DA - Leveraging Multiple Transfinder Solutions

In New York, Chenango Valley Center School District streamlines transportation operations with Routefinder PLUS, Viewfinder, Stopfinder, Wayfinder, and Servicefinder  

Fortunately for Transportation Supervisor Jason Hibbard, his superintendent understands how critical transportation is to the mission of the district. In fact, Dr. Larry Dake, Superintendent of Chenango Valley Central School District in New York, states emphatically that “transportation drives everything we do.”  

With that type of support, Jason helped the district adopt more technology to support their mission. It didn’t take Jason long for him to realize that Transfinder’s Stopfinder parent app could improve the communications between families and his department.  

Jason had already seen how much his former district benefited from the app through Transfinder’s Routefinder PLUS, so it made sense.  

“At Chenango Valley Central School District, there were a lot of other transportation initiatives that we wanted to address, so not only did we get Routefinder PLUS along with the Stopfinder app, but we acquired Viewfinder, Wayfinder, and Servicefinder,” Jason says. “It made sense to get everything from Transfinder so we would have all the products under one umbrella per se. This also made it so we didn’t have to relearn each product. Yes, there are nuances between them, but they all generally operate the same way. Everything flows together.”  

Opening Communications and Providing Transparency for Parents  
Jason has seen many benefits from each Transfinder product. The Stopfinder parent app specifically tackles the communication challenges that initially caused him to seek a solution in the first place. “It provides open transparency for our parents by allowing them to see exactly what the bus schedules are, the overall route, and where the bus is,” says Jason.  

Additionally, parents can use the app to directly communicate with him and his department. “They might ask, ‘Why did you add five minutes to the estimated arrival time?” and, since we have that data at our fingertips, we’ll be able to have a conversation with them by saying something like, “At this particular stop, a student was five minutes late or there was some road construction,’” explains Jason.  

For Jason, the biggest benefit has been that it catches about three quarters of incoming phone calls on a typical day, especially in the morning. “Very rarely does the phone ring,” he says. “I’ll get up at 5:30 am, and I’ll start getting Stopfinder messages on my phone so I can immediately react and respond to parents. Now I don't have 20 voicemails sitting on my phone.”  

Simplifying Route Changes and Driver Management  
With Routefinder PLUS, Jason appreciates the ability to compare multiple routes. Now, he can easily move stops around on the platform’s digital map to see if any combination leads to efficiency gains. Districts can also collapse and combine multiple runs. “This is now a simple process on Routefinder PLUS,” he says. “We can just move the kids from one bus to another, and Routefinder reroutes everything.”  

This particular functionality can also help whenever a district hires more drivers. Creating new runs is, as Jason says, very easy.