Public transportation projects are notoriously difficult to complete in the Bay Area, but one company is hoping autonomous vehicles could make it easier to connect travelers to the San Jose International Airport with the Diridon train station.
San Jose is considering a range of high-tech proposals to make the transport connector including hyperloops, monorails and magnetic levitation trains, but one South San Francisco company hopes its idea will beat out the competition.
The "Glydcar" is an all-electric autonomous vehicle produced by Glydways, which is proposing to run the pint-sized vehicles along a dedicated four-mile road with stops all along the way.
Keith Flynn with Glydways explained the process to KCBS Radio.
"Instead of putting a bunch of people onto one vehicle and figuring out how we move them," Flynn, Senior Vice President of Product and Engineering, said. "We actually break up each traveling party, and it could be an individual person, into different vehicles and we move them along directly to their destination."
Brian Middleton is with a developer partnering on the project. He spoke with KCBS Radio and said the journey time is "extremely fast" because you only stop at the requested destination.
"It's just as though you got in your personal automobile and had a completely open freeway to get to your destination," he said.
Middleton said it would be the first autonomous vehicle public transport project of its kind in the country.
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