Unicar
Design for Sustainable Mobility
Description
The problem of mobility affects all people every day regardless of whether or not they have their own means of transportation. The idea of Unicar was born from my personal experience as a student in southern Italy, forced to contend with the many critical issues of public transportation and the high costs of running a private car. To overcome these problems, I started sharing my car, and related expenses, with other students by implementing a rudimentary form of carpooling, almost unknowingly. From this experience, the project idea was born. After conducting initial research on alternative forms of urban mobility, a questionnaire was administered to university students in Lecce, which confirmed the initial hypotheses about the problems and needs of student mobility and the need to find solutions. Therefore, Unicar, a carpooling app that aims to facilitate the mobility of students and university professors by allowing them to share the journey to the faculty, while also positively affecting the environment, was created. Unicar, in fact, is designed to reach the faculty by car, conveniently and quickly, at preferred times, socializing and, above all, in a sustainable way thanks to the exploitation of an underutilized resource: empty seats. In Italy, in fact, the average car occupancy rate is only 1.17 passengers per car, one of the lowest in Europe. By sharing car trips, fewer of them are on the road, and therefore less traffic, Co2 emissions are saved and the risk of accidents is reduced; instead, available parking spaces are increased. The benefits are, first and foremost environmental but also economic, costs are shared, and social. Through carpooling, in fact, one can meet live peers, as opposed to social, with similar interests. Using Unicar is simple and intuitive. After registering, one can search for or create trips, entering the required information: route specifications, date specifications, trip preferences, finding those who are leaving from or going through one’s home city, headed to one’s faculty. With each trip made, a progress bar indicates the accumulated Co2 emission savings, which allows for milestones and related rewards. There is a feedback system, to navigate through the users and choose the most suitable for one’s needs. Unicar’s innovation is to have applied carpooling to a well-defined target audience (university students), in areas poorly served by public transportation. The app’s goal is also to try to educate the student population on the importance of controlling the impact of their lifestyle on the environment and to show how their daily actions can contribute to a more sustainable future.
