Vehicle count is the largest line item
Every additional vehicle means not just fuel but lease or depreciation, insurance, maintenance, driver pay and administrative overhead. Those run whether the vehicle goes out or not. Removing one vehicle from the plan therefore saves many times more than shortening that same vehicle's route.
Three things determine vehicle count: capacity, maximum ride time and shift time. When they are not weighed together, the plan goes out with more vehicles than it needs. In hand-built plans that surplus usually goes unnoticed, because there is no alternative to compare against.
Occupancy is a direct measure of cost
Carrying the same passengers with fewer vehicles means raising occupancy. In vitaRoute operations this has been measured rising from 54% to 87% — same passenger count, same stops, with only the plan changed.
Occupancy is also the easiest indicator to track. Watching average passengers per vehicle week by week shows that a plan is starting to decay before it reaches the cost report.
Empty kilometres and redundant stops
Distance covered without passengers is a straight loss: depot to first stop, last stop to depot, and the backtracking caused by a wrong stop order within the route. The third is the most insidious, because it is invisible on the plan and shows up only in the record of the trip actually performed.
Repeatedly skipped stops fall in the same category. If nobody has boarded at a stop for months, that stop is still taking up space in the plan; removing it shortens both time and distance.
- Depot-to-first-stop and last-stop-to-depot distances
- Backtracking caused by a wrong stop order
- Stops where nobody has boarded for months
- Several vehicles serving the same area
Planning time is a cost too
A hand-built plan takes hours and has to be rebuilt on every change. In an operation where the passenger list changes weekly, that is a continuously spent human resource — and it is usually never written into the cost report at all.
In vitaRoute operations planning time has been measured dropping from 3 hours to 12 minutes. The gain is not only time: because the plan can be rebuilt quickly, it stays current through every change, so occupancy does not decay either.
Starting a cost-reduction effort with fuel means working on the smallest line item. Taking vehicle count, occupancy, empty kilometres and planning time in that order makes the same operation markedly cheaper — without giving up service level.