Rethink Your Bus Routes - Without Disrupting Today's Service

Design, refine and schedule tomorrow's routes while today's continue running as normal.

For many schools, bus routes are created once, tweaked occasionally, and then left alone for years.

The reality is that while your routes may stay the same, your school community doesn't.

New housing estates appear. Families move. Roads change. Vehicle sizes change. Students graduate. Entire suburbs that once filled a bus may now have only a handful of families, while new growth areas emerge with increasing demand.

Over time, it's surprisingly easy to find yourself operating routes that no longer reflect where your students actually live.

The result? Lower utilisation, longer travel times, unnecessary operating costs and, in some cases, transport services that simply aren't serving today's school community.

So... what is Smart Route?

If you've ever looked at the Smart Route button in RollCall and thought, "I'm not clicking that - I have no idea what it does," you're certainly not alone.

Smart Route has always been part of RollCall, but because route planning is something most schools only do once a year - or even every few years - it's probably one of our least explored features.

Simply put, Smart Route is your transport planning workspace.

It allows you to overlay your students' home addresses with your existing routes and stops on an interactive map, giving you a complete picture of how well your transport network serves your school community.

Think of it as replacing the old way of planning routes.

Years ago that might have been a Melway or street directory spread across a desk, printed maps covered in highlighter, or even pins stuck into a wall map. More recently, many schools have relied on Google Maps - but quickly discover its limitations. Routes can't easily be saved, you're limited in the number of stops you can add, and it's difficult to view your entire network as a single transport service.

Smart Route was built specifically for school transport. It allows you to visualise your network, create and modify routes, move students with a click, and immediately see the impact of those changes - all in one place.

Whether you're making a minor adjustment or redesigning your entire bus network, Smart Route removes much of the manual work traditionally involved in route planning.

Why review your routes?

Smart Route isn't just for creating new routes. It's about making sure the routes you already operate are still the right ones.

School communities naturally evolve. Families relocate. New housing estates appear. Road networks change. Students graduate.

A route that was full five years ago may now be servicing only a handful of students. Meanwhile, another part of your catchment may have grown significantly without adequate transport coverage.

By overlaying your students' addresses with your existing routes, Smart Route helps you quickly identify opportunities to:

• Improve route efficiency.
• Better service your current school community.
• Reduce unnecessary kilometres and operating costs.
• Identify underutilised or "ghost" routes.
• Review route safety for both students and drivers.
• Make informed decisions before committing to service changes.

For schools working alongside a contracted bus operator, Smart Route also becomes an invaluable collaboration tool. Both the school and the operator can plan together using the same live information, replacing weeks of back-and-forth discussions with a collaborative planning session that can often produce a draft network within a day or two.

It also makes costing changes significantly easier. By calculating both route distance and estimated travel time, operators can quickly understand the two biggest cost drivers of any service - the kilometres travelled and the driver's time.

Most importantly, Smart Route removes much of the administration burden that often discourages schools from reviewing their transport network in the first place.

What's changed?

This release marks the first stage of a complete Smart Route transformation.

While Smart Route has always been a powerful planning tool, one piece of feedback consistently came through from our customers:

Once I'd finished designing my routes, I had to rebuild everything again in the live system.

We've listened. That duplicate work is now gone.

Instead of designing routes twice, Smart Route now becomes your complete route planning workflow: design, refine, review, collaborate, schedule, go live.

Create your proposed routes, save revisions, compare versions and work alongside your bus operator until you're happy with the final outcome.

When everything is ready, simply click Apply, choose your go-live date, and RollCall takes care of the rest.

Your existing routes continue operating exactly as they are while you work behind the scenes.

No disruption. No rebuilding. No late-night changeovers. No rushing through the school holidays trying to have everything ready before students return.

Simply prepare your routes when it suits you, schedule a go-live date, and let RollCall take care of the rest.

Parents can see changes before they happen

The benefits don't stop with your administration team.

With the new RollCall Parent App, families will also be able to see planned route changes before they take effect. If you've scheduled new routes to commence next Monday, parents can open the app today and view their upcoming stop, pickup time or route, along with the date those changes will come into effect.

Instead of being surprised on the first morning of a new timetable, families have time to review the changes, ask questions if needed and prepare for the transition.

The result is a smoother rollout for schools, better communication with families and a significantly better parent experience.

Nothing you do in Smart Route affects your live services until you decide it should. That means you can confidently explore ideas, test different options and refine your network knowing your current services remain completely untouched - while parents have advance visibility of exactly what's changing and when.

Our recommendation? Start planning in Term 4.

After more than 10 years working in school transport, one recommendation has never changed. Have next year's routes ready by November.

Planning ahead allows schools to:

• Open registrations during Term 4.
• Give families certainty before the summer holidays.
• Forecast demand more accurately.
• Review underutilised services before another year begins.
• Start the new school year with confidence instead of last-minute pressure.

It's particularly valuable for schools that transition students into their next year level during Term 4, allowing transport planning to happen alongside enrolment planning.

Even if you don't intend to make significant changes this year, we'd encourage every school to spend some time in Smart Route. Open your network. Overlay your student addresses. See how your community has changed.

You might be surprised by what you discover.

And we're only getting started...

This is the first stage of a much bigger Smart Route evolution.

Over the coming months we'll continue delivering new planning, optimisation and workflow improvements designed to make route management even easier.

Our goal is simple: give schools the tools to confidently design, manage and evolve their transport services - without unnecessary complexity or duplicated effort.

Keep an eye on upcoming newsletters. There's plenty more to come.