MapMechanics and HERE help businesses keep delivering despite the London Underground strike.

If you are living in any major city, you know the personal toll it takes when your transit system goes on strike. Londoners felt that pain yesterday as all four tube unions recently staged the latest in a series of 24 hour strikes.

For commuters who rely on the tube for their daily commute, a transit strike sends them scrambling for alternative options and often leads to extra travel costs, like taking a taxi. Buses are crowded with overflow passengers and the already congested roads can become a maze with more drivers taking to the wheel to get to work or around the city.

The burden for businesses, especially transport and logistics companies that have to meet strict on-time delivery requirements, is also high. Many employees may simply not be able to make it into work, leaving fewer customer service representatives to field phone calls or fewer drivers to make deliveries. With underground trains ground to a halt, there will be more traffic on the road, creating more obstacles and potential time delays for transport companies to maneuver.

In fact, the Federation of Small Businesses estimates that a single-day strike costs a total of £300 million.

Companies using Truckstops VRS vehicle routing and scheduling software from MapMechanics have a secret weapon to help them combat not just the transit strike, but to give them an edge in their daily operations.

Truckstops VRS powered by HERE is a routing and scheduling software solution that helps companies plan and implement routes on a daily basis. This is especially helpful for companies like a grocery delivery service that make different stops each day, but is also practical for companies running fixed routes. Using historic traffic patterns and real-time traffic from HERE, businesses can use Truckstops VRS to plan ahead and create special delivery sequences for days that are affected by a transit strike or re-route a driver as needed in real time.

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Image credits: HERE, Boegh on Flickr