San Jose Plans Robocar Network Instead of Airport Shuttle
The city’s exploration of personal rapid transit is a rejection of both traditional trains and the vision of autonomous vehicles traveling on conventional roads.
A prototype Glydcar autonomous vehicle at Glydways’s testing facility in Concord, California.
Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
On April 18, the central Silicon Valley city of San Jose, California, made a surprising choice: It granted initial authorization for a plan to develop a network of autonomous cars that will need their own dedicated roads.
The system, known as personal rapid transit, or PRT, will feature sleek four-person electric pods that ferry passengers between San Jose Mineta International Airport and the city’s central Diridon Station, which serves as a hub for regional transit and maybe, one day, California’s beleaguered high-speed rail project. If everything goes according to plan, cars reminiscent of the angular coupe that Tom Cruise escaped from in Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report could be zooming on narrow paths running alongside traffic-clogged roads as soon as 2028.