Solving the Problem

I have come up with a solution for the difficulty of getting around college towns without a car and returning home for the holidays without having to pay an expensive bus or plane ticket. Many students like myself are sick of relying on roomates busy schedules, waiting for the RTS bus, getting frustrated when the bus does not come on time, paying 90$ for a red coach bus home, and even getting ubers to go grocery shopping! My solution is an advanced carpooling app that let’s you plan trips with peers, they can be scheduled weeks in advanced, like a ride back to your hometown hours away. Or, it can be a carpool ride scheduled on the same day to a place in Gainesville, a place hard to get to without an uber, car, or having to wait forever for a bus. The app lets you easily search for people going to the same destination as you on the same day and time. It would also make you create a profile with a picture and bio to allow you to see who the driver and other passengers would be.

Testing the Hypothesis Part 1

1.         Students without a car are not able to easily move around Gainesville without taking the bus, which does not stop at many places around town and can be unreliable. It is also hard for them to go home for the holidays or breaks without paying for a bus ticket that can cost up to 90$.

2.         The who: University Students without a car

The what: They are unable to get to places they need to quickly and cheaply.

The why: Bus routes do not stop everywhere, ubers and other services are expensive, and organizing a carpool is difficult

3.         I believe many people have a need for a way to get somewhere without having a car and without having to pay a lot of money. But in Gainesville and most college campuses I think it is mostly students because most families and professors have a car.

I think people have tried to come up with solutions, for example there is a Facebook group called UF Ride Board in which you can post when you are going home for a break, when, and how much you charge. However, students post about it like the day before and you really have no idea who they are. It is difficult to search for a specific time or place you want to go with so many people posting at all times. I think this is a need around town also. For example, if I want to go to let’s say a plaza on archer and want to go to Trader Joe’s I have to either call an uber or wait for one of my roomates to have free time and be willing to drive me there. I know there are students driving there all the time so it would be great if there was an easy way to coordinate and catch a ride with them.

4.         After the interviews I was reassured that this is definitely a need people experience here at UF. One student said she has paid 100$ for a Red Coach back to Miami because she wanted to go home and needed a ride for the next day. One of my friends has a membership at Orange Theory and says sometimes she can only get there by uber which is a waste of money and she wishes she knew people who attend the gym who could drive her also. I asked the students I interviewed what the best way around for them is. Three said they mostly walk places because everything is pretty close, but the other two said they take the bus. One said it is a pretty good system and RTS has buses running almost every 5 minutes, but that many routes stop early or take forever to get to where she wants to go. One student told me she paid 450$ for a plane ticket back home to Miami during Thanksgiving because all the buses were booked and her friends had already left home. This assured me that I was not the only one facing this problem and there were other carless students struggling.