In transportation management services, sometimes popular belief might be easier to accept than fact, especially since the services are directly related to the safety of children, a top agenda for the country. In appeasing the public perception, situations are often mitigated in light of such beliefs, entire budgets and strategies can be altered to protect the myths in transportation management services. While many of the myths are based on some element of truth, they might prove unreliable in certain situations when you need to make decisions, or when faced with a challenge concerning the safety of your students. Here are a few of the myths that may lead to decisions or strategies that may not necessarily add value to the district transportation management service:
Risk is Mitigated in Predictability
As history has taught many transportation managers and administrators, risk can at times be managed through the predictability in situations. You can project possible outcomes that might compromise the safety of your drivers or students in the execution of the services. Using such projections, you can put measures in place in order to prevent or manage that situation should it ever occur. But risk seems to be mutating with your efforts, for every measure that you put to mitigate a possible outcome, it might prove that that exact protocol will be the source of the risk. Information Technology Security protocols teach us that the best security is not in the prevention or the predictability of risk, but it lies in transparency, the ability to see your entire transportation management services network in one central location as it happens, and while you might be keen to notice the possibility or risk, your response in mitigating it will not be in predictability, but in the prevention of said risk as it happens. Halting the negative outcome before it culminates.
Technology Application is Expensive
This is a business case myth where the belief is that one should invest sparingly in adopting methods of technology. Some of it is based on truth, since startup costs for advanced technologies can be quite high. With the advent of cloud technology, even a proprietary closed circuit system for monitoring and controlling transportation management services incurs minimal cost. Reinforcing this myth is the idea that breaking in the technology for the managers and administrators of the system can be a time costly affair and, well, that is only true for poor deployments. The developers of technological solutions often have the users in mind, incorporating conventional methods of interaction with the system for ease of use.
There is No Such Thing as Real-Time
Technically, this is true, but real time often lies in tolerance. Even your very senses take time to perceive situations in sight, hearing, taste and touch. While the use of technology gives an accurate picture of what could be going on in your transportation management services network, it introduces small delays with the relay of information from all the sources. The good thing is, the effect for real-time monitoring is resolved in calculating the delay often in milliseconds to seconds, a difference that can often be negligible. Either way, you are aware of how much time would have elapsed following an incident.
Separating these transportation services facts from fiction can be difficult, but it is essential in ensuring that the most efficient and effective systems are put into place to keep your drivers and students safe and your operation running smoothly.
What do you think? Are there any other transportation management services myths that you've heard? Let us know in the comments below!