A city with roughly 50,000 high school students and 139 square miles of neighborhoods, Detroit has just three college preparatory test-in high schools. Though nearly a quarter of Detroit households lack access to a vehicle, only students attending their neighborhood school are eligible for free or dedicated transportation. Those attending high performing schools outside of their neighborhoods depend on the public bus system, with daily commutes up to two hours. The goal of this project is to assess student dispersion, travel routes, and neighborhood demographics to design an alternative bus system so that students who qualify to attend high performing schools can do so without worrying about transportation.
We can make available student dispersion data, school locations, school rankings, DDOT discounted student bus pass data, and Census and American Community Survey data for neighborhood demographics.
Identify the five top-performing elementary, junior and high schools with significant student dispersion. Identify students who are traveling the farthest, their start and end locations, and ideal routes for dedicated transportation service. Assess neighborhood disparities (income, access to vehicle) to identify equity benefits of the project. Based on DDOT discounted bus pass records, identify the number of students that would benefit from this service.
The maps and reports will be used to support the creation of a dedicated bus system for students attending high-performing out-of-neighborhood schools. The pilot bus system to serve students attending the 10 or so top performing schools is intended to launch this September for the 2015-16 school year.
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