“Where Is My Ride?”

My project addresses the issue of the elderly and disabled not knowing where their Access-A-Ride is and having to wait prolonged periods of time to be picked up and transported to their destination.

What inspired me to create this project is hearing stories from my mother who works with the elderly and disabled, along with personal stories from my project sponsor Shanua and others about her parents having difficulty with Access-A-Ride. Hearing about situations where they would have to sit at a specified pick up location that may be located outside where the weather could vary from frigid to scorching. The riders all stay at the designated pick up location due to the fear of missing the ride when it comes. In the case of them missing the ride they face the possibility of being penalized or them losing their ability to use Access-A-Ride completely. Throughout the process of creating my project I took all of these concerns into consideration and created a layout where users can tracker their Access-A-Ride in real time. Hearing about the realities of what these riders have to face in regards to transportation assistance, made me appalled and upset that in this day and age of technology where apps such as Uber and Lyft give theirs riders the ability to track their ride in real time, Access-A-Ride and other similar companies do not have this option. Everything can be known through phones and devices, yet still there are problems like these that no one seems to look upon the needs of the most vulnerable groups of people and hold those that are responsible for their care accountable. Knowing these grievances are occurring day after day, I decided to design a project in hopes of helping the elderly and disabled ride easily.

My project works by giving the power to the rider. The rider would sign in with their ID number and password and enter the reference code of the Access-A-Ride appointment / occurrence or make a new Access-A-Ride pick-up appointment. They would be able to see the location of their driver, the driver's license plate and car type model, and how far away they are from their location. They would also be able to rate the driver after the trip has been completed in order to improve customer service and reliability.

If this could be built, I would have the app partner with Access-A-Ride and other companies so that it helps Access-A-Ride users ride easy and worry-free. Throughout that process, I am also thinking of ways that I can further innovate Where’s My Ride so that it can also help people who may be visually impaired, hard hearing /deaf and some disabilities that may hinder them from using the app.