>> What to do COVID crew?
My name is Mohammad Said.
>> I'm Nilay Patel.
We are two members of Team 26 due to minor inconveniences,
the other three members of our team could not make it today.
But we created MedRide,
which is a community powered ride sharing service
for medical employees.
Mo take the floor.
>> All right.
So our proposed solution is MedRide
and basically this is a ride sharing service,
specifically designed for medical employees to get to
and from their workplace
and basically parking drop off pick up zones.
There is an estimated need of 3,500 to 4,000 medical
employees that use the buses each day.
And we want to set up an alternative
system of transportation,
which allows for a decreased risk of COVID transmission,next
so basically the issue is in regards to transportation
is not going to be possible to operate the bus system
as it previously works.
Due to social distancing needs,
research suggests that public transportation is one of
the largest ways to virus spreads
and to reduce this risk,
we need to reduce the amount of passengers on the buses.
In big aspect of bus riders is medical employees getting
from their parking spots all across campus to the hospital.
And this, our MedRide solution
will allow us to circumvent this issue, next.
So who does this solution currently service?
Our statistics show that
there's sixty five to thirty five
split of students to employees on the buses.
So this MedRide ride sharing service would essentially
serve 35% of the bus riding population,
which will just decrease
the overall strain on the bus system
and allow employees to get to and from work faster,
more efficiently, next.
Just an overview of our solution,
it is basically a smart taxi system,
which decreases the total number of bus riders.
We believe that this proposal will allow members of the
community to use their personal vehicles,
to transport medical employees from
predetermined pickup zones
and bring them to the hospital
and drop them back off at the zone at the end of the day.
And our answer to this problem is MedRide, next.
As I mentioned earlier,
basically this is not a complete replacement to the
bus system for medical employees.
It is just an alternate system which
will reduce strain on bus travel, next.
So the mechanics of our solution,
one really important aspect of our system is safety
and authentication.
We want to make sure our riders feel safe
when they're boarding these cars,
different riders and different cars throughout the day.
So in order for the system to work efficiently,
we need to have a authentication system which
will allow our drivers to have
some form of license plate authentication,
which the rider can put into our app beforehand
and get on the correct car,
which will like match with a license plate,
which can be fun in a database, next.
>> So to determine, our pickup and drop off zones,
we looked at data where
after talking to some transportation officials,
we looked at data regarding
where medical employees tend to park the most,
and we came up with about eight specific parking spots
well, actually seven.
The union is only there to a account for students
that will need to go to the hospital for research or
volunteering or whatever else they may need to go there for.
And drop off zones,
we picked four places in the hospital that seemed to be
common places where employees and students
would like to be dropped off.
And those places are namely the Med Sci Research Building,
University Hospital, the Children's Hospital,
and the Kellogg Eye Center.
For requirements for the drivers
they must obviously provide their own car,
their personal vehicle,
and the university will inspect the car for safety.
Also, the university will
determine age requirements for drivers depending on if they
want students to participate in the MedRide service.
And then the drivers will have to pass a screening
and a background check.
And of course they're responsible for the insurance of their
own personal vehicle.
As for payment,
we're proposing a payment system on a per ride basis rather
than an hourly system
and to kind of incentivize these drivers,
we're proposing a peak pay system,
similar to the food delivery service DoorDash.
This will incentivize workers to sign up for shifts where
there's more demand for drivers
as more employees are moving back and forth between the
hospital and their parking spots.
And drivers will be compensated more money at these times.
Rides are free for medical employees
since the buses are free for them in the current system.
Medical employees will get up to two free rides a day.
Usually that means back and forth between their parking spot
and the hospital and the drivers will
be paid by the university.
This is a graphic that kind of illustrates what
the system will look like in action.
So in the bottom right corner,
you see a parking lot,
the blue rectangles represent individual vehicles that will
be driven by our drivers
and the pink dots in the perpendicular direction
represent hospital employees.
So each car will take two employees at a time to maintain
proper social distancing rules.
And then once two employees are in,
the car will move on.
And then the next car in the line will move forward,
take two more employees and so on and so forth.
We believe that this idea is sustainable because we will
require drivers to sign up for shifts in advance to ensure
that there's a constant flow of drivers
so that hospital employees are never really stuck in either
their parking spot or the hospital.
And we anticipate there being plenty of drivers as in the
Washtenaw County community,
there are plenty of Uber Lyft drivers who
will be looking for an extra source of income
now that nightlife is not as prevalent in the
Ann Arbor area.
So we believe that they will
have an incentive to join the MedRide system.
So that is a basic summary of our idea MedRide
and I hope that you enjoyed listening to it,
and we're excited to potentially implement this.