Avoid Road Closures and Congested Areas
Product Used: Map Editor and Directions APIs
Background
A non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT) provider operates in a popular urban area where road conditions frequently change due to traffic congestion, public events, and occasional construction works. The transportation of patients—many of whom are elderly or require specialized vehicles—must avoid delays to ensure timely arrivals at medical appointments. The provider often needs to plan for heavy congestion during peak hours, or local festivals or events occasionally blocking these roads for even an entire week.
Problem Statements
To ensure the timely transportation for his customers, the NEMT provider wants to overcome:
- Temporary Road Closures: Avoid roads closed because of public events like parades, festivals, or construction in industrial areas. Temporary road closures or detours aren't reflected in regular routing systems.
- Dangerous Left Turns: There are intersections where making a left turn during rush hour significantly delays the journey, increasing patient wait times and reducing the number of patients that can be served in a day.
- Traffic Congestion: Tune the ETAs when planning routes that experience heavy congestion, especially during peak hours since the standard routing algorithms would often direct drivers through these congested roads, leading to patient delays.
Solution
By leveraging NextBillion.ai Map Editor the NEMT providers can seamlessly customize / edit routes to suit their business operations. They can modify road segment properties (e.g., restricting roads or prohibiting turns), as well as configure the times during which the map edits are active. Hence, the providers can account for both one-time and recurring time-based restrictions to achieve a comprehensive custom routing experience.
Overcoming Road Closures
When the city schedules a week-long event, such as a festival or parade, the NEMT provider can restrict the affected roads for the duration of the event. The routing algorithm then takes the restriction into account and suggests detours that prevent unnecessary delays for patient pickup and drop-off.
Prohibiting busy Left Turns
At particularly busy intersections, where left turns lead to long delays, the provider configures the map to prohibit left turns during certain hours, enabling the algorithm to choose safer and faster routes.
Avoiding Congested Roads
The NEMT provider edits the map to apply a low “Fixed Speed” restriction for roads in the heavily congested areas during peak hours or near busy intersections. Once the edits are applied to the map, the routing algorithm then uses the given fixed speed to calculate the ETAs which are closer to actual ETAs that help with accurate planning and avoid delays due to traffic congestion.
Sample Map Edits and Route Responses
Road Closures
Close a couple of road sections using NextBillion.ai Map Editor. Once the restrictions are applied, observe how the routing engine suggests a different route after taking into consideration the closed roads.
Roads closed for NEMT routing
Turn Restrictions
Prohibit a left turn on a road section using NextBillion.ai Map Editor. Once the turn is restricted, observe how the routing engine suggests a different route to avoid taking that particular turn.
Left turn prohibited for NEMT routing
From the above changes we can see how the NEMT provider can leverage the custom map edits to manage road-closures, detours and turn restrictions to avoid heavily congested roads or rush due to public events and prevent missing any scheduled appointments.
