Inspiration
The idea for the BuSTOP app came to us when we were desperately running towards the bus station after buying our groceries, only for us to be caught by the signal right before the bus stop, causing us to miss the bus. While missing one bus may sound like an insignificant problem, for people who either do not have the money to afford driving cars or cannot drive due to circumstances, one of the only cheap methods of transportation available to them is using busses. We wanted to make travelling for these people as stress-free as we could, and hence BuSTOP was created. We hope that this app not only supports those who use public transportation often, but also incentivizes others to use public transportation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
What it does
BuSTOP allows the riders to notify the nearest bus driver that they are within very close proximity of the bus stop and want to get on the bus, allowing the driver to wait a few seconds for them to reach the bus. Because stalling the bus for a prolonged amount of time is not possible, the app restricts the amount of time the driver will wait for the rider, which can be set individually by each bus driver. On top of this, on the driver side, they are able to input the number of bike racks that are open on the bus, so that for any bikers interested in riding the bus, they would be able to determine if they would be able to ride the bus or possibly cycle part of the way when the rack is full.
How we built it
The app was primarily built around html, javascript and css.
Challenges we ran into
The biggest issue we ran into was setting up a clock where the user could input the desired wait time, and the app would automatically start a timer for the set amount of time. Although we tried debugging the code in many ways, we had to ultimately downgrade the clock on the driver side.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are proud that this served as further development of our coding skills using html and java.
What we learned
With this being our first hackathon, we learned how much programming could be done in the span of 3 days, and how we would have to compromise with messier code at times to achieve the desired result in time.
What's next for BuSTOP
In the future, we want to Implement a GPS system that allows the app to calculate the distance between the rider and the nearest bus stop. Using this distance, the app can determine if the rider could reach the bus stop within the amount of time the driver is willing to wait. On top of this, to ensure that the bus schedule remains the same throughout the day, it would be ideal if we could calculate the cumulative time that the bus has waited for other people and use this value to calculate
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