RidePilot is an open-source, web-based transportation scheduling system designed to meet the needs and budgets of smaller public and nonprofit specialized transportation agencies.

Efficiently scheduling trips while tracking and managing grant reporting requirements can be challenging for agencies.

RidePilot can help ease these challenges by empowering small agencies to create, manage, track, and schedule vehicles, drivers, customers, trips, runs, and reports through an easy-to-use interface and underlying database.

Computerized Transportation Scheduling Tools Within Reach

Track Driver, Vehicle and Customer Information. Track a range of information from recurring compliance events such as drivers’ license renewals, to vehicle data such as status of recurring maintenance requirements, make, model, year and current mileage.

Set Up Runs. Track the operation of a specified vehicle, by a selected driver, over a given period of time.

Create Trips. Using RidePilot, customers can create a one-time or recurring trip from a specified pickup location to a selected drop off destination.

Flexible Scheduling. RidePilot makes it easy for agency schedulers and dispatchers to assign trips to drivers’ runs and make changes to the schedule throughout the day, as needed.

Reporting. Agencies can store and maintain all of the data needed to manage day to day operations and generate information for ongoing grant requirements.

Who Benefits from RidePilot?

Small Transportation Agencies Can…

  • Modernize their whiteboard and spreadsheet-based scheduling approach with a computerized system, built to fit their needs.
  • Enhance and increase the services they provide to customers through more efficient and effective scheduling.
  • Save time and reduce human errors in assembling data and generating reports.

Customers Can…

  • Benefit from more efficient services offered by agencies.
  • Initiate the scheduling process on their own, through RidePilot’s integration with 1-Click multi-modal trip planner.

Regional Grant Administrators Can…

  • Manage a RidePilot deployment on behalf of smaller agencies, which can use the system at no additional cost.
  • Assist their smaller partners in more standardized data collection for grant reporting.

Key Features

Effective Trip Scheduling Tools

Scheduling is the primary objective for RidePilot. The system enables schedulers to review current runs and trips and identifies opportunities to combine them more efficiently. Agencies also can assign trips to taxi services if there is no capacity on an existing run.

Driver Compliance Management

RidePilot describes driver requirements, specifies the rules for meeting the requirements, and flags cases in which a driver’s compliance status has lapsed. Using these tools, agencies can instruct drivers to address the lapsed requirements before they can resume their runs.

Vehicle Maintenance Tracking

Vehicles are subject to periodic and recurring requirements, such as routine maintenance and safety checks. RidePilot enables agencies to set the rules for any recurring requirements, prompting drivers to record their mileage after each run is complete.

Tailored Reports and Queries

RidePilot provides custom-tailored templates for frequently generated reports. It also provides customizable query building tools to extract detailed data and format it into a spreadsheet for further analysis.

Trip Planning Integration

RidePilot can be integrated with web-based trip planning tools, such as the open-source 1-Click system, through an application programming interface (API). This seamless integration allows customers to review itinerary options before selecting and requesting a service.

Administrative Functionality

RidePilot is structured to allow hosting by one agency on behalf of many. While the hosting agency has administrative access across the entire system, each of the other agencies can view and manage only its own data.

Highlights of RidePilot

Meets the Needs of Small Agencies

Transportation agencies can enter and track information about their customers, drivers and vehicles, create one-time or recurring trips and runs, and create daily schedules.

Highly Customizable

Each agency within a RidePilot deployment can customize how the system works based on its operations. For example, each agency can specify its driver compliance rules and vehicle maintenance schedules.

Affordable

Unlike proprietary commercial systems, RidePilot is open source and not subject to ongoing licensing fees. Once a RidePilot deployment is up and running, it does not cost anything to add additional agencies. The system requires configuration, hosting, support and maintenance that could be outsourced or handled by an in-house IT Department.

Scalable

Another advantage of open-source is that it can support a nationwide community of transportation partners to develop and enhance RidePilot over time, so all agencies mutually benefit from one another’s investment in the platform.

Technical Specifications

RidePilot is a responsive web-based application designed to operate on personal computers and tablets. It supports the current and immediately previous versions of the four major web browsers (Internet Explorer, Chrome, Safari and Firefox). It can be securely hosted via Amazon Web Services, or hosted via a client IT facility. It is built using Ruby, Ruby on Rails, HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, JQuery and Bootstrap.