bus meltdown in Jefferson County, KY

 As I'm always keeping an eye on school transportation across the country, the meltdown last Wednesday of transportation for Jefferson County Schools (that's Louisville) in Kentucky caught my eye. Some students didn't get picked up, some didn't get home until hours later, and needless to say, there was an uproar. The district quickly cancelled school for Thursday and Friday, to try to straighten things out, and they've now cancelled classes for Monday and Tuesday of this week. 

There's been some suggestion that the issue was caused by the district using AlphaRoute, which uses (this may sound familiar) algorithms developed by MIT: 

The program — developed by graduates of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — uses artificial intelligence to generate the routes with the intent of reducing the number of routes. Last year, JCPS had 730 routes last year, and that was cut to 600 beginning this year. 

News in Kentucky has noted that the system struggled in Columbus, Ohio, as well. Columbus then switched to using Versatrans*

*which, for what it's worth, is what Worcester uses.