Inspiration
Durham is a wonderful place but one thing it lacks is good public transport and taxi services. Meaning that every night many students very far from home are strander, drunk, cold and incapable of looking after themselves after a night out. Yet they still make the arduous journey in the middle of the night intoxicated back to their colleges. This can be especially dangerous if you have to go through dark wooded areas or if you are by yourself.
Many times I have had to take my friends home on a 30minute walk or just stumbled across collapsed men and women in the street who were too drunk to go home. The student union had an answer to this. A night bus, it would pick you up no matter where you are and take you home for £2. Problem is that is not advertised well (ask anyone if they know what it is, they likely won't - the number is hidden on a 95 page document), notoriously difficult to get hold of and not very user friendly to use (you have to describe where you are to the driver over the phone = nightmare). Factor in the fact that your drunk and you can see why students don't use this excellent service and put themselves at risk by going home.
The night bus is the safe way for lone students to get around Durham safely:
When studying late in the library to get home To get to and from the train station late at night To travel between colleges To get to or from late bars and nightclubs You’re visiting friends At the cinema or theatre
What it does
DUber is essentially an SOS get me home now app. Let me set the scene, a student on night out decided that it would be wise to down a bottle of vodka and now needs to head home. He lives in the hill college, half an hour away. He pulls out the app, hits the pick me up button. The night bus driver is pinged his picture, location and the student is given an ETA. The driver and the student both get each other's numbers and can contact each other if the student or driver can't find each other. The App handles the payment and whether the student paid. We get all the data from CIS so the driver and the union know exactly who is using the service.
How we built it
The app consists of two major components. An app which the driver and student will use and a PHP REST API. The API scrapes the student data from Durham username and password and handles all the DB operations and provides the endpoints which the app relies on.
Challenges we ran into
Operating around the constraints of the universities systems was the only challenge we faced. Trying to get a way to authenticate on Durham's portal using students passwords and username was quite a challenge. (This was omitted from this release due to security concerns, will be work on and put back in at a future date)
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We have a working app and the API is functional. Although both need refining we have proven that it is feasible and intend on carrying on development on the project and handing it over to the student union.
What's next for DUber
There is a genuine potential here. I have called the night bus to get many of my friends home. But hardly anyone knows about it. I have seen many people frantically try to ring cab companies or call an actual uber. Only to be disappointed. If they are really really really lucky they will run into a rep that will take them home. But if not they are stranded and if they are in the hill colleges they have a good half hour walk just to get home. We intend on developing this fully and giving it to the union for free. I think this will be especially helpful for freshers and will significantly increase the safety of students.
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