QuickTravel - UVA

Inspiration

We were inspired by our own experiences at UVA. Sometimes there’s difficulties understanding all of the bus routes and oftentimes getting lost or simply ignoring them, so we wanted to create a better system for students to be able to adequately navigate UVA. In addition, we wanted to add a way for students to list other events and happenings on grounds like club interest meetings, intramural tournaments, etc. by adding those to the map as well.

What it does

We created a web app that takes a user to a map centered around grounds with bus stops populated on the map. A user can first select their starting location and then their destination location and the quickest route from point A to B will be calculated. If a user wants to enter a spot on the map, they can click a non-marked spot on the map and add a marker with a title and description of the entry they’re adding. For example, one could click on the AFC and add “Yoga Session: 2/25 @ 7pm” with a short description, and a marker will be populated at the AFC.

How we built it

We built it on using Flask in Python and HTML/CSS/JavaScript

Challenges we ran into

We had some integration with API issues with Google Maps as well as some issues with nearest bus stop location.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We got the events feature to work pretty well, which was very rewarding to see live, and have many of the features done that we wanted to implement considering how much we lacked sleep; we just need to work on cleanly integrating them together.

What we learned

We learned how to use Flask and utilize that with Google Maps to host and develop a web-based app in Python. We also learned that the flask-googlemaps package did NOT work!

What's next for QuickTravel - UVA

With more time to spend in the future, we aim to improve the bus/walking transition to make it look seamless on how someone would be able to catch a bus and walk and incorporating the bus arrival times to make for better time predictions. We'd also want to make the site look cleaner and more uniform for a better user experience. Additionally, we'd want to push it to a mobile-based app for easier access for students.