U of A Carpool aims to make campus more eco-friendly

An undergraduate student at the University of Alberta has recently created U of A Carpool, a carpooling service aimed at making campus more eco-friendly. 

Kian Kyars is a fourth-year undergraduate student studying computer science at the U of A, and the creator of U of A Carpool. “I created U of A Carpool to try and reduce the amount of traffic coming into the U of A campus,” Kyars said. 

“I saw a few other initiatives that were similar in other university campuses and I thought, why not create something similar for the U of A?”

U of A Carpool is available to anyone with an viable U of A email address. Participants can submit their preferences through a Google Form. These preferences include whether they are driving or riding, maximum distance for matches, and preferred departure times.

Users are then matched with other compatible users. They can find their matches in a Google Sheet that is sent to their email. The Google Sheet refreshes every night at midnight, giving users the possibility for new matches every day.

“Upon submitting [this form], the answers are compared every day with other users,” Kyars said. 

The main way that U of A Carpool ensures the safety of users is by restricting access to people with a viable U of A email address. 

“Once you contact the user, it’s at that point that you’re responsible for how the carpool happens,” Kyars said. 

“In North America, driving a car is very popular, so I try to improve that if I can,” Kyars says

The goal of U of A Carpool is to reduce the number of single occupancy vehicles coming to campus everyday, according to Kyars. 

“That will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by reducing the number of cars,” Kyars said. 

According to Kyars, there are many commuters that come to campus via car. 

“There are many different ways to transport to campus. If people wish to take a car, then I think that it can be optimized through carpooling,” he said. “In North America, driving a car is very popular, so I try to improve that if I can.” 

At the suggestion of users, Kyars is currently working on a few modifications for U of A Carpool. One of which is being able to suggest what parameters to change if a user does not have any matches.

For example, if a user would “like to have more matches, we [could] suggest to increase the distance or adjust their departure time slightly,” Kyars said. 

“I think this is a good feature because it’s currently rare for people to have multiple matches. I think that making these suggestions would be helpful.”