HopSkipDrive RideIQ: The future of safe youth transportation

Written by Corey McMahon

I’m Corey McMahon, Chief Product Officer at HopSkipDrive. And I’m very excited to announce the future of safe youth transportation: RideIQ, a powerful all-in-one hub that solves the unique transportation challenges of schools, districts, government agencies and more.

It’s been a long road getting here. HopSkipDrive started as a consumer app that arranged safe and reliable transportation for youth and has now evolved into a world-class enterprise product that enables school transportation staff to efficiently and cost-effectively get students — from the one to the many — where they need to go.

Along the way, we did intensive research and spent countless hours listening to schools and school districts, county agencies and nonprofits so we could better understand their needs. Repeatedly, we heard tales of a broken system and a strong need for flexibility, transparency, speed and reliability.

Many of the features of RideIQ were developed in direct response to that feedback. With HopSkipDrive’s new RideIQ, school transportation staff have all the tools they need to create and optimize individualized or small-group transportation plans for students.

Some important highlights of RideIQ include:

Easy-to-use navigation and self-service tools that make it simple to set up next-day transportation and get critical information into the hands of CareDrivers and parents immediately
Complete transparency and real-time visibility for everyone in a rider’s community of care, whether that’s via web, mobile app or SMS
Customization of operations with the click of a button, including wait times, communication preferences and parent permissions
Full access to our patent-pending Safe Ride Support platform, which combines on-device sensors, incident prediction and live specialists to prevent problems before they occur — including real-time collision detection and recording of instances of the six riskiest driving behaviors
Access to CareDriver OnDemand for last-minute and emergency transportation needs
Support for unique sponsorship arrangements, allowing districts, agencies and nonprofits to enroll parents into subsidized, self-managed transportation programs
Access to our route and rider optimization platform (Beta), which ensures high utilization while minimizing time in vehicle

We are investing heavily in RideIQ product development, so our customers — and their students — can reap the benefits. Over the coming months, we’ll be exploring new ways to streamline district transportation workflows and deepen the optimization features that help districts augment existing bus and van solutions.

RideIQ has already been rolled out to hundreds of school districts, charter networks and foster agencies, as well as to local municipalities managing transportation for aging populations.

Our product development team is fueled by a desire to ensure that no one’s ambitions are ever limited by their access to opportunities. Today’s announcement is just the beginning of our journey to make that a reality.