Thursday, October 12, 2017

Ads and Private Roads

Appealing to  people with money, autonomous vehicle (AV) businesses are showing the expectation of massive wealth generation to come. First, the LeBron James ad. A major sports figure who has garnered three professional basketball championships, James does not come cheap; he is popular and credible.

The sponsor of the advertisement is Intel, reports the New York Post.

Way different

On the other hand, the Waymo video takes the slick, but friendly, corporate-speak ad approach. Both ads seek the same result: A message of friendliness, safety, attractiveness, and reliability - without reference to cost, equity, and related aspects of a multimodal transportation network.


Already serving private roads

The AV transportation revolution is happening, but not in the usual places. Not San Francisco, New York, Seattle, London, or elsewhere. Private roads in gated communities and campuses are the new frontier.

I covered the Village last week. In that California gated senior community, app-based, on-demand, shared-use AVs are ferrying older adults around. That news got lots of press attention. Called the Voyage, the two AV sedans operate on private roads within the community.

In the other sunshine state

Across the country, Babcock Ranch, a development I wrote about last year (scroll down), has gone beyond plans, and has AV shuttle service on its private roads. This is a transit-like vehicle and is probably the first of a network of AV options. The development is billed as allowing for a car-free and walk-and-bike-friendly existence for 50,000 people. Transdev is planning a Mobility as a Service (MaaS) network of AV transportation services. The new development is also solar powered.

Don't confuse Babcock Ranch with Bishop Ranch, which is an office park in California that also has an AV shuttle.

Public planning

Not to be outdone, affluent small towns are beginning to plan. Aspen, CO, wants to establish a Mobility Lab. This will mean a transportation demand management (TDM), or mobility management, approach to transportation transformation.

And public streets in California may soon boast AVs being tested without humans on board for that matter. Proposed regulations await the current notice-and-comment period. 

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