Can self-driving cars run your town’s transit system?

Babcock Ranch, located eight miles east of Fort Myers, Florida, is a new sustainable smart town currently in development. Kitson & Partners are in charge and earlier this week suggested that autonomous vehicles would be the main mode of public transport.

Similar to NuTonomy’s plans in Singapore, Kitson & Partners wants to have a mobile app for residents that functions similar to Uber, letting them request an autonomous cab at any time. This will, according to Kitson, reduce the amount of traffic on the roads.

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“We’re really looking closely at parking, the size of the streets, what ultimately that’s going to look like when you have driverless cars within the community,” said Syd Kitson, chairman and CEO of Kitson and Partners. “It will change the design parameters. As these things become more commonplace, people may eventually turn to just one car because they know they can use an autonomous vehicle. So what do you do with the garage space eventually?”

Tesla’s Powerwall would be a good answer to Kitson’s question, considering solar storage might boost the amount of available energy during the night. The real estate developers are looking into several types of energy storage solutions, to make the 350,000 solar panel investment worthwhile.