Riding On The Freebee: Public Transportation Can Be Electrifying

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When we moved to our retirement home, hubby and I decided we could make do with one vehicle. Most of our appointments can be synced, and, as we’re both freelancers, the need to commute has vanished. That being said, there are the rare occasions where life interferes and we have to find alternative transportation. That happened to me this morning, when a neighbor needed a last-minute ride to the hospital. Of course, we jumped to help, but that left me without a ride home from an appointment.

I had heard about our local community’s grant program called Freebee, which is a free, on-demand, 100% electric transportation service available in my small city seven days a week. Serving the Redevelopment Agency’s districts, Freebee focuses on transporting residents and visitors between their homes and local businesses. This service is driving economic development, filling mobility gaps, easing traffic congestion, and reducing parking demands. Freebee picks you up at your doorstep and safely delivers you to your destination within the service zone.

A fleet of five Teslas and one non-electric vehicle has been commissioned to give local residents a ride around what is called the Inner Zone. It encompasses several square miles, and its range goes to the edge of my condo community.

“It’s really an economic tool” to help local businesses and the city’s senior citizens, Mayor Linda Hudson explained. St. Lucie County pitched in to make the Freebee service available, as “they got a grant from the Florida Department of Transportation.” The program is expected to be funded for the next two years.

I thought this morning was a perfect opportunity to give the Freebee service a try.

When my personal appointment was over, I logged onto the Freebee app, which I had pre-loaded at home. It asked me to confirm that the pin drop was my correct location. I set my intended destination, and I hit Submit. Oddly, it seems like I was outside the required pickup zone — I was, as they say, on the wrong side of the street. So I waited for a long train to pass on its north to south run and for busy vehicle traffic to dissipate. I used the crosswalk to get to the other side of the road and watched the pin move as I did so. Voila! I was able to get confirmation that a Freebee driver would soon be on their way.

The Freebee app was interesting, as it confirmed the name of the driver, how many stops they would have ahead of my pick up, and the amount of time that I would likely expect to wait. The app stayed live and was frequently updated as to my expected time of pick up and how many stops the driver had completed ahead of mine. While I did wish that it would take less than 20 minutes for me to get my ride, it was confidence-inspiring to see a running record that acknowledged I was moving up through the queue.

It’s interesting that, in our car-centric society, we expect people to be driving, not walking or waiting for public transportation. Driving a vehicle is the norm. Cultural change is very slow and frequently questioned; after all, haven’t we been taught to conform to accepted ways of being? But here I was on a sunny Florida day with temps in the high 70s, and life was good.

As I waited, I was conscious that it’s a very different experience to use public transportation once you have been accustomed to the independence and on-time immediacy of driving one’s own vehicle. That being said, I decided to use the time constructively: I would observe my own community a little more closely than I would otherwise as a driver. As I did so, I looked around, and I found my curiosity about the area kept increasing. I was an ethnographer studying built structure and how contemporary people live.

As with most of the US right now, I noted some businesses with For Sale signs or closed. I also saw several structures that have had updates and recent renovations to keep them structurally sound and aesthetically appealing. I noticed that there are a lot of people who wander, but, as Tolkien is said to have coined, “Not all those who wander are lost.” Dog walkers were everywhere, and tails were wagging on a morning in which a late balmy breeze refreshed us under a periwinkle sky. I witnessed a shirtless man picking up litter with reach extenders and a bucket. I saw a handyman trying to spiff up the facade of a building that was for sale. I saw a couple of guys waiting patiently, kind of lounging around, at the local dive shop, maybe waiting for a gig.

I actually think waiting for the Freebee was healthy for me. I kept moving around and accumulated a solid portion of my 8000 steps per day goal. And I learned a little bit more about the place that I call Home now.

Once a Teacher, Always a Teacher

As I saw the Freebee app update to say my driver would arrive in “zero minutes,” I made myself more visible at a street corner. A black pickup with three “American First” flags flying drove by, but then came the Freebee Tesla Model Y.

After I greeted the driver, I wondered what their experience was with driving an all-electric vehicle. The training course to learn to drive the Freebee was about three hours long, I learned as we headed to my condo community, and the most surprising part of driving the EV was that there is hardly any need to brake. The driver explained that “because these vehicles are so heavy with their batteries, you just take your foot off the pedal, and it slows down.” I paused, then struck an intentionally lighthearted tone to explain that it was called “regenerative braking.” Unlike an internal combustion engine, in which braking power just vanishes and is lost, an electric vehicle returns energy to the battery when the car is slowing.

“Really!” the driver replied. Then they explained that, in a prior year, the zone available for Freebee pickup was larger. It didn’t work though, because the EVs needed recharging during the course of the day. The only charging station was at a Wawa farther out by I-95, and “they are just too slow. And why doesn’t the other Wawa have chargers?” When the Freebee fleet is parked for the night, they recharge in the city garage alongside four chargers made available free to the public by the local utility company.

Since they’re primarily Teslas in the Freebee fleet, why don’t we have a Supercharger at the center of this Inner Zone district? I thought. Maybe now that Elon is going to spend more time at Tesla and earn those raises the fanbois offered him last summer, we can get more Superchargers…

Let’s keep a good thing — electrified free public transportation — rolling along.