Safer, Smarter, and Driverless: Exploring Smart City Transportation with May Mobility [Podcast]

Autonomous vehicles are here in Peachtree Corners!
Our latest UrbanEBB podcast explores the game-changing world of May Mobility’s driverless shuttles and their impact on urban transit. Join host Rico Figliolini as he talks with Brandon Branham (Peachtree Corners) and Daisy Wall (May Mobility) about the future of smart transportation.

Key Topics Covered:

• Peachtree Corners’ role as a Smart City and AV testing hub
• How 5G and AI are revolutionizing autonomous vehicle safety
• Situational awareness: How AVs prevent accidents before they happen
• Microtransit’s potential for underserved communities and seniors
• The future of autonomous mobility and expansion plans
• How residents can experience May Mobility’s driverless shuttles today

Resources:
May Mobility Website: https://maymobility.com/
Download the app here on Google Play and Apple

Podcast Transcript

00:00:00 – Rico Figliolini

Hey, everyone. This is Rico Figliolini, host of UrbanEBB here in the city of Peachtree Corners, a little smart city just north of Atlanta. I have some great guests. I’ll introduce them momentarily. I just want to say thank you, though, to two of our sponsors. EV Remodeling, Inc. Eli owns the company, him and his family. They live here in Peachtree Corners. Great people. They do design to build. If you need a room, a whole house rebuilt, they’re the people to go to. Great work. They’ve done up 260 homes. Check them out, evremodelinginc.com and Vox Pop Uli. They’re also local to Peachtree Corners, just on the edge of that city line almost. They do your branding. They will bring your branding to life. So anything that you want to do as a business, whether it’s a trade show, a truck wrap, or simply you want to put your logo or a saying on almost any object. You challenge them, they’ll be able to do it. So check them out at voxpopuli.com. And I welcome and thank them for the support of these podcasts and the magazines. Now, our guests. We’re here in Curiosity Lab in Peachtree Corners. This is Brandon Branham and Daisy Wall. And Brandon here is the Assistant City Manager of Peachtree Corners, as well as the Chief Technology Officer, among other things. So running Curiosity Lab and all that. And Daisy Wall here. works as senior director for May Mobility. So I welcome you guys. Thank you.

00:01:31 – Brandon Branham

And fun fact, Vox was actually who wrapped the autonomous vehicle we’ll be talking about today.

00:01:37 – Rico Figliolini

I didn’t even know that. Cool. And that looks like a great vehicle. And you may see that as part of this interview as an override video. Otherwise, check the show notes and you’ll see a gallery of images. So let’s start. How do we start? You know, this place has been here for how long?

00:01:54 – Brandon Branham

Open September of 2019.

00:01:57 – Rico Figliolini

Right, you’re doing, going on five years. We’re going to be doing that in the magazine and something about that. The autonomous vehicle lane, that’s your living lab. First in the nation, really? When it started?

00:02:11 – Brandon Branham

To do both connected and autonomous, yes.

00:02:14 – Rico Figliolini

And then five?

00:02:15 – Brandon Branham

Yeah, five years later, our journey through AV is what’s led us here today. Kind of that path of understanding the technology with that first real world deployment on public streets in 2019 with the purpose-built autonomous vehicle focusing on that low speed last mile connection. I mean as we as a city are starting to expand the service operations of that area is how we met May Mobility and launched that program in September.

00:02:45 – Rico Figliolini

Has T-mobile’s 5G network really helped getting this off the ground?

00:02:50 – Brandon Branham

Maybe let you answer that one.

00:02:52 – Daisy Wall

Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, obviously, as you’re running autonomous vehicles, one of the most important things is making sure the vehicle stays connected, right? Because that’s how everything operates. And so we want to make sure that there’s high performance, it’s always connected, and there’s redundancy. And so really the 5G foundation here at Peachtree Corners has been fantastic. The team has worked really closely with our engineering team to kind of figure out what different SIM cards, what different connectivity levels work best with our vehicles. And so it’s exciting to have that embedded in our vehicles. And hopefully we can scale that, you know, over time.

00:03:29 – Rico Figliolini

That’s great. I mean, I was just thinking about latency. You don’t want to be late. I’m sorry we hit you.

00:03:34 – Daisy Wall

Absolutely.

00:03:39 – Rico Figliolini

So we’ve had other vehicles too. So and for a variety of reasons different ways things are done. What makes May Mobility different than those others? Well maybe you want to start explaining?

00:03:52 – Brandon Branham

Yeah we can start kind of with our evolution through AV space. So there’s two form factors that were out on the market once we had seen originally through Curiosity Lab were purpose-built autonomous shuttle. So it didn’t have all of the features that a vehicle has, right? Because it was built with autonomy as its platform. There wasn’t a steering wheel. There wasn’t rear side mirrors, all those things you see on a traditional car. But they were really focused on that last mile connection. So average speed, 11 to 13 miles an hour. So it served well inside of the campus. And as we learned and got comfortable with the autonomous platforms. But as you need to start moving into other areas of cities, how do you start to create a microtransit scenario for service? So you have to go a little faster. And then what the challenge with the shuttles brings is because they’re not a vehicle, you actually have to get a waiver from the federal government to operate them on the road. So listen we all know that increases your time to deployment so working with May they use what’s called an fmbss standard vehicle so Toyota Sienna which fits perfect in the suburbs with us, I drive a minivan, I can say that. And so they can deploy immediately from day one because that already meets those standards from the vehicle perspective. The speed is a lot higher so now your elevation increases. Because our goal, right, is let’s connect all these hotels to the downtown, continue to feed our economic driver and use that. So we needed to go a little faster.

00:05:30 – Rico Figliolini

So it goes miles an hour now?

00:05:31 – Daisy Wall

It goes up to 35 miles an hour. Yeah. And we’ll be going to 40 miles an hour by end of this year.

00:05:37 – Rico Figliolini

That’s fairly good. That’s good for local streets.

00:05:37 – Daisy Wall

Yeah, absolutely.

00:05:40 – Rico Figliolini

You don’t want to go faster than 40 miles an hour. Especially in Roswell. In some ways it’s Roswell. So, that’s cool. So now we have the vehicle. I was in it a couple of weeks ago. It was a great ride. It was a little strange. Like my oldest son said, he works here in Tech Park. He says, Dad, seeing that car drive with no driver really is strange. And I felt strange too in the car and no driver. We’re sitting in the back. I felt like, where is this going? How is this going to go? But it was fast. I mean, it was easy. There was no problem. Left turns were great. My son, I’ll share this. I don’t know if he’ll like it or not, but he tried to test the vehicle. So he sped up a little bit to see if he would actually try to make that left turn, knowing that it was going to stop or something. But it didn’t do it. And it waited, and then it did its turn. So that was a real-life test on that street.

00:06:37 – Brandon Branham

That’s why we’re here. That’s the whole point of Curiosity Lab. What we want to do to evaluate the technology, make sure it is safe operations on our roadways. They’re not the only one that tests these vehicles. We see all kinds of fun things happening today. 

00:06:57 – Rico Figliolini

Do you get to see live feeds, by the way?

00:07:05 – Daisy Wall

Absolutely.

00:07:07 – Rico Figliolini

Live feeds as it goes to see?

00:06:59 – Brandon Branham

The operators are all sitting behind in May’s place ensuring safety.

00:07:04 – Daisy Wall

Absolutely. So the way it works is that when we run in a fully autonomous vehicle, meaning no driver. You know, you have the vehicle running, but there is someone watching the whole time. And so we do have a tele-assist person, if you will, watching the vehicles live in real time to make sure the vehicle is doing what it’s doing. And also if, you know, if they run into situations or, you know, situations, for example, you have an emergency management vehicle, right? If there’s unexpected construction. If there’s things like that where, you know, someone actually needs to keep an eye on the vehicle and help the vehicle kind of make decisions.

00:07:46 – Rico Figliolini

So the way it works almost, it’s almost Uber-ish to me, right? So I download an app and say, I want to, I need the car. Right now there’s eight points of pickup, right? Eventually the whole idea is that there shouldn’t be any points of pickup except where I want to be picked up, right? At a hotel, a restaurant, whatever. So we get in the car, if I remember correctly. The scan, the system actually scans a barcode or something off the app. And accepts you as the ride. And it’s running the AC. It’s doing its thing. What else can I do in that? Can I listen to music? Can I, you know, what else is the possibilities?

00:08:24 – Daisy Wall

Yeah, no, absolutely. Well, first, you know, obviously, first and foremost, we want to make sure the experience getting on and off the ride is safe. It’s easy, right? Because like you mentioned before, you know, for a first time rider, sometimes we’re like, oh, this is a little weird. And but once you’re in the vehicle, you know, the QR code is very specific. We want to make sure the right person is in the vehicle.

00:08:47 – Rico Figliolini

Right.

00:08:47 – Daisy Wall

Right? And the vehicle won’t move if it’s not the right person. It’ll just literally just sit there. And so  what we call, what you were talking about is the in cabin, you know, features and functionalities. When you enter the vehicle, you will see a big, you know, screen, a large tablet. And it allows you to really just be with the vehicle and track kind of where the vehicle is going. It allows you to see pedestrians and trucks and cars and all the things that, you know, that you would normally see as a driver, right? And need to maneuver around if you needed to. But then there’s also other features and functionalities we’re exploring, things like air conditioning, things like music, other things that we could add to make it a really great experience. But at the end of the day, it’s really odd to say it this way, we really want the experience to be boring because that’s probably the best. I mean, initially you’re like, oh, wow, this is kind of cool. And then after a while, you just start looking at your phone, you chat with your fellow rider, and then it’s kind of normalized.

00:09:47 – Rico Figliolini

I wonder how that would be, this comedy show, It’s comedians in cars or something looking for a coffee shop.

00:09:53 – Daisy Wall

There you go.

00:09:53 – Rico Figliolini

They don’t need to drive. They’re just going through the thing.

00:09:57 – Daisy Wall

Absolutely.

00:09:59 – Rico Figliolini

So, you know, I can see the future a little bit. If I could be a futurist a little bit. And this is an Uber type car. Uber Eats isn’t too far behind that. You know, drop the food in there. It’s coming by a house. You go in, you can just take it off the seat and get your food. But there’s other things I’m thinking about, too. So I’ve changed my mind now. I want to go somewhere else. Well, I need to pick up a friend. So it’s a ride share almost. These are possibilities, I imagine.

00:10:26 – Daisy Wall

Absolutely. Yeah, and we’re looking at all of these. Right now, there’s single passengers or what you call group passengers. So you can have multiple people in your own group. But we would love to do a ride share type of model where multiple people can get in and that’s actually what we do in all of our other locations. It is, yeah. We’ve, you know we’ve launched in 15 different locations we’re in nine that are active right now. And we have multiple variants of this. We have rideshare where multiple people can come in. But then also we have wheelchair accessible vehicles as well, you know, for people with disabilities. And so what we’d like to do is how do we create the same user experience as an able-bodied passenger for a person with a disability? And then also how do we do it in a way where if someone was to come in, what would that look like, right? You know, is that okay? And as I mentioned before, the good news is that we’re still kind of watching you. There are cameras in the vehicle. And we have a call button there as well. So if anyone ever needs help or needs to talk to someone, they can call the button. There’s someone who can look in the vehicle. So you’re not really quite alone, if you will.

00:11:35 – Rico Figliolini

So not a chatbot, but an actual person.

00:11:38 – Daisy Wall

An actual person, yes, yes.

00:11:40 – Rico Figliolini

What has May Mobility learned from this experience from being here? What do you expect to learn? And then what are you going to use it for?

00:11:48 – Daisy Wall

Right. Well, first, we’re really proud that this is the first driverless commercial autonomous deployment, I guess. I know that’s kind of a mouthful there, you know, in the state of Georgia. And we’re really excited about that. And we’re really appreciative that Georgia happens to be a very AV-friendly state. So that’s kind of part one. You know, part two is that, as Brandon was saying, we really want to make sure that the technology and the innovation that we’re developing is being applied and we learn from those applications. So, for example, we operate on public roads in mixed traffic conditions, pedestrians, different weather conditions. You know, in the snow and very, very hot weather. And here in Peachtree Corners, it’s kind of odd because we’re going a little reverse. It is a dedicated AV lane. And so that’s a little different than what we’ve been operating. But the beauty of that is that we’re also very cognizant that airports, you know, universities, other employment centers have a lot of need for this particular, you know, type of service. And so we’re really learning about, okay, what would a fixed route service look like? You know, there’s a lot of hills and sharp turns here, you know, that we are learning from as well. And because we’re picking up, you know, visitors from the Marriott, for example, you know, over to other office locations and City Hall, then it’s giving us an idea of, okay, well, are there any differences in terms of how people interact with a vehicle at a hotel, you know, location? So even those small things are very useful to us.

00:13:27 – Rico Figliolini

As you were saying that, I was thinking of the ability of the HOV lanes, for example. Because that’s what this is almost, right?

00:13:38 – Daisy Wall

Yeah.

00:13:39 – Rico Figliolini

And you mentioned, I think, once before on the ride that I took, that there are unique things besides the hills and stuff. The fact that it is an HOV type lane. You have to make a right or left differently in that type of environment. So it’s learning more than it would almost in the real world.

00:13:56 – Daisy Wall

Absolutely. And the other thing that’s interesting is we’re learning how other vehicles also react to us as well. So, you know, not every vehicle might notice that that’s an AV lane and they want to decide to cut across an AV. Like, how do you manage that particular situation? What do you need to do to make sure other folks on the road know that this is an AV? Or you know, how to interact with that. And it’s just good, you know, roadside safety.

00:14:24 – Rico Figliolini

It’s interesting because it’s, I mean, it could be used as an ingress, egress where that traffic goes into that lane to make that right turn maybe into the driveway.

00:14:31 – Daisy Wall

Exactly.

00:14:34 – Rico Figliolini

Brandon, as far as the vehicle and everything else, I mean, it’s been almost five years in September. This type of expansion and the type of vehicle and the type of work that you’re doing, how does this help Curiosity Lab to expand and get into other? Can you piggyback off this, can you use this?

00:14:53 – Brandon Branham

Right, yeah. And we’ve started that process a little bit with the infrastructure right? Growing it out of Tech Park into 141 as we’ve seen you know the evolution of the technology really needs those more dense volume, higher residential area. And so this right, we’ve kind of figured out the office park environment dedicated lane. But what happens like our public concerts, that’s a great use of this type of technology. All of our neighbors that are coming to the concert, they’re all driving in. We know we don’t have enough parking on site and we start to use the shuttle to do that. So we know that expansion of the technology is already here. Some of the deployments May’s doing. So how do we start to incorporate it into the city?

00:15:37 – Rico Figliolini

I was thinking about what Mayor Mike Mason said to me once. He says, you know, it’d be great for a vehicle of that sort to come into Amberfield or Fox Hill, pick us up at the house, take us to the concert, and then take us back home and not have to worry about walking, to driving, finding parking, and all that stuff. Yeah, now I could see the city really, a little smart city, North of Atlanta, being more of that technology and using more. I mean, we’re getting more LDR cameras. All the security cameras, all these other cameras. God knows how many cameras are in the car you know just by itself. Great number of cameras. But and all this data that you’re accumulating just will help grow. Now I’m assuming even the data you get from other cities is going to inform what this one does as well.

00:16:32 – Brandon Branham

Yeah, it learns from all of its environments because some things are similar. Some things are different. I mean, the deployment in Grand Rapids. Hugely different than what we’re doing here, but there’s still trees, still fire hydrants, all those roadside markers that the vehicle continues to learn from.

00:16:49 – Daisy Wall

Absolutely. And you want to be able to kind of get as much data as possible in diverse learning environments, right? Because the way the technology works, you know, from, there’s two parts of it, right? Like you said before, it’s the cameras, the sensors, all the hardware. Then you’ve got the software component, which is the brains of everything. And that’s, we call it multi-policy decision-making. So think of it like you’ve got to be making thousands and thousands and thousands of decisions in a millisecond. And so how do you make those decisions? You have to combine both what you’ve already accumulated from a knowledge perspective, but then also, you know, kind of the intelligence and the AI decision-making of like, okay, here are all the different scenarios. What’s the best one? What’s the safest one? What’s the best in terms of customer, you know, experience and smoothness, all those things.

00:17:36 – Rico Figliolini

It’s funny as you’re saying that I’m thinking, a particular event that happened where I saw this woman, woman or guy, it doesn’t matter, I’ve seen it often enough, where they’re pulling out, ready to like, they’re creeping out into the street, deciding whether they should go or not go. And I’m saying out loud to myself, don’t go because I’m coming.

00:17:50 – Daisy Wall

Right.

00:17:54 – Rico Figliolini

And they’re like playing chicken. And this happens.

00:17:56 – Daisy Wall

Absolutely.

00:17:58 – Rico Figliolini

You know, when people are exiting sometimes out of, on Peachtree Circle. Some people think they can make that left.

00:18:07 – Daisy Wall

Absolutely. It’s really interesting from a safety perspective. And I know that’s something that the city and Curiosity Lab has been really, really keen on is we get anecdotal comments all the time from our clients in other areas. So, for example, in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. You know, they say, oh, you know, the vehicle’s going over there and then all of a sudden it stops. It’s what’s happening and a deer comes out, right? And so it saw the deer and so that could have, you know, avoided, you know, an accident there. And then I know that we have another location where they said that they were at a four-way intersection and then, you know, the light turned green, but the vehicle didn’t go. And everybody was honking behind the vehicle. And they’re like, why aren’t we going? And immediately a couple seconds later, there was a car that ran really fast past a red light. And so if you think about that, you know, that car, if it had gone, it would have gotten T-boned. So things of that nature. And then, you know, if it was us in the vehicle, we would be like stressed out. Someone’s honking, you know, we’re like, we better go. And we could have gone, you know, even, you know, with that, right? But the vehicle just kind of doesn’t want to break the law and just does what it’s supposed to do. It doesn’t get stressed. It doesn’t get sleepy.

00:19:23 – Brandon Branham

Not on the cell phone.

00:19:24 – Daisy Wall

It’s not on the cell phone. It hasn’t had a couple glasses of wine.

00:19:36 – Rico Figliolini

Yeah, because I know that feeling. I’ve seen that in front of me. So I usually wait a beat or two before I go for it.

00:19:44 – Daisy Wall

Right. You never know.

00:19:47 – Rico Figliolini

This maybe a tough question to ask, but how has the accident rate been? Has there been any?

00:19:55 – Daisy Wall

Well, there’s been accidents, absolutely. We’ve been operating since 2017 in 15 cities, and we operate 60 hours a week. So if you look at it from a public transit perspective, there’s going to be some. However, what we are really, really proud of, we’re proud of our safety record. Autonomous vehicles are actually very highly regulated by NHTSA. And so we are required, and not just us, any autonomous vehicle company is required to report any incident in. And when I say incident, it’s even like a mirror clip. You know, or a curb, you know, a curb cut if, you know, the system has been in autonomy for a particular, you know, amount of time. And so anyone can go in and look. And I think we have a, you know, we’re very proud of our safety record.

00:20:42 – Rico Figliolini

I’m sure. It probably is way better than a normal person. So your insurance should be a lot cheaper. So as far as the other cities you’re in, you’re all on local streets now. Wherever you are. It’s not highway driving?

00:20:59 – Daisy Wall

No, we don’t do highway driving. Yeah, because of the speeds at this point.

00:21:03 – Rico Figliolini

But do you have a plan a year out from now, what you plan to do?

00:21:06 – Daisy Wall

Yeah, we have a roadmap. And so every year we make modifications. Speed is one of the big ones, right? To get to those milestones from our roadmap. And then it’s combined with the progression or the maturity of the technology itself. You know, the LIDARs, for example, on top of the vehicles, how far they can see, for example. And then also, you know, the progression of our technology as well. But for the most part, everywhere we’ve gone, we’ve always found locations to operate in because, you know, 40 miles an hour, that’s decent. You know, there’s always areas, downtown areas, residential areas.

00:21:45 – Rico Figliolini

Speed limits are 35.

00:21:46 – Daisy Wall

35.

00:21:49 – Rico Figliolini

As far as the information, the data, so everyone’s sensitive about that to some degree. And I know data is collected in a fashion that it doesn’t tie to a specific list.

00:22:02 – Daisy Wall

Yes, yes.

00:22:03 – Rico Figliolini

But obviously, I have an app calling for a car. Does it pick up any, like, which would be interesting, I think, to know for you all as well. Will it eventually pick up the data, like demographics and such, the age of the person, where it’s being used? Will that eventually be important to how the company expands its business or how it does its business?

00:22:28 – Daisy Wall

Yeah, from our perspective, you know, there are two pieces of data that are really important to us. The fleet, what we call the fleet API data or the autonomy data, right? Because safety is most important. Whether or not data is collected, we contract directly with cities and public transit agencies. And so most cities and public transit agencies are very sensitive to this and also are required by law in some circumstances that you don’t collect the personally identifiable information. So we actually don’t.

00:23:00 – Rico Figliolini

So not even demographics like that?

00:23:02 – Daisy Wall

None of that. Yeah. Now, in the future, we don’t know. Like you said, we don’t know what the evolution could look like. But for the most part, from a government perspective, that’s something that it’s very important to government right, to protect personally identifiable information so we don’t collect that.

00:23:18 – Brandon Branham

I think that’s been the unique approach how May has entered the market versus what you see when you think of like the robo taxis where that is a shared ride first approach. Whereas May has taken the leap into the city to offset solutions in the public transportation space.

00:23:39 – Daisy Wall

And at the end of the day, it’s about filling transportation gaps, right? Because we do have two models, you know, the model that we’ve grown up with and the model that we have here is, you know, contracting directly with cities and public transit systems. What that allows us to do is really tailor our services you know, to the way that the city or the public transit system wants it tailored to, to really complement and fill in those gaps. And we have, you know, also signed a partnership with Lyft as well, which will be launching service here in Atlanta, you know, this calendar year. So we’re excited about that. But that’s another model. And we know that that’s also a needed model.

00:24:19 – Rico Figliolini

That’s going to be in the city?

00:24:22 – Daisy Wall

Yes, in the city. And if you think about all the things that Atlanta brings, you know, and the economic development of the city and the overflow that that comes into Peachtree Corners, too. I mean, we have FIFA coming. We have the Super Bowl coming. We have Dragon Con every year. Right? So those are all big events where we can see the vehicles really providing meaningful service.

00:24:48 – Rico Figliolini

You all also did just a recent agreement with a, what’s the name of the company? It’s a… 

00:24:53 – Brandon Branham

TechnoBus?

00:24:55 – Daisy Wall

TechnoBus. Yes, yes.

00:24:57 – Rico Figliolini

That’s also doing disability, accessibility, but being used in cities where I think it’s 20 passengers.

00:25:05 – Daisy Wall

Yeah, no, great. So obviously, again, the use case is the most important, right? We want to match the right vehicle with the right use case. So if you need to, for example, you know, service an airport, you know a bus of that size, which is, you know, up to 30 standing, 16, you know, sitting, for example, is a great use case. And also there’s other benefits too. You know, it’s got the accessibility component. This particular bus actually is running in Europe already with public transit agencies in, you know, 40, 50 different cities. So what we like, we love about that, we say it’s a workhorse. Very similar to what Brandon was saying. We know it’s running in public cities. It has done its job. So now we just need to autonomize it, if you will, and make it run without a driver.

00:25:57 – Rico Figliolini

I don’t want to stereotype, but European drivers are crazy. Especially if you go to Italy, where my heritage is.

00:26:05 – Daisy Wall

And it is, believe it or not, actually, TechnoBus is an Italian company.

00:26:12 – Rico Figliolini

That makes sense. But everyone in an autonomous vehicle gets less accidents.

00:26:15 – Daisy Wall

Yeah, but we are very grateful. I mean, they’re wonderful partners. And we actually are very fortunate to have a lot of wonderful partners in Toyota, you know, in State Farm, in, you know, a whole bunch of NTT, a whole bunch of other, you know, investors and partners.

00:26:28 – Rico Figliolini

And I can see that as better use in Atlanta than the trolley system they just put out recently, right? It’s a lot less infrastructure, right, to put. You can just run these things and set around, it goes. Yeah, way more efficient than that. What else can Curiosity Lab learn from this partnership that you think that, because you’ve been to the CES show, you’ve been to Israel, to other countries, trying to bring business here. So how can you use this to work?

00:27:01 – Brandon Branham

Yeah, as we think of not just us, but all of our cities that we work with across the U.S., how are these new technologies going to shape the future of our cities? They’re going to play a role. So why is, why does the city not stand in the front of that and support it. So learning how they operate what are some of our limitations? It is still new technology relatively speaking so there are going to be some limits on what you can do with it and how do we overcome them which we’re seeing here and then we translate that to our partners that we work with in Texas and Colorado and Arizona hey let’s share in this.

00:27:38 – Rico Figliolini

Do you share?

00:27:40 – Brandon Branham

We do yeah. We all said it’s a very awesome group that we get together and we share what’s going on, share the ideas. Hey this worked, this didn’t, I saw this, what are you seeing here? Because in the end we all want a better service for the resident. Whether that’s here in Peachtree Corners, in Atlanta, in Colorado, in Texas. So and all of these technologies help us do that. So for us, you know councilman Wright, he’s a big proponent of AV. So we have to be looking forward on how these start to service the residents because you don’t take public transportation now because it’s not convenient.

00:28:12 – Rico Figliolini

No, it’s not.

00:28:13 – Brandon Branham

Right? So can we supplement with these types of technologies to start to make that convenient and maybe take a few cars off the roadway when we’re going shopping or going to downtown? This is our chance.

00:28:24 – Rico Figliolini

And I think, like, Gwinnett County is talking to get into microtransit, which is pretty much your vehicles can be used.

00:28:33 – Daisy Wall

It’s exactly what it is, yeah. It’s a, you know, there’s different models, right, to Brandon’s point. You know, public transit, like we have here in, you know, Peachtree Corners and in Gwinnett County, we have a, you know, a fantastic partner, you know, on the public transit side. But, you know, it’s normal as cities grow. And as, you know, there’s more economic development, what ends up happening is that you want to make sure that those pockets are filled and those gaps are filled. And sometimes, you know, public transit may not get there fast enough or may need help, you know, where we can supplement and connect into public transit. And that’s where microtransit is. That’s the beauty of it is that you get to your point. Like a rideshare TNC type of service where you can pull up an app and ask to go wherever you know so you can get really shorter wait times and more convenient service.

00:29:22 – Rico Figliolini

The future’s almost here. 

00:29:26 – Brandon Branham

I’d say it’s here.

00:29:27 – Daisy Wall

It’s here. It’s here.

00:29:30 – Rico Figliolini

And thinking about that, too, and thinking about COVID, what that did to people. Because I know quite a few people that some of them still wear masks, some of them still don’t like crowds, and these types of micro transits would be beneficial to them. 

00:29:45 – Daisy Wall

Absolutely.

00:29:45 – Rico Figliolini

Or even seniors that can’t get around. If it gets there.

00:29:48 – Daisy Wall

A lot of our locations, you know, seniors are our heaviest riders in a lot of ways, which is quite interesting. A lot of people think, oh, well, seniors really take it. But if you think about it, seniors in a lot of ways need it the most, you know, because there’s sometimes mobility challenges. And, you know, instead of having to rely on loved ones all the time, this is a great opportunity to provide more, you know, independence for them.

00:30:11 – Rico Figliolini

I think there’s a stereotype out there that they don’t do that, but they’re probably on iPads way more than their kids.

00:30:15 – Brandon Branham

Yes, they are.

00:30:17 – Daisy Wall

Oh, yeah. And they give us great feedback.

00:30:23 – Rico Figliolini

Anything that we forgot, we’re getting towards the end of our conversation. So anything that you want to share?

00:30:29 – Brandon Branham

I would just encourage our residents to come out, take a ride, experience it, get comfortable with the technology.

00:30:36 – Rico Figliolini

Cool. Where can they download the app?

00:30:38 – Daisy Wall

Yep. So you just go online and you can pull up a May Mobility app and then you find it and then just download it and you’ll see, you know, Peachtree Corners in there. Wherever you are, if you’re in the area, you can pretty much, you know, call up a vehicle to any of our eight stop locations.

00:30:54 – Rico Figliolini

Technology Parkway.

00:30:56 – Daisy Wall

Yeah. Yes.

00:30:58 – Rico Figliolini

Which runs from the, what used to be Anderby’s, which is close to the…

00:31:08 – Brandon Branham

Spalding Drive.

00:31:10 – Rico Figliolini

Spalding Drive. Thank you. Norcross High School, Wesleyan is right on that corner. All the way down to the Marriott. So check that out. Guys, I appreciate you being with us. This was a great conversation. Thank you. I love being here at Curiosity Lab. Just more to come, right?

00:31:19 – Daisy Wall

Yeah, thanks so much.

00:31:21 – Rico Figliolini

And thank you to our sponsors again, EV Remodeling, Inc. and Vox Pop Uli. I appreciate you guys supporting us. Thank you so much.