Mariah Furtek: BPool would be safe alternative to ride sharing

You’ve just packed an overnight bag and you’re standing in your dorm at 9:30 p.m. on a Friday night, about to walk to Westwood and get into a stranger’s car.

Your phone buzzes ominously, a text from an unknown number jolting you out of a daydream. …

“Let’s meet behind the Chevron, I’ll be in a black Honda with my hazards on,” it reads.

Though this sounds like the setup of an illicit drug deal, it’s a fairly normal conversation for thousands of UCLA students using the two UCLA ride share pages on Facebook.

Students use these pages, which have more than 11,000 and 9,000 members, respectively, to arrange carpools and minimize the costs of traveling. Many take trips home on the weekends from Los Angeles to San Diego, Riverside or the Bay Area – often for $30 less than it would take to go by train. Anyone with a car who has access to one of the Facebook ride share pages can post prices and proposed routes, leaving desperate students to battle it out in the comments for a spot in the backseat. Students then tend to rely on Facebook Messenger to finalize ride transactions. These carpool agreements typically take place between strangers who aren’t even Facebook friends prior to riding together.

These Facebook pages, however, are hardly improvements on the outdated ride share bulletin boards our parents posted notices on when they were in college. If students could use a mobile app specifically designed for the UCLA community to arrange their carpools, this process wouldn’t be as outdated and ineffective. An app would streamline the ride share process and improve safety and efficiency by better organizing carpool options and allowing riders to rate each other.

And there is an app that can do just that, but it needs UCLA’s marketing to help get it off the ground. UCLA student programming group DevX is in the final development stages of an app called “BPool,” which is designed to restrict use to UCLA students and streamline the ride search process. DevX created the app to address the shortcomings of the ride share pages. UCLA should support DevX in promoting BPool, as doing so would make ride sharing safer and more convenient for students.

The current ride share system creates safety concerns for students.

“Not knowing who the driver is could be intimidating for some people who are worried about their safety, especially because ride shares usually meet so late at night,” said Marc Farah, a second–year microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics student. “The way ride share is set up now, it is pure chance that you get a good driver.”

In this way, the ride share pages are similar to Uber and Lyft – except there isn’t a rating system to vouch for the strangers you are about to drive with. This means there is nothing to help drivers avoid inconsiderate passengers or help passengers avoid unsafe drivers.

And, like any Vegas junkie will tell you, sometimes the roulette spin just doesn’t land in your favor.

On several occasions, I have had drivers cancel at the last moment, leaving me stranded in deserted parking lots. I have even shown up to a pickup location only to find that the person driving me wasn’t even a UCLA student.

These are concerns BPool’s team, which has been working since fall quarter, aims to address. Though the app is minimalist now, lead developer George Archbold, a fourth-year computer science student, hopes to include a ratings system in the app and develop an algorithm that tracks user history and flags relevant new ride options. A prototype of the app should be ready in spring quarter.

Cristen Anderson, a fourth-year computer science student and the current president of UCLA’s chapter of Upsilon Pi Epsilon, an international computer and information science honor society, noted that such an app would need to reach a critical mass of users to function well.

This is where UCLA Transportation can step in.

“UCLA has newsletters, alumni connections, media outlets – that is not something we have,” Archbold said. “We would gain legitimacy for the app with UCLA support, if UCLA were willing to meet with us and test out the app.”

Archbold acknowledged that for UCLA to endorse BPool, the app would undoubtedly have to meet a number of safety and functionality requirements. But as the app is not yet in the final stages of development, there is enough time before the target release date for UCLA to play a role in shaping the final product.

Thousands of students are already using ride shares without the added safety measures – such as user profiles, ride history, and ratings – that BPool would bring. It wouldn’t be hard for UCLA to endorse BPool while protecting itself legally by inserting a liability waiver and disclaimer into the app’s sign up process.

Moreover, student programmers have already done the majority of the work needed to launch BPool. UCLA would not need to hire costly programmers and app developers, only consult on and market the final format of the app.

BPool will provide a way for students to escape the inconveniences and horrors of UCLA’s ride share Facebook pages. And UCLA should encourage the endeavor so that next time a student opens a car door to get into a ride share, they have some peace of mind.