MBTA Leapfrog

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  An image of the mockup of the homepage of the site!

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  Mascot! "Silly Frog Icon SVG Repo" by SVG Repo is marked with CC0 1.0.

Inspiration

I went into this Hackathon planning to take on one of the given challenges by the sponsors. When I heard about the challenge to create the mapping software for MBTA for the HNTB challenge, I wanted to try there. In the past, I've worked with Open Street Maps, and I use public transit all the time as a New Yorker.

What it does

The core idea of MBTA Leapfrog was a standard transit planner with station transfer support, that would allow a user to input their route using standard language. By just talking to the app's conductor/msacot Hopper, the frog AI companion would interpret the user's message and suggest a set of stations/times that would be feasible. This would be useful for the rushed traveler, who doesn't have time to tap at a screen as they rush to the train station! This would also serve as an accessibility feature for the physically or visually impaired, who might have difficulty entering the station information.

How we built it

I've done some mobile development before, but I wanted to build to all platforms. I found Flutter/Dart, and began spending the project learning that.

Challenges we ran into

My laptop had a bunch of old files from when I transfered from an arm64 chips, and many XCode files were improperly linked. This made getting the simulator running very tricky at first! I also spent a lot of time learning the software on my own - in the future I'll definitely take a more "learn and write" approach, since I found myself spending hours on tutorial projects in the first half of the event.

I was NOT able to get all the features I wanted implemented. I definitely overestimated my individual abilities for this, as well as underestimated the scope of the project.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I'm glad I got auto search and a basic map system working! I thought this would take a lot longer to implement.

What we learned

I feel much more well versed in flutter, and mobile development in general!

What's next for MBTA Leapfrog

I'd be interested in continuing this app. I think accessible and assistive transport apps are important, and I think AI poses a unique ability to declutter potential sources of confusion when route planning. If I were to continue with the app, I would finish adding the AI assistant Hopper, as well as route transfer support.

Built With

• dart
• flutter
• mbta
• xcode