"Is the causeway open?"

It's a question which has filled community Facebook pages all summer, even after the vital connection between Padanaram and Smith Neck reopened in June. But one Dartmouth resident hopes to answer that question with a simple press of a button.

Drew McArthur has created a website and app -- causeway.mcarthur.in -- to keep people informed about the status of the causeway. McArthur, who is beginning his senior year at Hamilton College in Clinton, NY, originally created the website a few years ago.

“I made it when they were doing construction when it was open or closed seemingly randomly,” McArthur said.

The site was actually his mother’s idea. She suggested that he could create a website that would let people know whether the bridge was open or closed.

The website, which took McArthur about a week to build, has a fairly simple function. It allows anyone visiting the site to update others on whether or not the causeway is open or closed with the push of a button.

If the website displays the correct bridge status, users should press the website's thumbs up button. If it is wrong, however, users should press the triangle button to indicate it's wrong.

“It’s all crowd sourced,” McArthur explained. “It’s just like Waze, where people see a cop or a car stopped and report it for other people to see.”

“Crowd sourced” means that data comes directly from its users, not the town or any other authority on the causeway, so McArthur is relying on building a base of users to keep the site up to date. 

McArthur said that he thinks of the website as community service, and a way to give back to the town that he has lived in since first grade.

“It’s something that people will find useful, hopefully,” he said.

It is designed to work on both computers and smartphones. The site includes instructions on how to add the app directly to an Apple or Android smartphone's home screen, allowing for a quick check of the status before heading out.

McArthur is studying computer science at Hamilton, and will soon begin his senior project with a professor. He has already secured a position after graduation, and will be working at TripAdvisor as a software engineer -- something he began doing over the summer.

If people have questions about the website, or a picture of the bridge for the site’s background, they can email McArthur at causeway@mcarthur.in.