Mobile Application for After School Pickup Solution: Malaysia Perspectives

ABSTRACT

School pickup is a daily routine for most parents during the school term. The use of private vehicles as daily commute to transport students to and from schools has caused school-related traffic congestion and air pollution problems. The after school waiting bay of most schools in urban areas is normally very crowded with students waiting for transport to travel home. Teachers on duty and school student council members are assigned to monitor and control the crowded situation. Some schools implement drive-thru pickup procedure in which the teacher on duty need to be very attentive and observe the cars approaching the bay for pickup in order to queue up the students at the pickup bay. With the outbreak of pandemic COVID-19, the teachers not only need to observe the vehicles heading to the pickup bay but to ensure the students obey social distancing norms. To alleviate after school pickup related problems, a mobile application for after school pickup is proposed. With this application, the school teachers would be able to obtain a list of pickup requests from the parents via the mobile application and queue up the students accordingly with safe social distancing at the pickup bay. This can ease the crowded situation, minimize parents’ waiting time at the pickup lane, and reduce air pollution problem caused by vehicle engines that are running while waiting at the pickup lane. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.