UTMACH Rides -- I Built a Carpooling App So My Classmates Stop Paying $3 for a 10-Minute Ride

This is a submission for the DEV Weekend Challenge: Community The Community I'm an 8th-semester Information Technology student at the Facultad de Ingeniería Civil, Universidad Técnica de Machala (UTMACH) in El Oro province, Ecuador. I live in Piñas -- a small town up in the highlands, about 1.5 hours from campus by road. Every single day I make that commute, and so do 14,000+ students spread across 5 campuses and 14 different cantons -- Pasaje, Santa Rosa, Zaruma, El Guabo, Huaquillas, and more. Here's the problem: there is no public transit system connecting most of these towns to the campuses. Students either: 💸 Pay $2–3 each way for informal taxi/bus rides (on a student budget, that's $20–30/week gone) 🛤️ Stand on the highway hoping to catch a shared pickup truck ❌ Skip class entirely when they can't afford the ride But cost isn't even the scariest part. Security is a real, daily concern. Ecuador has been going through one of the worst spikes in violent crime in its history. As CS/I