Babcock Ranch, Fla., – on the Gulf Coast halfway between Sarasota and Naples – is a developing planned city, and one of the selling points appears to be that you may not need a car to live there.
Let us repeat that: you may not need a car in Florida!
The town’s website notes: “In addition to electric-powered, self-driving shuttles running along set routes, Babcock Ranch is an early implementation site for on-demand self-driving cars that you can schedule with an app on your smart phone.” It will be an interesting story to follow.
The bikeable, walkable town sets aside 50 percent of its footprint for public green space and lakes. Multiple Transdev-operated autonomous shuttles will initially be deployed to transport visitors .
The long-range goal is to bring on-demand, Mobility as a Service options to the nearly 50,000 residents who will make their home in this eco-friendly town of 19,500 homes and six million square feet of commercial space.
Babcock Ranch developer Kitson & Partners and Transdev share a vision for the future of mobility that aims to reduce or eliminate the reliance on vehicle ownership and use while lowering the environmental impact of transit through sustainable alternatives.
Babcock Ranch will serve as a living laboratory on the development of the mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) platform, with car-sharing, bike-sharing, autonomous shuttles and pods, and charter transit all planned for future phases of the mobility plan.
“This is a game changer. It’s everything a transit company could hope for, basically starting with a blank canvas and creating a network—from scratch—and managing the mobility ecosystem with all of the innovative tools we’ve developed,” said Dick Alexander, executive vice president of Business Development for Transdev. “As the community grows, the mobility choices will grow with it. Notably, we will have unprecedented access to MaaS data that will help shape how this vital service is implemented in other cities and communities across the country and world.”