? It might be time for a change.

Jade Champion: That's right, Josh. We just released a white paper that outlines the five main risks of legacy systems and the benefits of modernizing your digital infrastructure.

Josh Henderson: From security weaknesses to inefficiencies and high maintenance costs, legacy systems can really hold back government agencies. So, what are some of the benefits of future proofing with an updated tech stack?

Jade Champion: Modern cloud-based solutions help to streamline processes, protect against cyber threats, improve the resident experience, meet compliance requirements, and provide more scalability.

Josh Henderson: Are you ready to leave your legacy systems behind and improve your digital services?

Check out our show notes for resources to help you get started and reach out to us at podcast@tylertech.com to connect with a Tyler expert today.

Now let's get back to the Tyler Tech Podcast.

Josh Henderson: So, we've talked a lot about, you know, all of these solutions, and the ways in which things are being implemented in the student transportation world. Can you give me any examples of how, some of this technology has been implemented and ways in which it has, you know, kept children safe or provided a service that that that parents might want to hear about?

Ted Thien: Thanks for asking, Josh, because there's a really great story that comes to mind here.

Actually, at Tyler Connect, our user conference, I was talking with one of our customers, and they very kind of nonchalantly told us a story about where they had had a shooting incident, that had spilled over onto one of their campuses. So, there wasn't an actual active shooter in the building, but there was gunfire on one of their campuses.

And using our routing software and our Tyler Drive technology, almost and again, they made very light of this situation, but they said, yeah. We're able to reroute everybody and get them to a place of safety, and we had it all done in 20 minutes. And they just sort of took it in stride, and we were like, wow, that's really, really cool that you that you could do that. And so, we've actually arranged, for that story to be featured in the September issue of school transportation news. So, if you want to learn more about the details and figure out who the district was and see how they use that technology to help keeps cool help keep students safe, go read the September issue of STN.

Josh Henderson: Now, you know, we've talked a bit about AI, but we talked about the benefits of AI. And I know that there's a lot of potential risks or significant risks involved in in artificial intelligence and the implementation of AI, especially with something like student transportation. Can you share any examples of where AI implementation and student transportation hasn't gone as smoothly or as according to plan?

Ted Thien: Yeah. And we don't want to talk about failures. But I do think it's important to understand the risks of artificial intelligence and how it can be misapplied.

And, unfortunately, there have been some very public failures in the student transportation world a result of, I'll say, incorrect application of that technology.

A lot of the AI solutions that we're seeing coming into the industry are solutions that don't really understand the nuances of K-12 transportation.

And the bad news is that the casualty of these failures are kids not getting to school. And not getting, for three or four days we’ve seen school districts have to cancel school because they the routes weren't getting kids to school, these AI planned routes.

We were seeing districts with issues related to AI, bad AI technology, having delays into November, which is just almost unheard of. So, a good routing plan isn't created overnight.

And anything that's generated by AI needs to be checked by a human and verified by a human before you put that, a student lives at risk by having a bus driving a route that was generated by AI but wasn't verified by an actual human with local knowledge of the route being driven.

Josh Henderson: Right. Kinda defeats the purpose if, you're not getting to the place you need to go.

So, based on some of those examples of the challenges involved in in implementing AI that you've heard or you've seen firsthand, what are some key takeaways or lessons learned that you would that you would point to or point listeners to?

Ted Thien: I would encourage them to make sure that that the AI technology that they're proposing or that they're being told they can use was actually developed for K-12 transportation. That it's not AI technology that was used to route a car or even maybe a local delivery vehicle. I don't know about you, but, you know, the way the Amazon delivery truck runs through my neighborhood is a lot different than the way the school buses run. And so we can't take one sort of local delivery AI paradigm and apply it to K-12 transportation.

We saw we saw one instance where an AI company was promising to take a district that had 700 routes, and run it or reduce the number of routes to 450, but it was going to take the AI company two or three weeks of continuous processing to come up with that solution. We were able to sit with that district and show them how they could use the existing Tyler's technology, our decades long or decades proven, routing algorithms that come up with similar solutions in just a few hours.

So, I think those are some of the that that's the big takeaways. Make sure that the technology that you're being told you can use was actually developed for the industry that you're we're working in, which in this case is K-12 transportation.

Josh Henderson: And sort of looking ahead and as somebody who's spent a lot of time in the technology industry, and in student transportation specifically, how do you envision sort of the future of technology in in student transportation? Because this stuff's evolving by the hour, essentially.

And furthermore, are there any innovations in the space that you're particularly excited about for the future?

Ted Thien: The pace of change of technology in K-12 transportation has really accelerated in the last couple of years. And I think that's generally a good thing. But right now, there's a lot of challenges getting all of this new technology integrated and working together, getting the data flowing between all of these new solutions. So, one of the new products that we're really proud of and really excited about is onboard iPaaS.

So, you've heard of SaaS, software as a as a service. Well, iPaaS is an integration platform as a service. And so, we built onboard iPaaS specifically to solve the integration challenges that come with deploying lots of two new technologies. So, it's a great tool out there. We have a lot of partners, software companies that we work with in the k twelve transportation space have become onboard iPaaS partners, and we're signing new ones up every month.

Josh Henderson: That's really great. Ted, I wanted to thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me today.

And as we wrap up this conversation, you know, I'd love for you to just share some final thoughts or key takeaways for our listeners regarding the role of technology and the overall role of technology in student transportation.

Ted Thien: It's not the, the be all and end all. One of the things that that I I like to say to our customers about is that you can't automate a non-process.

If you don't have a good existing process, throwing technology at it isn't going to really help solve the problems. That's why I go back to where I started this. What is the let's really understand a problem that we're actually trying to solve. The next thing that I would ask folks to do is when you're looking at solutions, I would actually ask them, as we like to say, drive the demo.

Don't buy anything if all you're going to see before you sign on the line is a PowerPoint presentation. Because then you really don't know what you're getting.

You know, if a tech vendor says that they can show you real time vehicle updates in the parent app, make them do that. Make them show you how their parent app keeps up to date and shows the bus moving exactly where it is. I've personally done that with our technology, and I would encourage them, to do the same with anything else that they're looking at.

Josh Henderson: I think that's the perfect spot to wrap this this conversation up. Thank you so much again, Ted, for your time today. It was a real pleasure talking to you and hope I can have you back on the show soon.

Ted Thien: Great. Thanks, Josh. Appreciate it.

Josh Henderson: We hope you enjoyed this conversation with Ted Thien. If you'd like to learn more about student transportation solutions and other topics discussed throughout the episode, check out our show notes for more resources.

A modern digital infrastructure allows the public sector to adapt in the digital age.

From operational agility to data management and analytics, as well as cost savings, security, compliance, and scalability, governments are poised to take advantage of innovative technology to create more efficiencies in their systems and better support and connect their communities. Tyler creates solutions made exclusively for the public sector and has experts with government experience ready to support you on this journey.

I hope you're excited about what the future holds and will reach out to us at podcast@tylertech.com to connect with a subject matter expert if you'd like to learn more. And whether it's transportation software or a modern digital infrastructure or something else entirely, we want to hear from you about what you'd enjoy hearing more of and how we can make the Tyler Tech Podcast even better. Fill out our audience survey in the show notes today to let us know how you heard about the show and your ideas for future episodes.

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For Tyler Technologies, I'm Josh Henderson. Thanks for joining the Tyler Tech Podcast.