CarAamad – The carpooling service

Abstract

115 million people have to travel every day in Pakistan yet Pakistan lacks efficient transport infrastructure. People either travel in public transports or in personal cars. Public transport is neither convenient nor reliable. Moreover, they are not considered safe especially for women. On the other hand, people who own cars drive mostly alone to their workplaces which causes wastage of space and fuel and also puts financial burden on them. One of the solutions to the above mentioned problems can be carpooling, which is basically the sharing of car journeys so that more than one person travels in a car. By having more people using one vehicle, carpooling reduces each person’s travel costs such as fuel costs, tolls, and the stress of driving. But in spite of many attempts of carpooling in Pakistan, this concept hasn’t been received in a welcoming manner in our society. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that generally Pakistanis are not willing to carpool because of the safety and security concerns of our society. Moreover, the dynamics of women commute are different than their male counterparts in our society. All of these reasons combined, carpooling isn’t successful in Pakistan. To make carpooling better adaptable to the needs of our society, this project proposed a secure carpooling service that connects people for travelling together who already know each other. The app connects people that are travelling on the same route and they either belong to the same organization/university or are friends/friends of friends on Facebook. These people can share their rides over a small compensation for fuel. In this way, the ride offeror will get reimbursed for their fuel without going anywhere apart from where they already had to go, and the ride requester gets a secure and economic ride to their destination by travelling with people that he/she already knows. The app also has real time location tracking feature to ensure that the cars stay on their intended route. The app was made keeping in mind the demographics of Pakistani society catering the sensitive cultural issues and security concerns of masses.