Traffic Dodger

Real-time traffic updates, saved route monitoring, and incident alerts to help you beat Houston's notorious traffic and arrive on time.

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Inspiration

When I drive through Houston traffic on the highway, I hate when I have to do abrupt lane changes to avoid an accident or lane closure up ahead. If I had a heads up of which lane(s) to avoid, I wouldn't have to worry as much in the moment and can plan miles ahead of any slowdown.

What it does

The idea is simple: let users know ahead of time which lanes are affected by a traffic-related incident. That way, they can be aware ahead of time and/or merge while traffic is flowing more smoothly. The hope is that, by doing so, you are naturally in a faster flowing lane instead of one stuck due to an incident up ahead.

How we built it

Both the website and the mobile app were initially built in Bolt with final polish being added with the help of Cursor. For mobile development, Expo was a great help and sped up the testing cycle. Netlify is used to host the website and the domain was purchased at a reduced rate through Entri/IONOS. Cloudflare powers a lot of the backend functionality for the core services.

Challenges we ran into

Initially, I wanted way more features to be packed in from the get-go. However, it turned out that this was not as easy to implement as I initially thought. There are placeholders in the app for saved routes and alerts (via push notifications and/or text) which will likely come later, but as a quick and dirty proof of concept, I think this does the job just fine.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Getting something to the finish line (or starting line!) is always fun and rewarding. I hope to continue this little project and see if it can get to a state that helps people on a day-to-day basis.

What we learned

Bolt is an extremely powerful tool. I honestly think its best-in-class for starting new projects. It tends to have the best looking one-shot or few-shot projects and I tend to find myself building small, personal software using Bolt. Expo was also extremely easy and pleasant to work with for mobile development.

What's next for Traffic Dodger

I'll probably begin to work on allowing users to save routes and set up notifications for designated notification windows (e.g. 5-7PM on commute home).

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