visit the Altamonte Springs CraneRIDES website<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cSo far, it has been very nice, very different,\u201d said Lajoan Petit-Frere, who recently took her first ride. \u201cAs I was walking by, I told him what destination I was going to, and he let me know that the destination was en route, so I thought I might as well tag along and give it a try.”<\/p>\n
Instead of walking in the sun and carrying her 1-month-old Jonas, the two rode in the air conditioning.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was skeptical about whether the baby could be on the vehicle or not, but he almost insisted me bring the baby on,\u201d Petit-Frere said.<\/p>\n
The vehicles are also wheelchair accessible. The hop-off and hop-on service stops at places like the mall and the hospital.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been a nice ride,\u201d Petit-Frere said.<\/p>\n
The free ride vehicle travels on a set loop, and even though the cars know the way, there is an attendant on board just in case.<\/p>\n
\u201cCraneRIDES is using technology that is in use every day to help get people around,\u201d said Altamonte Springs City Manager Frank Martz.<\/p>\n
Martz said that 95 million cars pass through the city every year, and CraneRIDES gives people another way to get around.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is really one of those things where we are finding, many of the young folks, even the ones who work here, driving doesn\u2019t mean to them what it used to mean,” Martz said. “So, people are looking for an opportunity to get some of their time back.”<\/p>\n
Right now, the program has three vehicles on the road, but once the program is at full capacity, Martz said there will be up to 12.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe state has already approved autonomous vehicles and they have a group of autonomous vehicles we can choose from, so we will begin that process to try to find the ones that fit us the best,\u201d Martz said.<\/p>\n
He said that $750,000 from the state will help buy more autonomous vehicles and expand the route, with a new stop coming to Sunrail.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we want is that we will eventually develop an app so that you can see on your phone, not just how to get on CraneRIDES, but how do you get on a Lynx bus, or how do you get on SunRail, or where is a bike path,\u201d Martz said.<\/p>\n
In a statement, officials with the Florida Department of Transportation said they are embracing new transportation technology.<\/p>\n
“FDOT believes in developing the latest cutting-edge technology, including this pilot project for autonomous vehicles in Altamonte Springs,” the statement said. “The department looks forward to this new technology seeing further development.”<\/p>\n
More than 12,000 people have hopped on for a ride, but Martz said the program is more than just ridership \u2014 it\u2019s about learning how to best use this evolving technology in the future.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cConvenience is only as good as it is reliable,\u201d Martz said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALTAMONTE SPRINGS, Fla. \u2014 The CraneRIDES autonomous vehicle pilot program launched two years ago in Altamonte Springs, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22786,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[274,28,115,139,141,140,9429,1014,278,1798],"class_list":{"0":"post-22785","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orlando","8":"tag-app-top-stories","9":"tag-florida","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-orlando","12":"tag-orlando-headlines","13":"tag-orlando-news","14":"tag-sarah-winkelmann","15":"tag-seminole-county","16":"tag-top-stories","17":"tag-transportation"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22785\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}