The first fully automated public transportation system.

It is an intelligent, automatic and in-demand system.

While many cities are still trying to solve traffic by adding more lanes and more cars, Atlanta decided to try a different idea, transforming public transportation into an intelligent, automatic and fully on-demand system. In the southern region of the metropolitan area, construction began on what could become the first fully automated public transportation system of its type in the world.

Instead of buses stuck in congestion or expensive trains that take years to be ready, the project relies on small autonomous electric vehicles that circulate on exclusive tracks, controlled by artificial intelligence and requested directly by application.

In pilot section in Atlanta

The pilot section of about 800 m will connect the ATL Sky Train station with the Gateway Center Arena, functioning as a real laboratory to test a new logic of urban mobility. At first glance, those 800 meters seem simple, but they represent a profound transformation in the concept of public transportation.

Instead of fixed schedules and rigid routes, the system works on demand. You call it, the vehicle arrives and the journey occurs directly from point A to point B without intermediate stops. According to the responsible company Glyways, the objective is to create something with a capacity close to that of a light rail, but with an operating cost comparable to that of a bus, thanks to the absence of human drivers, the use of electrical energy and continuous operation 24 hours a day.

The differential is in the total separation from conventional traffic.

Unlike autonomous cars like the CyberCap that will compete for spaces with human drivers, these vehicles circulate in exclusive corridors, allowing constant speeds, lower risk and greater predictability of the system. The promise for the future is ambitious. Transport thousands of people per hour using narrow lanes, reducing congestion without the need to widen roads or invest in gigantic works.

Behind this idea there is a greater reflection on the future of cities. For decades, mobility was thought about the private car, now the logic is beginning to be reversed with intelligent systems that try to combine the flexibility of an individual car with the collective efficiency of public transportation and perhaps that is the most important transformation of all when mobility stops being just infrastructure and begins to behave as an intelligent organism within the city itself.