Senior & community transport
Plan senior shuttle runs where every passenger still gets there
You set the pickup windows, the seats on each bus and how far out of the way a passenger may be taken. Optimiciti works out who rides together and in what order, and tells you when a request cannot be met rather than quietly dropping it.
Where the difficulty is
Everyone books the same hour.
You know your riders, the appointments they cannot miss and how long any of them should reasonably be on a bus. The difficulty is that these choices are coupled: adding one rider to a run changes who else that bus can still collect in time, and a single cancellation reshuffles the morning. Searching that space quickly, and searching it again when a booking moves, is the part we can help with.
What makes it tricky
What you can hold the solver to
You define these; the solver treats them as hard constraints rather than targets. If a morning cannot satisfy one, the ride comes back unassigned rather than scheduled outside its window.
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Pickup windows
A rider is collected inside the window you agreed — commonly a tolerance either side of a promised time — never outside it.
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Appointments are the point
A dialysis slot or a clinic appointment is a fixed time the route is built around, not a target to aim at.
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Seats and accessibility
Buses carry a set number of passengers, and a wheelchair space is not the same as a seat. Riders are only assigned where they actually fit.
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Time aboard
Cap how long any one passenger may spend on the bus, so pooling never turns a ten-minute trip into an hour.
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Shifts from a centre
Drivers start and finish where their shift does, with the hours you set.
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Return journeys
The trip home is its own request with its own window, planned alongside the outbound rather than bolted on.
What you get
Every passenger collected in their window and delivered before their appointment. Fewer bus-hours doing it.
- Windows are hard, not weighted.
- A pickup window you mark hard is never traded away for a shorter route — if it cannot be met, the ride comes back flagged.
- Time aboard is bounded.
- Pooling saves vehicle-hours, and a cap on any rider's journey stops it doing so at one passenger's expense.
- Accessibility gates the assignment.
- Mark a rider as needing a particular vehicle and only those buses are eligible to carry them.
- Re-solving is cheap.
- A cancellation or a same-day booking is a new solve, not a rebuild of the morning.
More routes like yours
Related community and care routes
- Miami
Scheduled passenger transfers
Riders moved door to door against fixed appointment and departure times, with party size deciding the vehicle.
75 stops · 130 rides - Manchester
Community nurse rounds
NHS community nurses cover morning and afternoon home visits across the region, with some visits tied to a booked slot and the rest free to place.
50 visits · 8 cars - Phoenix
Home health aide shifts
Aides plan visits across the valley against real clock times, with some visits tied to a booked window and the rest free to place.
50 clients · 540-min shift - Tokyo
Home nursing visits
Visiting nurses travel between patients' homes, with some visits tied to the patient's preferred window and the rest free to place.
50 patients · 40–130 min
Try it with your own riders
Open one of the examples above and change it, or enter your own pickups, windows and buses. No account needed.