Orange County and Lake Nona—a smart community within the city of Orlando and Orange County—have been awarded a new $20 million federal BUILD grant that will help “reimagine mobility” in the smart community.

The grant, which is the first of its kind for Central Florida, will support the planning, design and construction of a Local Alternative Mobility Network (LAMN) in Lake Nona.

LAMN includes five components that are designed to work hand in hand to connect people to places with less dependency on automobiles. One of those components is infrastructure for autonomous vehicles (AV) and a bicycle transportation network. Lake Nona currently has 1.2 miles worth of autonomous network and infrastructure, but it is expected to be expanded to create more than 25 miles of dedicated AV lanes.

According to Lake Nona, the key findings from the development and operation of the LAMN project in Lake Nona combined with the research and education programs sponsored by Beep, the operator of Lake Nona’s autonomous shuttles, will help with the learning and advancement of autonomous vehicle technologies, and the potential impact that they will have on safety and traffic relief.

The entities will work together to serve as a “living lab” for the broader autonomous mobility ecosystem to “innovate, collaborate and drive” this technology forward.

“As we prepare for Florida’s transportation future, these BUILD grants will provide significant investment in our infrastructure and advance multimodal initiatives here in Lake Nona and strategic areas across our state,” says Florida Department of Transportation Secretary Kevin Thibault.