Connecting communities and enabling everyone to travel is at the heart of Road XS. Whether a passenger is heading to a medical appointment, social event, family gathering or even work, the software integrates across all forms of transport you offer.
With many services desperate for more volunteer drivers, increased passenger demand and rising transport costs, it’s more important than ever to use transport software that saves you money and at the same time allows you to scale to meet demand from your passengers, whilst still reducing the cost to them for the journey. This week, reports have been coming out about how cancer patients cannot afford to travel to their hospital appointments amid the ongoing cost of living crisis and we’re doing our very best with our technology to bring costs down for passengers.
Since its launch in September 2016, during the past 6 years, Road XS has changed from what started as a basic transport booking software into a comprehensive and user-friendly transport operating system using the latest in cloud technologies and machine learning. Its modular design has enabled the platform to expand into deliveries and support ambulance services too. We have released over 650 innovative features which are keeping people moving and powering connected communities.
This latest community connection development pushes the platform even further into a more integrated and collaborative world post the Covid-19 pandemic and cost of living crisis improving the quality of life for drivers and further community care.
What is Road XS?
Road XS is a fully integrated, easy-to-use transport software.
The software’s primary focus is placed on the passenger requirements and transport service operator’s experience. Unlike other transport software, community transport runs at the core of our solution. The software is a secure, cloud-based platform which can be deployed quickly into any transport scheme operating environment. You can use it as a full office, “hybrid” model or as a complete working-from-home model. You can also limit access to just one central location too for added security. Some have even chosen to set up Road XS to work from a community centre and now securely from a local GP surgery. It is completely adaptable to your situation and requirements. All you need is an internet connection and Road XS takes care of the rest.
The Road XS Difference
Our primary goal from day one was to focus on the passenger experience and a focus on community support. We wanted passengers to use the nearest available transport service or driver to save saved money on transport costs. We also wanted transport managers, and their teams, to be able to collaborate together either from the main office or remotely, whilst still providing the same seamless experience using secure cloud technology.
Road XS provides the capability and full optimisation for:
- Community car schemes (door-to-door generally volunteer driver-driven car service).
- Patient transport (non-emergency medical appointments via ambulance or medical vehicles).
- Dial a Ride (pre-scheduled dynamic passenger-driven routes).
- Demand Responsive Transport (DRT) – real-time route updates and responding to passenger demand on the day).
- Deliveries (optimising routes and orders relating to delivery requests).
Modular by design, it makes Road XS flexible and adaptable to meet any transport service requirement without the need for high-cost development usually associated with software development.
How We Are Connecting Communities and Increasing Driver Journeys
Professional and volunteer drivers play a vital role in delivering transport services across the UK. They provide a lifeline to those who cannot travel by themselves or on public transport. Without these drivers, we would see increased pressure on the NHS, impacting community health, which would in turn increase waiting times and missed appointments.
This has been shown to increase mental health issues and a wide range of other health problems down the line including increased feelings of loneliness and increased hardship for disabled people.
Thanks in part to COVID-19 and the rising fuel costs, there has been a slight drop in the number of volunteer drivers putting increased pressure on transport operators as demand has surged for journeys.
The technology in Road XS was already optimising routes, pickups and demand-responsive journeys to get the most out of your resources, but it can not integrate further into your community too.
As local and county council transport services become more and more fragmented, Road XS is the glue that provides the day-to-day management and detailed insights and reporting needed to make better, more informed decisions. This also opens up new funding opportunities as you can demonstrate with full transparency the difference your services are making in the community and have the technology behind you to deliver advanced, modern transport services.
Here’s a look further into how Road XS connects further into communities for greater community engagement:
Providing a Singular Platform of Operation
Having a unified transport platform at a community level makes things easier to operate, maintain, support and deliver a streamlined service for the passengers, drivers and transport service operators across any area. It also means you can easily integrate with neighbourhood partnerships too.
This ensures:
- Faster, streamlined bookings.
- Safer services with in-built reminders relating to record-keeping (Licenses, DBS etc).
- On-site secure portal access across the region.
- Instant reporting for the entire area.
- Improved personalised service relating to passenger mobility requirements.
- Complete control over service operations.
- Secure data sharing.
- A platform for growth post the Coronavirus pandemic.
- A singular point of service.
- And more.
Enabling Transparent Integration with Other Transport Providers
Our connecting communities update allows you to work together with other transport operators collaboratively whilst still maintaining all your valuable data. This is enabling volunteers who might live just over the border to join in and increase local driver pools to meet demand.
Rapid Deployment
With connecting communities release you can now deploy instant transport services across any geographical area in a matter of seconds. This means if you need to upscale your services for upcoming booster jabs, run a pilot scheme or simply open up a new transport service in a new area, you just have to switch on a new service area and your services are live.
This means you can overcome common issues surrounding the launch of new services, especially in rural areas with the numerous bus route cuts happening across the country. You are able to adapt and respond quickly which is one of the key issues when meeting the requirements of funding awards and health services.
Reducing the Manual Admin Work as You Scale
You can use the community connect feature to allow community members to book journeys for you. They only see the passengers that use the service and can take a lot of the hard work away from the transport teams, leaving them to focus on allocating journeys and promoting the services. For example, this means you could allow bookings to be completed there and then by:
- GP surgeries
- Schools
- Clubs and societies
- Community activities approved by you
- and any third-party service contract
This all brings a number of community benefits and a frictionless transport service too.
Reusing Vehicles
If you have a collection of vehicles which are not used after specific times, they can be allocated to a community area and rented out for further use to increase revenue for transport providers.
Real World Use Case Scenarios of the Connecting Communities Feature
You might be thinking how does this all apply to the real world of my operations? Well here are 3 scenario examples where the new connecting communities feature would greatly benefit your services and enable you to scale up or down based on demand:
Booster Jabs
We are likely to see continued demand for seasonal booster jabs, be it for Covid-19 or the flu for example. This can lead to increased demand for your already stretched services. However, by working with local authorities and other transport providers in the area, you can simply set up a service area for example with the name “Autumn Boostee Jabs”, assign your confirmed drivers and load in the passengers for the service. This could be done by yourself or, to speed things up, could be entered by the GP Surgery as and when required with them only seeing their patients. This will then come straight into Road XS in a fully automated fashion and assigned to your drivers for car scheme or demand responsive transport services (depending on how you are expanding the service). You can then easily report back on the usage levels of your transport services.
Opening a New Transport Service
Let’s imagine you’ve just won a brand new contract to deliver transport services to a new area. You have a whole new office ready to go and all the drivers and vehicles you need. You would simply add the new service and contract, assign your admin staff, drivers and vehicles and away you go! You can be up and running in an instant. You receive all the reporting information as usual broken down per service area. You would also be able to pool drivers in from other areas but keep them separate from your other transport services.
For example, let’s say you operate a transport service in one area and want to expand into another. You would be able to work with other transport operators under the same branding (or theirs) and quickly integrate their drivers into your journey demands. You benefit from their driver pool and them from yours. All the time, keeping the data separate for funding purposes but that goes completely unnoticed by your passengers, they just receive increased transport services local to them as a result – a win-win.
Pilot Transport Schemes
You might have an inkling that there is a need for a transport service in your local area perhaps following the closure of a bus route, road works, or just general increased demand. The problem is you don’t know how it’s going to go. Don’t worry. If you want to quickly see a simulation or demo some routes, you can set out some schedules and scenarios separate from your main transport operations and use the pilot to report back on viability and driver uptake.
For example, you might have multiple hospitals that want to consolidate patient transport services. You would set up the service, provide the admin teams with a login at each hospital and assign the drivers to the service. This would then enable the hospitals to book their patients into transport services in an efficient and timely manner and receive real-time updates from your service desk.
These are just some of the examples of this new feature, but you can see you have the ability to just turn services on or off without disrupting your existing core transport operations.
How We Use the Latest Technology to Connect Communities
Whilst many transport software tell you they optimise routes automatically, Road XS is the only software that truly does this without human intervention.
Using machine learning Road XS is able to calculate the nearest available drivers, but also factor in transit times, capacity, arrival times and even with an optional extra live traffic.
All of this allows the transport operator to know precise arrival times streamlining the planning of journeys, driver and vehicle availability and all from a secure cloud portal allowing them to operate at home or in the office. It also accurately shows transport costs and accurately calculates multiple contracts which offer different rates of service too.
Some of the key features in Road XS which solve daily issues include:
- A simple booking workflow.
- Records management and reminders to maintain high standards.
- Fully integrated driver portal for driver convenience.
- DVLA and Highways agency integration.
- What3Words tracking and pinpointing.
- GPS live vehicle tracking.
- Instant route optimisation and timings.
- Driver release optimisation to get more journeys into any given day.
- Complete journey tracking and filtering to make sure nothing is missed or forgotten.
- Optional live traffic and SMS reminders.
- Advanced security and configuration options.
Bring Your Community Transport Services to Life and Complete More Journeys
With Road XS, you can bring your community transport services to life and build deeper connections as we all work together to solve some of society’s greatest problems.
You only need basic skills on a computer thanks to the user-friendly design and we also have a model which fits all funding levels no matter what Government cuts may be coming down the road.
