With school districts reducing or cutting bus service, parents in Chicago are turning to rideshare apps to transport their children to school, reported ABC News.
According to the article, Ismael El-Amin was driving his daughter to school when an encounter on the road gave him an idea for a new way to carpool.
After spotting one of his daughter’s classmates riding to school with her own dad, El-Amin reportedly noticed they drove to their selective public school on the city’s North Side for forty minutes along the same congested highway.
That is when El-Amin was reportedly inspired to create the Piggyback Network, a service parents can use to book riders for their children. With school districts struggling to find drivers the question of how to replace the traditional yellow bus had become an urgent problem for some and a spark for innovation.
According to the article, Chicago public schools, the nation’s fourth largest district, have significantly curbed bus service in recent years. It still offers rides for students who are disabled and homeless, in line with federal mandate, but most families are on their own. Approximately 17,000 of the district’s 325,000 students are reportedly eligible for school bus rides.
On Piggyback Network, parents can book a ride for their children online with other parents traveling in the same direction. Rides reportedly cost 80 cents per mile, and the drivers are compensated with credits to use for their own kid’s rides.
The article states that the company has arranged a few hundred rides in its first year operating in Chicago, and El-Amin had been contacting drivers for possible expansion to Virginia, North Carolina and Texas.
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