Miami is set to become a test-bed region for innovative mobility technologies and transportation solutions, following the formation of a new consortium.

Miami-Dade County has teamed with CoMotion to launch CoMotion Lab Miami (C-Lab Miami) with the aim of improving mobility and transit across the county and Southern Florida.

Founding members

HNTB, Inrix, Joby Aviation, Lacuna, Via and Uber are among founding members of the new initiative. The NewCities Foundation, a non-profit focused on city-building around the world, is also backing the venture.

C-Lab Miami plans to source and attract innovative ideas and technologies from around the world and test them through local proof-of-concepts and then develop policy recommendations in each focus area.

C-Lab activities are also designed to help spur economic growth and job creation as Miami-Dade and Florida begin to recover from the Covid-19 crisis.

The first areas to be focused on in 2020-21 are:

• urban air mobility for emergency medical services (EMS)
• smart kerb management and smart infrastructure
• decarbonising maritime mobility in maritime and riverine cities
• new frameworks for public/private partnerships in transit, including data management and data governance.

“CoMotion Lab Miami is designed to make our county a vibrant living lab of new mobility in order to create new services for our residents and thus jobs and economic activity,” said Carlos Gimenez, mayor.

According to the consortium, C-Lab is designed as an advanced and connected urban playground for mobility innovation in which public rights of way in the county and in adjacent geographies are used to develop and validate new and commercially-viable transport technologies.

“CoMotion Lab Miami is designed to make our county a vibrant living lab of new mobility in order to create new services for our residents and thus jobs and economic activity”

Miami-Dade County, reports, with 5,500 miles of public roads, its airspace and maritime channels, provide a complex and variegated testing geography, representative of different kinds of urban geographies throughout the US and beyond: dense urban centre, exurban sprawl, developer-led communities.

CoMotion describes itself as a global platform where leaders of the most innovative transportation and technology companies around the world meet with urban policymakers to share ideas, do business and plan the new mobility future.

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