An app to schedule & optimize after-school pickup, reduce vehicle idling / emissions, save time & money
This is a project stub/beginning to present, discuss, and gather support for a free and open source system/app to schedule the pickup of children after school and to avoid the long lines of polluting vehicles, wasted time, and wear on cars.
If you have seen school dismissals, you have likely seen a long line of cars idling their engines for half an hour or even more before the dismissal. All the parents compete to be first in line, so they come earlier and earlier. Many or most keep their engines running the entire time, even when the weather is nice. Many vehicles now automatically shut off their engines automatically at stop lights, yet we are still idling our engines for half an hour in carline.
Idling vehicles produce emissions which harm the environment and the air quality. This is bad for everyone who breathes the air; and even worse for children, whose lungs are still developing.
In this critical time for our environment, we have a solution at our fingertips! Just like the theme parks do with "Fast Pass," we can schedule cars to come at appropriate times and eliminate the wait.
Each parent would be given a time window in which to arrive.
The app would cycle parents’ positions around on different days so that one day you get to be first in line, the next day someone else, and so on. So Sally Smith might pick up toward the end of the line on Monday; Tuesday she’d pick up a little earlier, and so on…
This would help families. It would save parents half an hour of time per day at pickup. It would save them gas. It would save them wear on their cars (idling for long periods is bad for engines). It would reduce the pollution that parents, children, and staff breathe. All of this in turn helps our children - when parents benefit, it trickles down to the children. When families do better, they can do more to help the school.
People in the city would be appreciative as this would end the backup onto the street and reduce pollution in the town.
There are other useful things that could be included in the app.
Let’s say a parent/child has an appointment after school and needs to pick up among the first in line. A feature in the app would allow the parent to request this, and the app would account for this by later pickup(s) on some other day(s).
We could optionally allow families who carpool to get an early place in line. This would encourage families to help the environment and reduce traffic.
I have surveyed the existing school pickup apps that are available. There are apps that:
- allow schools to track when children are picked up
- allow parents to authorize other parents to pick up their children
- allow the school and children to see which parents are in carline or on their way
- allow schools to create parking lot group pickup times
All of the above features could potentially be included in this app.
However, I have not seen any app that allows actual scheduling of the carline sequence / times.
This helps to improve our children’s future, and the wellbeing of many. Climate change is a humanitarian problem because it causes more severe weather, which results in decreased agricultural yields and crop losses. This causes problems for the world on a whole but starvation among vulnerable populations.
Through this project we can set an example for our children to make a better world.
Of course, there are many details to be worked out. For example:
What if a parent does not have a smartphone? They can use the supporting website to get their assigned pickup times for the week.
What if a parent refuses to use the system? Their daily pickup time will be at the end of pickup.
How will we know what time a parent arrives? The app uses GPS just like Walmart pickup. We can also use voice recognition to record the times / names that get announced by the teacher over the loudspeaker.
What if a parent arrives at the wrong time? They can still pick up their child. But they get a point penalty in the app, which results in them getting later times the following week.
There could be a point system. The closer a parent arrives to their assigned time, the more points they get each day. Carpooling could give bonus points. Each week, the order is determined by the number of points each family/parent has.
If you would help to support this project, please show your support in the project discussion section or email Bryan at info@alwayslearn.org