Porter

Porter is a community transport management system built in Django, designed to support volunteer and community transport organisations in managing bookings, drivers, vehicles, and passengers.

The project draws on years of direct experience working with road transport at Cabline UK, and then later working on Chariot Gateway, where I gained a deep understanding of transport management.

I later spent some time working in the VCSE sector where I had some contact with community transport organisations, and learned about the operational challenges facing these organisations became clear. Porter is built to address them: low-tech passenger access, complex scheduling requirements, driver-passenger compatibility matching, and the administrative burden on coordinators working with limited resources.

The core booking engine handles the full journey lifecycle, from initial request through driver assignment, acceptance, and completion, with recurring journey support, return trip management, and a detailed audit trail. A flag-based compatibility system matches passengers with appropriate drivers and vehicles based on mobility requirements, building a scored driver preference order for each booking with optional automated assignment.

Passenger accessibility was a key design consideration from the start. An SMS and WhatsApp booking interface allows passengers to book or amend journeys via text message rather than requiring web or app access, meeting users where they already are.

The system is structured for multi-organisation deployment: organisations manage their own driver pools, locations, and coordinator roles with granular permissions, while a shared location registry and ledger system support cross-organisation reporting.

Porter demonstrates production-grade Django architecture across a domain requiring genuine operational understanding, not just technical implementation.