Big Red Routes

Inspiration

Our team has frequently heard peers discuss possibly visiting New York City and how hard it'd be to plan a trip like that. Aside from the long drive, finding some way to get there and back is daunting (especially without a car). Big Red Routes aims to address this by connecting students who are already driving long distance trips and are willing to rideshare to those that cannot drive. Our team hopes our platform will make trips more feasible not only logistically, but financially as well (as we expect cost splitting to arise naturally).

What it does

Drivers can post their trips. Each driver created trip is searchable by passengers. Passengers can sign up for trips they searched. All parties will be notified through email when trip details are modified (e.g. a passenger joins/leaves a trip or the driver deletes trip).

How we built it

We used Bubble.io to build our application. The platform provided visual representations of our application's pages and we didn't have to write code. However, Bubble.io was new to us and we still spent lots of time learning its features (primarily creating and manipulating custom types).

Challenges we ran into

We initially considered implementing some algorithm to calculate the driving distance between a trip's start and end points. The driving distance could then be used with some constant cost/mile to give a cost estimate of the trip. The estimate could be used to determine how much each passenger and the driver should expect to pay. Essentially, the driving distance algorithm would be the first step towards a cost calculator feature in Big Red Routes. We ultimately couldn't implement such an algorithm. We eventually found that a downloadable Google Maps API in Bubble.io would suffice. However, we needed a Google API key. Unclear about Google's pricing and running out of time, we decided to move on.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We nailed most of the basic features of a rideshare app (namely being able to create, sign up for, and modify rides). We were really excited when we finished implementing a custom user type that allowed users to track any trips they are driving for or riding on. This was important to the email notification system (which was the last feature we developed).

What we learned

We all initially thought that building a multi feature application was well beyond our limits given that we are all freshman with limited CS experience. However, we found that by methodically experimenting with Bubble.io's features and looking for help on forums and YouTube videos, we could figure out a lot of things. After this project, we, more than ever before, recognize that thinking carefully and seeking out help will help us overcome seemingly huge challenges.

What's next for Big Red Routes

Big Red Routes will continue to be developed in the DTI Propel business incubator. The Big Red Routes team has more members (namely 2 graduate students) who can help with business related and software development related strategies and methods. We intend to build the application from scratch in code to so that we have the flexibility of adding more features (e.g. cost estimates, interactive maps, built in messaging systems). We hope it will serve the Cornell community alongside apps such as Eatery or CourseGrab. Eventually, we hope to reach all college students wanting to rideshare.

Final note

Since Big Red Routes was constructed on a free Bubble.io account, we did not have the ability to publish the app. Please reference the video for a demonstration of the app.

Built With

• bubble.io