A San Francisco-based technology company is bringing its fleet of driverless pods to Atlanta.
Called Glydcars and made by a company called Glydways, the podcars are coming as part of a long-planned pilot involving the ATL Airport Community Improvement Districts and MARTA to explore alternative and innovative transportation options at the airport.
The self-driving pods will connect the airport SkyTrain to the Georgia International Convention Center in College Park — not the Atlanta Convention Center 10 miles away in downtown Atlanta. A national media outlet confused the two event spaces in a report this month, prompting Atlanta City Council President Doug Shipman to clarify at a council meeting last week that the vehicles aren’t coming downtown.
Such a route would duplicate MARTA’s red and gold lines, which already take riders from downtown to the airport. Instead, this pilot program is designed to fill in gaps in the transportation network that exist around the airport and in the south metro area as a whole.