A pilot program using autonomous shuttles to transport students to and from school launched Friday becoming the first location in the world to pilot the use of autonomous vehicle for school transit.
Transdev is the mobility partner of Babcock Ranch, a fully solar-powered, sustainable city outside Fort Myers. The school shuttle pilot program was launched after months of dedicated testing focused on ensuring the safety and security of the students. The pilot program will continue in anticipation of growth in the number of students expected to need school transit in the community by 2019. A safety attendant will remain on the shuttlebus while the vehicle is in service.
“We expected the idea to be exciting and the actual operational service to be uneventful. We were right on both counts,” said Dick Alexander, Executive Vice President of Development and Innovation at Transdev. “This was quite a momentous day at our company in terms of innovating to serve mobility needs, and everything worked just as planned.”
The 12-person EasyMile EZ10 Gen II picked up students at a dedicated shuttle stop, though later stages of the pilot will experiment with on-demand rides that will be booked through an app. The students attending this fall will have access to the autonomous school shuttlebus on Fridays during the pilot, and the number of days will be expanded assuming the pilot’s success. Parents or caregivers are allowed on board during all segments of the trips.
As part of their plan to offer residents comprehensive mobility options, Transdev and Babcock Ranch will examine opportunities to implement school shuttle operations full time as a supplement to the AV’s and other modes that will provide daily mobility choices for the town's growing populace.
“It's exciting, but it's just the beginning,” Alexander said. “Having an innovative partner like Babcock Ranch gives us a mobility laboratory where we can experiment with the transit solutions of the future and understand how passengers will react and what they will require moving forward. There's nothing like it in the world.”
