Dehradun Public Transport
System Design
App Design
Group Project
3 months
In my 7th semester of college, we were asked to pick a domain in order to identify flawed systems and propose solutions for them. This project was the result of us looking in the roadways of India or more specifically, Dehradun.
The Problem
Existing transportation system for students and villagers are very uncomfortable and outdated
Most of the students attending UPES’ campuses in Bidhauli and Kandhauli, as well as a large part of the natives, use a form of ride sharing, known locally as the Trekkers, to get to the city. This trekker system is dominant in these areas due to how cheap it. This monopolization of this region by trekkers means that students and villagers have to put up with issues like:
Overcrowded rides
Long wait times
Payment friction
Creepy people
Traffic on small roads
Unsafe driving
A part of the Bidholi - Premnagar stretch. The road along this route is surrounded by the forests and mountains, with the certain sections passing through villages.
A trekker dropping of a passenger
Our Solution
A three face solution built to improve passenger experience for the present and the future
Screens from the current application UI.
Process
A deeper dive into how we discovered and solved the problem
Interviews
General reported wait times were 10-15 mins
We conducted interviews with student passengers, older passengers, faculties, villages, drivers and other stakeholders impacted by the this mode of transport. We also conducted quantitative research through online surveys. We gained the following insights:
Long wait times
Student passengers often complained about how difficult it is at times to get a ride, with wait times exceeding 30 minutes at a time. Some passengers said its nearly impossible to get a trekker with available seats in some of the stops.
Uncomfortable
Passengers felt uncomfortable with being stuck in the overcrowded rides, especially with people of the other gender.
Payment friction
Students preferring UPI while drivers preferred cash was another major issue. Students preferred UPI as getting cash was a difficult issue, with the whole village relying on one ATM, which is often out of service or empty as per students.
Bluffed out of fares
Drivers preferred cash over UPI because they were at times tricked out of fares by students showing them old payments at busy stops.
Traffic jams
When asked about how trekkers cause traffic by stopping suddenly, the drivers responded that they do so because of passenger demands.
Stakeholder maps
Understanding what stakeholders want and how they impact each other
My Learnings
The most significant learning was to see how parts of the system impacted each other
Particularly when talking to the drivers and when creating the influence map, I was amazed at how the different stakeholders impacted each other and in how many different ways they did so. I started to think about how different systems/teams/components work in a product.