Driving America Forward with Ken Martinez
“To me, that’s the peak–to not only disrupt the status quo, but also do so quickly, with incredible service and urgency. That’s real innovation.”
Ken Martinez
Transportation Director
Salt Lake City School District
Ken is Transportation Director for the Salt Lake City School District (SLCSD). A 34-year veteran of vehicle transportation, he spent the first 17 years of his career as the lead bus mechanic for the Jordan School District before joining SLCSD. Today, he oversees all aspects of student transportation for the district, and in his free time enjoys fishing and drag racing.
How is Salt Lake City School District driving innovation forward?
At SLCSD, we innovate by constantly keeping our eyes open and ears to the ground—by thinking outside the box.
The biggest example in recent years is our shift to electric buses. I’ll be honest—in 2017, when we were first approached to bring EVs into our fleet, I didn’t even know electric buses existed. But at the district, we’re dedicated to not accepting the status quo, to shaking things up and doing them differently if that means better outcomes for our students and families. So when I saw the benefits of converting from diesel to electric buses, we jumped at the opportunity.
Now, 12 of our 100 buses are electric, and I can’t imagine not having them. They’re quieter. They’re cleaner. They’re so much better for our students. I’ve become a huge EV bus enthusiast; I can’t wait to bring in newer, more efficient buses. To innovate, you have to keep eyes and ears open—that’s how we do it.
From your perspective, how is Zum driving America innovation forward?
For me, the most innovative thing about Zum is its customer service—the speed with which they serve their customers, the school districts.
To understand how big an impact Zum has had on our student transportation, I have to paint the picture of before. Before, our bus routes were two decades old. They were written down on the back of napkins and never updated—just built on from there. One stop might have been added to accommodate a student’s need. That student would graduate, or no longer have that need—but their stop would remain. The stops would all remain—nobody would take them out—and so you’d have all of these unnecessary stops, stops that were 1/10th of a mile away from each other. It was crazy.
When we brought Zum on to do our routing and software, it was only one month before the start of school. One month to redo twenty years of poor routing. Zum didn’t bat an eye, though. We gave them all of our locations and student information—not the old routes, just the data they would need to design new ones, as though we were a brand new school district. They worked hand-in-hand with our in-house routing team, on holidays and weekends—and in three and a half weeks, they had totally redone our routing. That is insane. I’ve never seen that kind of sense of urgency—and like us, they have their eyes open and ears to the ground for ways to improve. The RFID cards for tracking students when they get on and off the bus. The GPS-enabled tablets that integrate automatically with the routing software. It’s all under one roof.
To me, that’s the peak—to not only disrupt the status quo, but also do so quickly, with incredible service and urgency. That’s real innovation.
When you think of the future, what role do children/the next generation play, and how can we set them up for success?
The best thing we can do is train our kids to not accept the status quo. We’re thinking outside the box, and we have to encourage them to do so, too.
Today, I talk frequently about EVs at conferences. I think hydrogen power is one of the biggest up-and-coming pieces of technology, so I have my ears to the ground about that. I’m always thinking about how to continue improving and innovating, as is Zum—and the best part is, the more we innovate, the more it shows to our students. The fact that our students now get to ride on EVs is tangible, physical proof that we’re innovating—and, hopefully, inspiration for our students to grow up and become innovators themselves.