Remix launches Carpools, so you can get more out of your relief vehicles.

A major inefficiency in bus operations happens behind the scenes. Every day, transit agencies need to deploy relief vehicles just to swap drivers on and off shifts. These trips can be costly. They don’t carry passengers. They take an operator out of service! They add deadhead time. 

Remix Carpools is a new feature that helps you group your driver relief trips more efficiently. With it, you can reduce the number of relief vehicles on the road and ultimately cut down on unnecessary operational costs.  

Let’s get into how it works.

Smart groupings mean fewer relief vehicles.

No more painstakingly calculating optimal relief carpools from schedules in spreadsheets or complicated tools. 

Remix takes your schedule and automatically recommends the most efficient carpool groupings. It analyzes your relief timing, travel distances, locations, and more, instantly providing clear grouping recommendations. Want to tweak the original suggestion? You can edit right in the tool.  

Flexible enough to handle real-world service.

We all know reliefs never start and end in the same place at the same time. That’s why they’re so time-consuming to calculate.

Don’t worry, Carpools is designed to handle that. Simply customize your:

• Wait time: Set a maximum waiting window (e.g., 10 minutes), so the system can group drivers who are slightly offset from one another.
  
  
• Pooling by proximity: Combine relief trips that start or end near each other, not just at the exact same place. For example, you could allow for groupings if relief trips start or end within ~300-400 meters of one another. 
• Vehicle capacity: Specify how many drivers each relief vehicle can carry — whether it’s a truck for two or a van for ten.

Then let Remix do the hard part: calculating the best schedule and showing you who’s riding together, in which vehicle, and when.

Respond quickly to last-minute changes.

Service evolves. Vehicles come in and out of rotation. Schedules shift. Your fleet manager tells you that you unexpectedly have three vehicles available next week instead of four. That’s okay. You can update parameters — like vehicle count or capacity — and immediately see how your groupings (and costs) change.

No tedious rework. Just a simple, clear visualization that helps you make decisions.

Prepare your ops team in a click. 

Once your schedule is set, you can export Relief Paddles with everything your operational teams need — who’s picking up, who’s dropping off, where, and when.

The result? Less waste. More service.

Relief vehicles are a hidden cost — and they add up quickly. By optimizing carpooling you:

• Reduce deadhead time
• Shrink the relief vehicle fleet
• Reclaim valuable driver hours
• Save significant operational budget

And because carpooling is built into your Remix Scheduling workflow, you can skip the spreadsheets and manage everything in one place — saving time and uncovering new efficiencies.