Scheduled Bus Service Software: Plan Timetables and Dispatch Runs in the Cloud

Scheduled services often still run on yesterday's software

Commuter services, school buses, the fixed shuttle line to the business park: scheduled services are the most reliable business for many bus companies. Yet this is exactly where planning often looks like it did twenty years ago. The timetable lives in a spreadsheet, dispatching in a second program on exactly one computer in the office, and if you want to know which run has no driver tomorrow, you ask the colleague who keeps the list.

On top of that, classic timetable software is expensive. Licences per workstation, maintenance contracts, updates that need a technician. For a company with ten or twenty buses that is out of proportion to what it actually needs: a timetable that turns into properly dispatched runs.

That is exactly what scheduled services in Busly are for. In the browser, with no installation and no licence fees.

One timetable that creates every run

A line in Busly consists of three things: a route with start, destination and every stop in between, a period of validity and a timetable.

You build the timetable per direction in blocks. Each block has its own operating days, for example twelve departures Monday to Friday, three on Saturday and two on Sunday. While you plan, Busly counts how many runs this creates across the whole period and warns you if a departure is planned twice on the same day.

From period and timetable, Busly then creates every single run. Not as a row in a spreadsheet, but as a real run with route, departure and arrival that sits in the calendar and can be dispatched.

Public holidays are already planned in

Anyone who has maintained a yearly timetable by hand knows the problem: the commuter service does not run on Easter Monday, maybe it does on Reformation Day, and Bavaria has different holidays from Hamburg.

Busly knows the public holidays of the federal state where the line starts. On a public holiday only the departures you marked for it run. If the line should run as usual on a particular holiday, you take it out with one click. There is no need to cut the period of validity into pieces any more.

The best route, calculated for buses

Which order of stops is actually the fastest? With two stops that is obvious, with twenty it is not.

Busly compares the current, the fastest and the shortest option for your route and shows you how many kilometres you save. Start and destination stay fixed, only the stops in between are reordered. The calculation uses the same routing as the rest of Busly: for buses, not for cars. The return trip takes over the new order automatically in reverse. More on route calculation is on the route planning page.

Driving time and dwell times give every run a time at every stop. You no longer have to work them out by hand.

Assign once, apply to the whole series

On a line with a thousand runs, planning is not the real work, covering them is. Nobody wants to pick a bus and driver a thousand times.

The line planner shows every run of the week with its bus and driver, open runs are highlighted. You assign one run and then apply the bus and driver to the whole series:

• just this one run
• every Monday at 06:15
• all runs at 06:15 on every operating day

If the bus is already booked on a date or the driver is not available, Busly skips that run and tells you exactly which one it was. When assigning single runs you also see the driving and rest time warnings that apply in dispatching.

Runs in the next seven days that still have no bus or driver appear in your alerts. An open run stands out before passengers are left waiting at the stop.

When the timetable changes

Timetables change, even in the middle of a term. An extra early run from March, one more run on Saturdays.

In Busly you set the date the new timetable takes effect. Runs before that date stay unchanged, all runs after it follow the new timetable. The previous and new timetable sit side by side, new times are highlighted. If your customer has a Busly account, the change is sent to them as a request and applies once they approve. Every change is recorded in the line history.

Lines are part of the project

A line rarely stands alone. Rail replacement comes with single tours, a commuter service perhaps with a shuttle at shift change or accommodation for drivers. That is why a line in Busly is a position in the project, next to tours and extra services.

For your own customers you create the line yourself and commission it directly. Customers on Busly can also plan their line themselves and put it out to tender, on its own or in a package with other services. You submit an offer and, once ordered, dispatch in the same line planner.

Every dispatched run then appears in the calendar of the bus and driver and in the driver app. Fleet, driver team and contacts are the same as in the rest of the business, nothing has to be maintained twice.

Switching costs nothing

Scheduled services are part of the Busly software and cost nothing. No licence per workstation, no maintenance contract, no setup fee and no limit on the number of lines. Everything runs in the browser, on the laptop at home or the tablet in the depot as well.

Moving from the old solution is manageable: enter the route, set the period, add the departures per direction. For a typical line that takes a few minutes, and then every run is ready.

If your next line is coming up or the old timetable software is due to be replaced anyway: everything else is on the scheduled services page.