Co Travel



http://www.cotravel.uk

Twitter Feed (@cotraveluk)

Facebook Page

cotravel - Collaborative taxi journeys for people going to the same locations and helping support local taxi firms by promoting taxis as a reliable, convenient and affordable alternative.

About cotravel
Connecting travellers in Norwich for sharing cab rides and reducing the cost of your journey.

Problem
''Sharing cabs is common practice around the world, but in the UK it can be hard to arrange when travelling on your own. How do you meet people you can share a taxi with, how do you agree on a departure time and where will you meet? Sharing a taxi is appealing nonetheless as you can substantially reduce your travelling costs. So how do you connect travellers who have never met before?''

Solution
''cotravel solves this problem with an online platform where travellers can register their interest in travelling at a specific time to a specific destination. Travellers can see other travellers they can share a taxi with, agree on a place and a time to meet. Cotravel will extend this matchmaking functionality over time to aid travellers and make their journey more comfortable by offering online payment support, automatic scheduling of return journeys, etc. All of this will be offered through an easy to use online application that anyone with a mobile device can use on their journey.''

Marketing and Launch
cotravel beta was launched to allow customers to register on 22nd November 2014 and has a marketing campaign spanning social media and flyer drops within Norwich City Center. The beta gives the example journey of Norwich Train Station to the University of East Anglia. When fully released, passengers can specify their journeys, allowing for greater flexibility.

Cotravel has a presence on social networks, integrating Facebook logins.

Example Case
''Picture Norwich station at 5pm, with a traveller arriving from London by train, a student leaving the Compleat Angler and a shopper who has just completed the groceries at Morrisons for the week. All of them are looking to get back to the UEA campus at a reasonable price.''

- The traveller opens the cotravel website and indicates they would like to travel to UEA campus at 5.10pm from Norwich Train station, and is willing to share a cab.

- The student opens the cotravel website and sees the traveller is someone he could share a cab with. They registers interest as well.

- The shopper opens the cotravel website and finds the traveller and student as cab sharers and registers as well

- The traveller, student and shopper go towards the meeting point at Norwich station at 5.10pm with their taxi from a license local firm waiting. They shortly introduce themselves and get into a shared cab to make their way to UEA campus, quietly pleased they have cut their costs by at least 50%.

Founder
David Cutting (@davex0x29a)

''David is a PhD student in Software Engineering at the University of East Anglia and he came up with the original idea for Co Travel. David is a technology oriented guy with a love for unknown programming languages.''

Team Members
Tom Brown (@Tom_Brown1)

David Cutting (@davex0x29a)

Rod Humby (@rodhumby)

Steve Jones (@sjjones85)

Ed Morgan (@edmorgan46)

Joost Noppen (@JARNoppen)

Adam Ziolkowski (@adsized)

Daniel Bloom (@DanielJBloom)

cotravel – public API specifications
The cotravel system provides a public API which allows third-parties to search travel availability. This can then be used or embedded in any system.

Making an API Request
To make a request to the API you need: The cotravel public API URL is: http://cotravel.uk/cotravel.php You can make GET or POST requests to this URL.
 * 1) The URL
 * 2) A correctly formatted command
 * 3) Correctly formatted data if applicable
 * 4) An ability to parse the JSON output

The command string must be passed as a parameter named ‘command’ and is a string describing the function.

Currently the only function provided for is searching jouneys with the command taxijourney/search

The data element is an associative array (created by jQuery or similar if appropriate) containing a series of optional fields to refine the search. These fields are as follows:
 * from - string describing start location

Note that all the above fields are optional. If they are not provided all records matching that field will be returned other than those already passed. So searching with no specifications will provide all the future journeys.
 * to - string describing finish location
 * date - date of journey (YYYY-MM-DD)
 * time - time of journey (HH:MM)
 * period - period (in hours) on each side of time to return

Return data is in JSON format and is an array of journeys, each journey containing the following named data elements:
 * journeyed - unique identifier (integer)
 * from - journey from (string)
 * to - journey to (string)
 * datetime - journey in full YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM
 * date - journey date only YYYY-MM-DD
 * time - journey time only HH:MM
 * people - number of people signed up (integer)
 * updated - timestamp last changed (YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS)
 * created - timestamp created (YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS)
 * ourjourney - 1 if customer’s journey 0 if not (always 0 if not logged on)