There are Waymos zipping around Intown Atlanta and autonomous buses coming to the Beltline.
Now, Atlanta is poised to get another autonomous transportation option.
Venture-backed, San Francisco-based Glydways broke ground this month on the first public mass transit system serving South Metro Atlanta. That means that by the end of the year, a person can hop off their flight at the airport and take the ATL SkyTrain at the Georgia International Convention Center to the Gateway Center Arena along by taking a seat on an on-demand vehicle.
WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT THE ROUTE
The South Metro Atlanta pilot, jointly developed by Glydways and ACS Infra, will initially connect the ATL SkyTrain at the Georgia International Convention Center to the Gateway Center Arena along a dedicated half-mile guideway. The pilot project’s RFP was initially released in 2023.
The transit system is scheduled to open to the public in December 2026, the system will provide free, on-demand service and will “serve as a real-world demonstration of Glydways’ ability to operate reliably, scale efficiently, and integrate seamlessly into multimodal transit ecosystems,” according to a press release.
Krystal Harris from AACIDs (ATL Airport Community Improvement Districts) told Hypepotamus that the project cost is above $23 million.
“The project is funded by both public and private investments. AACIDs received funding from MARTA – $10M and a grant awarded by Atlanta-Region Transit Link Auth (ATL) – $3M and the remaining balance will be private investments from the project team APRTS (Atlanta Personal Rapid Transit Solutions),” she added.
Each vehicle holds from four to six people, with five vehicles operating on the half-mile corridor at a time.
WHY IT MATTERS
No one in Atlanta needs to read about how bad traffic is (but new data is out to validate your commute-related complaints). Autonomous vehicle advocates believe they can help optimize traffic flow by reducing human driving inefficiencies like sudden braking, bottlenecks, and poor merging.
Autonomous public transportation options also offer another level of efficiency, moving more people with fewer vehicles and operating on optimized routes that adjust in real time to demand. Instead of adding more cars to already packed highways, advocates argue that self-driving shuttles and buses could reduce congestion by increasing capacity without increasing traffic volume.
Atlanta is no stranger to projects at the intersection of transportation and innovation. The Metro area is home to The Ray (a living laboratory along I-85 testing connected and autonomous vehicle infrastructure) and Curiosity Lab in Peachtree Corners, one of the country’s first smart city environments where autonomous vehicles (AVs) and other mobility technologies are tested daily on real city streets.
