LNC RideLink

The mission of LNC RideLink is to help reduce costs, traffic, and carbon emissions within the Lake Norman Charter School community.

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Inspiration

The hassle of finding and organizing a carpool group through scattered social media apps is what inspired me to create LNC RideLink.

When my parents tried to organize a carpool group for my sister, it took many days to fully establish a carpool group for Lake Norman Charter School. My project aims to help members of LNC efficiently organize carpool groups to reduce traffic and environmental impact.

What it does

LNC RideLink allows parents to create or join carpool groups for their children. These groups can be filtered based on campus, activity, location, and time, helping users find carpool groups with similar routes.

Parents can also use the Ride Chat feature to privately communicate with other parents about the carpool. The dashboard displays information about the environmental and monetary impact of the parent.

How I built it

First, I programmed the back end of the project using Flask 3.1.3, and I used SQLite to create the database. Werkzeug 3.1.8 was implemented to encrypt passwords through hashing for security.

The front end of the project was created using HTML5, CSS3, Bootstrap, Javascript, and Jinja. The entire project was programmed in Python 3.13.

Challenges I ran into

One issue that I faced in the creation of this project was variable names getting mixed up. When updating the project, some of the variable names had to be changed across the front end, the back end, and the database.

This caused a lot of confusion and many programming errors. To solve this strenuous obstacle, I carefully traced the variables through each part of the application and searched for outdated variable names that needed to be updated. I then tested the application to make sure the changes were consistent across the front end, back end, and database.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

After many weeks of progress and construction, I am proud to say that this project is fully functioning and is ready for use.

Every part of the database, back end, and front end work properly with no issues, and the only steps remaining are to add more images, improve the style of the web app, and fix any additional bugs.

What I learned

Through working on this project, I learned the value of perseverance and time management in developing a large-scale web application before a deadline. I also learned more about the Bootstrap library and how it can be used to make webpages look more appealing to users.

As someone new to hackathons and programming in general, this project has helped me to further develop my problem solving and website design skills.

What's next for LNC RideLink

In the future, I hope to implement the following features:

  • Google Maps to provide users with a better understanding of their carpool route
  • AI assistant chat bot that users can talk to if they need help navigating the web app
  • Carpool matchmaking calculator to find the best rides for each user
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