Approach 1- MarcD

1. Title: Small Towns Taking Back Their Roads
2. One Sentence summary/abstract: : Develop a community app for reporting excess town traffic so GPS’s can then be deactivated or scrambled from a device build on a telephone poll or cell tower.
3. Visuals: (what will the project look like when built…give 2-4 images):
4. Background (this gives any brief info the viewer needs to better understand the project; e.g. hat is the issue you are addressing): Since the development of the GPS small towns have been inundated with increased cars from commuters and tourists looking for shortcuts, ways to dodge highway traffic caused by rush hours and car accidents. These new cut though routes encourage frustrated commuters to clog up and even speed down what are supposed to be quiet side streets, which can be dangerous to small children playing and annoying to neighbors.
5. Explanation (while the project should be able to stand on its own, this section allows you to give any brief info for the viewer): The goal is to keep commuters on highways, even if there is an accident or rush hour traffic, and stop GPS’s from routing them through small town side roads as a way to shave off a few minutes and enable their impatience.
6. Credits (who was involved, or what sources or inspirations you had for the project. Mention specific classmate feedback, for example): The town I grew up in is next to Boston and I walked to school every day but now I notice so many more cars clogging up our roads. The year after I graduated a girl named Kate was hit by a car that was cutting through from Boston when she was walking home from school. Also my sister got in a bad car accident last month from someone that was speeding down a road that is now so crowded with cars that get off of Highway Route 93. Instead of staying on the highway, so many people get off and cut through Milton. Also there are a lot of nice quiet towns in Maine but sometimes if there is traffic on the highway the GPS will route tourists and commuters off the highway and that brings a lot of annoying cars driving through quaint towns that people move to for peace and quiet. Some towns are fighting back by putting up electronic signs forbidding travel down some roads, redesigning traffic patterns, and even issuing tickets for nonresidents cutting through. Here are some articles on that…

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/22/nyregion/leonia-gps-navigation-apps.html

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2018/01/09/towns-fight-back-against-navigation-apps-are-machines-making-us-too-efficient/#89b4d403aaa5 

…What I am proposing is to take it a step further by using technology to fight back against the technology that caused this problem in the first place.

7. Simple budget for estimated cost: Money will be needed for people to write the computer codes for the community app, probably around $20,000. Also money will be needed to build and install the GPS scramblers on cell towers or telephone poles on small town main roads, perhaps $500,000. The app costs and the scrambler/GPS deactivator costs to build, install, and maintain could be added to the tax budget of any town that is interested and that has a problem with people cutting through because of accidents, rush hour traffic, or to avoid tourist traffic.  Perhaps a special vote by townspeople could be added to the ballot for a special one-time tax for this effort,  which could keep excessive car traffic out of their small town.  For example, maybe tourists are headed toward Old Orchard Beach but there is a backup on I-95 North.  The GPS has you get off an exit and cut through Kennebunkport’s small side roads.  If there are about 650 households in Kennebunkport their tax bill would have an added charge of  $800.  They could even stretch the extra tax over a few years so the bill won’t be so high all at once.