Entrepreneurship Post           

          

           In New York City, people use the subway to get around to places. There are various trains that run underground and above ground that can be taken to get to places; there is also the option of taking the buses. Unlike Syracuse, where you will have to either take the Centro bus that takes an eternity to arrive and pick you up, own a car, or know someone who owns a car to get anywhere. New York City has the subway transit system; The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), who is in charge of running the busses and trains makes transportation easily accessible. You don’t have to be rich or very patient in order to travel.

            Customers can access the trains/busses by purchasing what is known as a Metro Card. They have to pay a fee of $2.25 per journey and they are issued a Metro Card which is swiped into a turnstile order to get on the trains and busses.

(Swiping the Metro Card)

(The turnstile in which you swipe your Metro Card)

 Because paying the same amount over and over for a journey is a drag, they are allowed to refill the Metro Cards or insert an amount that can last them months, or even the entire year. Now one of the biggest expenses in New York City is most definitely transportation costs. It is not as costly as buying and affording a car, but it is still expensive and annoying. Annoying because people tend to lose such objects in which they have invested so much money in, easily. They get lost and money is lost as well. Since, either it ends up in the train tracks or someone picked up your Metro Card and used it for their own purposes. This is theft that cannot otherwise be detected and prevented because it’s for an object so small and easily lost. Once it is lost, it can’t be regained.

            Now my entrepreneurship idea is to find a solution to this problem. I would like to propose to create an app that can help you find your stolen or lost Metro Card. This is how a Metro Card looks:

                                             

The top part of the image is what the front of the Metro Card looks like, and the bottom part is what the back of the Metro Card looks like. On the back of the Metro Card you will find the expiration date, and the number of the card. It is kind of like an ISBN number for a book, or an identification number. With my app, you can capture an image of the numbers with your phone or other mobile device, so that it can be recorded into the system. So when you do lose your Metro Card (hopefully that does not happen), the app will tell you where the exact location of where the card is after you enter the number in.

One would also be able to do this online; since the picture of the number is already taken he/she would just have to refer to the image in order to crunch in the identification number. You can report it to the authorities and give them the identification number. Then, authorities would put the card on hold so that it can’t be used by anyone else, and the person who does attempt to use it for their own purposes will be caught red-handed. This plan would have to work by being in a partnership with Google Maps (our source for finding the location of the Metro Card), and the MTA (the authorities who would put the card on hold and let you know that your card has been found so that you can pick it up).