IndyMobilityNext

Time to reclaim downtown streets for people. Small autonomous vehicle circulators would allow us to use the public right-of-way for people instead of parking.  Urban mobility:

• leverages public systems and spaces for diversity of experience and economic opportunity
• integrates small/smart transit and distributed parking systems to create linear placemaking and extended walkability
• supports the vital arts, entertainment and retail environments of downtown with a moving experience

What if you could hop on a smart, autonomous vehicle shuttle to go to dinner, on to theater, back for an after-dinner drink, home or Red-Line connection, or your commuter parking or carshare station? The public right-of-way of Mass Ave is currently a virtual parking lot while the sidewalks are uncomfortably narrow. Dead zones exist between walkable districts. What if that were re-imagined with a vehicle fleet crawling the avenue, shifting the spatial balance from cars to people? Mobility as experience. The experience integrated with the identity of place. Walkable districts joined to other walkable districts for a extended walkable downtown. Let\'s try it

• create a public/private partnership to develop and manage a fleet of ubiquitous people movers and its integrated distributed parking resources. Park once, if at all.
• test it in a controlled urban street environment. The technology exists.
• create an Indianapolis designed and produced vehicle as an economic development initiative. The skills and capacity exist.

Coming soon in future posts: more about a social vehicle as a place in motion, moving within a sequence of urban spaces, displacing vehicles that now displace pedestrians.

IndyMobilityNext