Project Name

Developer Names:

• Aysu Ozdal
• Andrew Thompson
• Arvind Shastri
• George Yazji
• Stanley Nguyen

Date of project start:

Monday September 16th, 2024

Project Description:

For many student / faculty drivers, the McMaster shuttle bus service is their main method of transportation from off-campus parking to campus, and vice-versa. Those who use these parking lots (eg. Lot M, Lot P, etc.) do not have an idea of when shuttle buses will arrive at their nearest stop, as they are generally inconsistent with arrival times. This negatively affects the schedules of many commuters and adds to the frustration of getting to/from campus.

We propose a project whose goal is to provide clarity into this problem by making a general purpose support application for these commuters. Commuters can track shuttle bus arrival/departure times at their nearest station, and parking office administration can send public notifications, modify routes, and manage shuttle bus information and availability.

Here are the main proposed features of this application:

1. Provide users with live departure times (and location) of shuttle bus(ses).
2. Provide users with other relevant shuttle bus information (number of active busses, scheduled maintenance, change in schedule, etc)
3. For admin to be able to provide urgent push notifications (in event of bus breakdown, road closure, etc).
4. For admin to accommodate additional buses on route, and add/extend/modify bus routes in the future.
5. For commuters to provide general feedback / report issues to parking admin.
6. Potentially provide tools for admin to perform data analysis to improve scheduling / routes (to be discussed with the parking office).
7. Potentially provide a way for drivers to have buses uniform distance from each other (to be discussed with the parking office).

The folders and files for this project are as follows:

docs - Documentation for the project refs - Reference material used for the project, including papers src - Source code test - Test cases etc.