Self-driving shuttle service comes to Tradition next month
Tradition, Fl (treasurecoast.com)- Residents will soon be able to get around town via a self-driving shuttle service, the first of its kind in a South Florida planned development community.
Tradition in Motion, also known as TIM, is an electric self-driving car that can seat up to nine passengers and reach up to 15 miles per hour. The free self-driving shuttle service launches Dec. 11.
“The ride was great, very smooth,“ said Port St. Lucie resident James Faison, who was one of TIM’s first passengers at a press event on Friday. “I would definitely trust riding this over a bus driver in standard traffic.”
TIM works by using censors on the outside of the shuttle to travel along it’s pre-established destination path. As an omni-directional vehicle, TIM has no steering wheel or gas pedal, just a shuttle attendant on board overseeing passengers.
Mattamy Homes, largest privately-owned homebuilder in North America, partnered with Beep, a Lake Nona based self-driving car company, to make TIM come alive.
While TIM is free for Tradition residents, it is paid for by their taxpayer dollars since the shuttle service is owned and operated by the community development district.
It costs roughly $10,000 a month to operate TIM, according to Beep’s Chief Marketing Officer Racquel Asa.
There will be two TIM’s providing shuttle services in Tradition come December, with hopes of eventually having 12 in total, Grosswald said.
Spanning 3 miles, TIM will stop at nine locations such as the Cleveland Clinic Tradition Hospital, the Landing Shopping Center, Tradition Town Square, the future site of Veterans Memorial Park, as well as various parks, athletics fields and nature trails and more.
