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🚘 Carpooling with Neighbours

A zero-cost, minimal interaction solution for carpooling with your neighbours, using Google Apps Script.

This is a beneficial solution for:

• Residential buildings
• Offices / large companies
• Close-knit communities

Table of contents

• How it works
• Benefits
• Setup
• Development
• FAQ
• Inspiration

How it works

A neighbour offers a ride by filling out a form. Every Sunday, an email is sent after 18:00 with a list of available rides for the upcoming week to all those interested. Neighbours can also check the latest available rides on a webpage.

Hey Sally Carrera,

Here are the available rides for next week:

🚘 California International Speedway | Wednesday, Aug 20, 13:37 PM
Driver: Lightning McQueen (+0123456789)
Meet: Mater's Garage (Radiator Springs) | Seats: 3

🚘 Brunch @ Central Perk Coffeehouse | Saturday, Aug 23, 12:00 AM
Driver: Joey Tribianni (Apt. 4, +0123456789)
Meet: Downstairs | Seats: 4

If any of them work for you, just reach out to the driver to reserve a spot.

You can also offer a ride here: https://forms.gle/ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQ

If you'd rather not receive these updates, tell us by replying to this email, 
and we'll remove you manually.

Cheers,
The Carpooling with neighbours Team

To use this solution, someone in the community / neighbourhood must fulfill the role of the Admin. The Admin needs to manually add users to a spreadsheet. Only users listed in the spreadsheet can receive the Sunday email or offer rides using the form.

💡 If you don’t plan to send the Sunday email, you only need to add drivers to the spreadsheet

💡 To improve the chances of success, start with a small group of neighbours. Once you've tested it together and seen how it works, you can announce it to the community: Hey, we are a group of X neighbours who have tried [...]

Benefits

1. Zero costs! No app instalations or account registrations required (except for drivers⁽¹⁾)

2. It works for any number of users⁽²⁾

3. It’s a simple way to get in touch with your neighbours and help lessen the traffic in your area

⁽¹⁾ Drivers must have a verified Google account to offer rides through the form

⁽²⁾ Sunday email. 100 is the daily email quota for free accounts and 1500 for workspace ones

Setup

To get started, you’ll need to decide whether to use a personal Google account or a secondary one. Note that emails will be sent using your email address, using plus addressing ([email protected]).

To install:

• The easiest way is to copy the public project from Google Apps Script into your account
• Alternatively, if you’re tech-savvy, you can use clasp on the downloaded project

Now, on your project page:

1. Click the project settings icon ⚙️ on the left side of the page and pick your time zone

2. Also on the left, click the code editor symbol < > and open the src/_main.gs file.

3. In this file, choose the language by modifying the second line of code, then save the change by clicking 💾, or using Ctrl + S or CMD + S. Possible options are:
   en - English
   ro - Romanian

4. Run the main function by pressing the ▷ button. This will create:

   • The users file (Spreadsheet)
   • The form for offering a ride
   • The ride offers file (Spreadsheet), where the form responses will be saved
   • A trigger that sets the phone number in the users file when the driver adds it to the form
   • A trigger that sends an email to recipients every Sunday, sometime between 18:00 - 19:00

5. Now, press the big blue Deploy button and pick the New deployment option. In the new opened window, press Deploy. Now, you'll see the Web App link which can be used to access the available rides. If you can access it and see an empty list, the setup is complete

The next step is optional:

6. The default unsubscribe mode is manual. If you want your neighbours to be able to unsubscribe automatically, by replying with 'unsubscribe' to the received email, then:
   • In project settings (⚙️), scroll to the bottom of the page and click the button to edit the script properties
   • Change the UNSUBSCRIBE_MODE property from manual to auto and save
   • Open the src/unsubscribe.js file and run the activateAutomaticEmailUnsubscribeTrigger function
   • This will activate an automatic check (every 30 minutes) for unsubscribe emails and remove subscribers from the user list

Your only remaining task is to manually populate the user list. For each interested neighbour, you’ll need to add their email, desired language [en, ro] and 1 in the notification column if they should receive the Sunday email, otherwise leave it empty; optionally, you can also add their name, phone number, and a reference for driver identification (apartment/office). That’s it.

Names are useful for personalizing emails and reducing the chances of them being marked as spam. Phone numbers are necessary for drivers, and the optional reference helps email recipients better understand who the driver is.

If something breaks, good luck <3 "The fragile digital fabric holding this solution together is torn. Destroy it and rebuild it." Save the data from the users file, then uninstall the solution. You’ll need to open the src/uninstall.gs file and run ▷ the uninstall function. Then, restart the installation process from step 2.

Development

All technicals details can be found here.

FAQ

• Why not add a form for users to allow them to easily subscribe to the ride offers email?
  

  • We vet each user individually because we handle personal data. Access must be limited to those who are part of the community

• Why not add a form for ride reservations?

  • We want to encourage direct social interaction between the driver and the potential rider, not limit it
  • If a form is used, the driver may need to initiate a refusal if they’re uncomfortable with the rider, but when the rider initiates contact, it allows the driver to assess, ask questions, and respond in their own way, making the process more personal and respectful
  • It complicates the UX and the code

• What do you think about multilingual forms for drivers?

  • This need hasn't come up yet
  • It complicates the code. It requires a spreadsheet with multiple sheets (one per form)

Inspiration

The challenge was "How can I create a carpooling solution that works for any community with minimal effort and zero costs?". I created this solution after a neighbour gave me a ride to work (thanks, Roli!). I hope it inspires you to seek simplicity. Simple is hard.

If you'd like to learn more about me or support my work, feel free to visit my GitHub page.