Use case · Dial a Ride
Dial a Ride Software
Door-to-door journeys for the passengers who need a hand getting there.
Most Dial a Ride passengers are older, registered with you, and travelling to the same few places week after week. Road XS holds their membership, their mobility needs and their standing bookings in one place, works out a pickup window it can hold to, and puts the driver at the front door itself.
Keeping communities moving
Planning that used to take a morning
Operators are being asked to carry more passengers without spending more to do it. Road XS builds the time windows from real mapping and counts the seats that are genuinely free, so the arithmetic that used to eat a morning stops being anybody’s job.
Efficiency
40%
more efficient than the legacy transport software it replaces.
Cost
25%
less spent on the administration that surrounds your transport.
Fuel
15%
less fuel burned, once the routes are optimised properly.
Intelligent bookings
A pickup window you can read out over the phone
Plenty of schemes still work their pickups out by hand, telling somebody they will be collected around ten and hoping. Road XS builds each window from real mapping, counting the seats free on that vehicle at that moment, the transit time for every passenger already aboard, and the size and speed of the vehicle itself.
Journey 1184
Built from the map
Every stop timed off the road network.
Vehicle 3
What will genuinely fit
Counted before the booking is taken.
Planning
Done before the call ends
The arithmetic nobody wanted to do.
How the booking arrives
Most of your passengers will ring the office
Dial a Ride skews older than almost any other service, and a good share of your regulars will never install anything. The office takes their call and books into the same system, with the same mapping and the same capacity check behind it. The app is there for the ones who want it, and for the family member booking on somebody’s behalf.
Call centre
One screen, whole answer
Availability and eligibility together.
Passenger app
Booked by somebody else
The passenger still gets told.
Standing bookings
Set once, then they run
The trips that come round every week.
Shared journeys
Several passengers, one vehicle, nobody kept waiting
A Dial a Ride minibus earns its keep by carrying more than one person at a time. Road XS groups passengers heading the same way as each booking is taken, and it holds the pickup windows it already promised while it does so. Add somebody at half past nine and the run rebuilds around them.
Optimisation
Shared where it suits
Grouped as the booking is taken.
Protocols
The rules as you run them
Ordering, eligibility and matching, all settings.
Fares
Calculated on completion
Your fare rules, applied every time.
Driver portal
Everything the driver needs before they knock
Dial a Ride asks more of a driver than most services do. There is a tail lift to work, a walking frame to stow and somebody to see safely to their door. The portal and app carry the assistance notes, the run sheet as it currently stands, and a three metre square to navigate to.
Driver app
Read before they arrive
The notes travel with the journey.
Navigation
Three metres across
Straight into their own navigation app.
Availability
Set by the driver
Journeys offered inside their own hours.
The scheme itself
Membership, eligibility and the numbers
Dial a Ride usually comes with rules about who qualifies and a funder who wants to see what the money delivered. Both are handled as the service runs. Nobody has to rebuild a year in a spreadsheet the week before the meeting.
Membership
Consistent answers
Eligibility held against the passenger.
Reporting
The numbers they ask for
Recorded as the journeys complete.
Period close
April, Dial a Ride
One set of numbers, agreed by everyone.
Still deciding
The things people ask us first
If yours is not here, just ask. You will get a straight answer from someone who knows the software.
Dial a Ride is a form of demand responsive transport, usually pre-booked and door-to-door, for people who find conventional public transport difficult. DRT is the broader term for any service that flexes routes and times around real demand. Dial a Ride sits inside DRT, and Road XS runs both.
Typically older people, disabled passengers and anybody with limited mobility, though eligibility and registration rules vary between operators and areas. Those rules are configured in Road XS, so the answer given on the phone is consistent whoever takes the call.
Working out journey times, distances, pickup windows and vehicle availability by hand can take ten minutes or more per booking once several passengers and destinations are involved. Road XS does those calculations in moments. Across a busy day that is hours back, and far fewer slips.
No, and on a Dial a Ride service most will not. Your office takes the call and books into the same system with the same optimisation behind it. The app tends to get used by younger passengers and by family booking on somebody else’s behalf.
Yes. Ordering, membership and eligibility checks, accessible vehicle matching and fare rules are all configured around your scheme, and can change as your scheme does.
Sheltered housing, large estates and long rural lanes are where a postcode stops being much help. Each pickup can carry a what3words square, which is three metres across, so the driver arrives at the entrance the passenger will actually come out of. The access and assistance notes are on screen before they get there.
Small schemes are where the admin saving lands hardest, because there is rarely anybody spare to do the arithmetic. Tell us how many vehicles and journeys you run and we will be straight with you about the fit.