I feel like it would be an awesome project to dissect a large public institutions funding and to discuss ways that algorithms can help reduce costs without reducing the quality of service and agility of the organization.
The site would not allow me to read the full article, so I might have missed something.
http://facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.wsj.com/articles/how...
There is only so much efficiency you can squeeze out with an algorithm. But, think scale. This is only in Boston. What if this team offered up the algorithm to all schools and other public transit authorities in the country? Think how many miles driven (less miles = less wear and tear, less opportunity for accidents to occur) and dollars would be saved.
Want to do it as a for profit taking a cut of the savings? Cool. Want to do it as a non-profit funded by the DOE out of a grant? That'd work to. It appears there are hundreds of millions of dollars in savings to be realized out there from this, which is awesome.