Today's community design and urban development projects are faced with considering a lot of transportation innovations. This Forbes article discusses how one community is using drone deliveries. Is your community ready for that?
The Virginia town of Christiansburg is getting a preview of what life will be like when delivery by drone becomes practical. Forced to stay at home amid the coronavirus pandemic, more residents are ordering from a pilot residential delivery service run by Wing, a unit of Google GOOGL parent Alphabet, the company says. The most popular items: Coffee, toilet paper and cookies.
Wing says it’s made more than 1,000 deliveries over the past two weeks in Christiansburg and at test sites in Helsinki and two Australian cities where movement has also been restricted to stem the spread of the disease. “That’s a dramatic increase from our standard rates,” says Jacob Demmitt, a spokesman for Wing.
The company won’t break out numbers for Christiansburg.
A local bakery and a coffee roaster recently added to the service are hoping that drone delivery will help keep them afloat. In their first day of availability on Saturday, which has been the busiest day for Wing, Mockingbird Café owner Donna Speaks says that drone delivery customers bought roughly double the number of croissants, muffins and almond macarons that she would normally sell in store. “Right now it’s a super great bonus for us,” she told Forbes.
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