Driving Hope for Syracuse's Southside
Transportation improvements drive community progress and the enable the opportunity to reach for the American Dream. This project supports that dream now and provides for the opportunity to dream bigger. This project will demonstrate that the dream of a better tomorrow can be seen through the lens of transportation. It can be seen through using transportation to get healthcare, to eat better, to spend less time getting to and from work, and to spend more time with your family. The project will deliver fixed route and on-demand shuttles that are electric, can be operated autonomously, and minimize impact to the electric grid. You'll see details about how we will document the lessons learned and share them broadly. You will also see how we will engage the public through our partners at the City of Syracuse to make this a complete community win.
Southside will benefit from a micromobility strategy for first/last mile service so that existing transit service can focus on the most heavily traveled routes. The community will also benefit from electric grocery delivery service. For both services, we will complete an electric vehicle study, install electric vehicle infrastructure, provide the vehicles, provide a data ecosystem to manage the vehicles, provide access to our Advanced Mobility Operations Center (AMOC), and use the results of this project to establish a regional strategy.
The electric vehicle study will locate the infrastructure to best meet the needs of this neighborhood, and we'll also look at the impacts this could have regionally for the long-term. The study will include a review of the energy grid, locations, and maintenance needs. We will purchase up to six electric shuttles. We will work with Centro to make modifications at their Tallman Street location to store, charge, and maintain the vehicles. We'll also work with the Syracuse COOP Market and Café Sankofa COOP to install charging capabilities.
The Team will build the Syracuse Surge Mobility Data Ecosystem (SSMDE) in 12 months to support the operating environment for the project; a preliminary architecture is included with the proposal. Finally, Gannett Fleming will implement its AMOC. The AMOC is a fully staffed operations center with data scientists and operations personnel to monitor vehicles and provide advanced analytics support and other mobility services. The AMOC is powered by Verizon and in-house software.
The project goal is to be operational within 18 months.