Crowded buses, with passengers jostling for space, are common on Chennai’s roads. The city has many public transport users, including college students and people commuting daily for work. Share autos play a crucial role in providing last-mile connectivity, helping passengers travel from bus stops and MRTS stations to their final destinations. These share autos fill the gap by making multiple stops between bus stations, schools, colleges, and other key locations.
However, the share auto system has its shortcomings, the most notable being that it is unreliable. Share auto drivers often decide daily whether to stop at a specific location. If a designated stop has few commuters waiting, the auto drivers tend not to stop there. That’s why, there is usually a bit of uncertainty for both commuters and drivers.
Read more: Fixed fares and limited passengers – what regulation can mean for share autos in Chennai
We wanted to try and solve these problems in the share auto segment. After speaking to drivers and commuters, the answer seemed to lie in tracking and including share auto requests from commuters to drivers. After conducting research over 10 months, we developed QPo, a unique app for hailing share autos. This app attempts to bridge the gap between public transport users and share autos, and helps auto drivers get adequate rides while augmenting their income.
Here is how the QPo app works:
Demo/Tutorial Video for Rider App
Demo/Tutorial Video for Driver App
Who uses share autos and where?
Share auto routes are fixed, and most regular commuters are familiar with them. For example, the popular OMR route starts at Madhya Kailash and ends at Kelambakkam. While the routes are fixed, the stops are not. Drivers decide whether to stop based on the crowd at each bus stop. During peak hours, they follow the entire route, but at other times, they may stop and wait in between routes.
Our research shows that many college students and IT professionals in Chennai often use share autos. One common route is from Tambaram Railway Station to Prince College in Mambakkam. Students rely on these autos since there are no local trains, metro, or buses connecting to Mambakkam. There are many such routes, and we aim to help all these commuters have a better ride home.
Features of the app:
- It’s absolutely free
- It allows the general public to see the real-time location of the auto.
- Drivers will be able to see how many customers are waiting for a share auto in the next five bus stands (generally any share auto).
- The drivers can locate waiting commuters for up to five stops ahead.
Working with drivers
While we were developing the app, we conducted many surveys among auto drivers, to understand their needs. We also conducted tutorials for drivers on usage of the app. Their main challenge is managing and predicting fluctuations in passenger demand. Often, when share autos arrive at a stop, drivers need to call out to see if there are any commuters wanting a ride.
The app uses a request system to address this problem, allowing commuters to send a stop request to the auto driver. Drivers can then view these requests and decide to stop accordingly. This system could potentially stabilise their income, which depends on the varying crowd levels throughout the day.
In normal circumstances, commuters are not aware of the location of the share auto and when it will arrive at a stop. They may then just take a bus or book a ride through services such as Uber or Ola. With the QPo app, they have a concrete idea of the location of the autos and where they will stop.
The app allows commuters to communicate with the drivers and send them a ride request after checking the share auto’s location. When we explained this to drivers, they showed a lot of interest in using the app. One feedback drivers gave was that the user interface and experience should be familiar, like popular ride-hailing apps, so that they could use it easily.
We only display commuter demand for the next five stops because share autos don’t follow a fixed route. We also introduced more stops within these routes after consulting with drivers and researching popular existing routes.
Key goals for drivers:
- Skip low-demand bus stands and head to high-demand ones, saving time and reducing customer wait times.
- Identify routes with higher demand and choose them over less crowded routes.
Future plans
We have plans to display the directions for routes people want to take via share auto on the app. Currently, drivers can see which stops are being requested, but we aim to show the complete journey from the starting point to the destination.
For riders, we want to give a more accurate estimation of the auto’s arrival time, its real-time location at different points along the route, and the expected wait time.
We want to focus on public transport for two key reasons — firstly, it reduces pollution. Secondly, share autos are economical and accessible to most people. To make these accessible means of transport more reliable, the tracking feature has been helpful.
Apart from the three of us, our team consists of 10 students from St. Joseph’s Institute of Technology, who work as interns and assist us with app development. We have received immense support from the CSE Department at St. Joseph’s Institute of Technology. Dafni Rose, who heads the department has been coordinating with us for incubation, outreach and recruiting interns.
Share autos are a necessity for daily commuters in the city and provide much-needed last-mile connectivity. But currently, they operate in a regulatory vacuum in Chennai and the State government is yet to streamline their services. The Chennai Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority (CUMTA) has proposed a comprehensive bus transport and last-mile connectivity improvement plan for the city that would include the services of share autos.