I visited Pune this month and came back with an app idea: EcoRoute
After a trip to Pune this October, I kept wondering which way of getting around was actually cheapest and greenest. EcoRoute is a mobile app that compares routes and plans a whole month of commutes with a calendar.
Earlier this month I visited Pune, and I came back with an app idea.
Every time I had to get somewhere, I had the same small debate with myself. Metro or auto? Cab or share a ride? [Add one real moment from your trip: a fare that surprised you, a long wait, a crowded ride.] Each choice was easy on its own. But I had no idea which one was actually cheaper, or what it meant for the air in the city.
I was only visiting for a few days. The people who live there make those choices every day. That's what EcoRoute is for.
The idea
EcoRoute helps a commuter see two things side by side for every route: what it costs and how much CO₂ it produces. The aim is to make the cheapest and greenest option the easy one to pick.
The app has five sections:
- Home for comparing routes between two places
- Planner for planning a whole month of travel
- Carpool for finding shared rides
- Impact for seeing money saved and emissions avoided
- Profile for your details and settings
[Add a line or two on why you chose these, for example why Carpool and Impact each get their own tab.]
The 30-Day Planner
This is the part I care about most.
Comparing routes for a single trip is easy. But nobody commutes once. You commute twenty-odd times a month, on the same route, at about the same time. A saving of ₹40 and a few hundred grams of CO₂ looks small. Over a month it adds up to real money and real emissions.
My first idea for the planner was a simple summary card. I decided that wasn't enough, because it didn't let people say when they travel. So I designed it as a calendar.
Here's how it works:
- Pick any day of any month, in any year, and add a trip with a start, a destination and a time.
- Add a return trip with its own time if you need one.
- Choose how the trip repeats: every day, weekdays, weekends, custom days, or monthly.
- Choose how long it keeps repeating: this month, 3 months, 6 months, the rest of the year, or no end.
- Skip a single day, such as a holiday, without touching the rest.
The rule I designed it around is that if someone makes the same journey 20 days a month, they should never have to fill in 20 entries. Set it once and you're done.
Before you save, the app tells you what you're signing up for, for example "22 trip days in October". Under the calendar you see an estimated monthly cost, the CO₂ prevented, and a recommended mix of travel modes.
Those numbers currently come from simulated Pune routes, and the app labels them that way. I'd rather be upfront about it than pretend they're live data.
What it's built with
- Expo and React Native, with Expo Router for navigation
- TypeScript
- NativeWind for styling
- AsyncStorage to save plans on the phone for now
Where AWS fits in
[Fill this in with the AWS services you actually plan to use or already use: where trips and plans are stored, how route and cost calculations run, how users sign in. If it's still planned, say it's planned.]
What's next
- Replace the simulated routes with real Pune transit and fare data
- Move saved plans from the phone to a backend, so they follow you across devices
- Compare a planned month against what the user actually travelled
- Make the monthly PDF report real instead of a placeholder
Why I'm building it
I went to Pune as a visitor and came back wanting to make that city's commute a little cheaper and cleaner for the people who live there. EcoRoute is my attempt at that.
And if I win the AirPods, they'll be on my next trip, with a playlist on and a route that costs a bit less than the last one.
If you live in Pune, I'd love to hear what you'd want from an app like this.
Tags
Pick the closest matches from the dropdown: mobile, sustainability, react-native, typescript, and aws (or getting-started).
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