A billed mile has a rider in the van. Every other mile — depot to first pickup, drop to next pickup, the long crossing because a ride was assigned to the wrong side of the metro — you pay for entirely.
$1.50 a mile — Fuel, wear and driver time on every one of the miles you did not need to run.
Rides grouped geographically before they are ordered, so no van crosses the metro twice.
Each van’s day sequenced to cut the distance between drops, not just to hit the appointment times.
Wheelchair matching and zone-lock are constraints, not costs to be traded against mileage.
A tighter route that makes someone late is not a better route.
A cancellation or an add-on re-sequences the affected van and pushes the change to the phone.
No. Turn-by-turn solves one leg. This decides which rides belong on which van in the first place, and in what order — which is where the empty miles actually come from.
Yes, and the gains are usually larger, because a badly assigned rural ride can cost forty empty miles instead of four.
Yours. The figure is a setting, not a constant.