Peachtree Corners joins PAVE Advisory Council to Expand Autonomous Vehicle Tech

Transcription:

Jim Fitzpatrick:
So gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us here in the studio and also online.

Brandon Branham:
Yeah, Thank you for having us.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Sure. So let me start with you if I can, Brandon, for those that might be unfamiliar, what makes a city a smart city?

Brandon Branham:
Great question, and probably get a hundred different answers depending on who you ask. But as we think about the use of technology to make visitors’ and employees’ and residents’ lives easier, better, how we provide services to our constituents using both the new emerging technologies as well as the data that comes from this. So bringing those together with the centric focus on the resident, not the technology. So making sure you’re just using that to help the community get better and stronger and grow.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Yeah. And there’s been a lot of articles. You guys have gotten a lot of great press here in the last few years because of the fact that you’re out in front and really taking a lead on this. Right? Your city is so much more advanced than many other cities that you would think would be advanced, right?

Brandon Branham:
Yeah.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Talk to us about the importance of delivering that kind of service.

Brandon Branham:
Yeah, we’re fortunate, Peachtree Corners is a new city, just 10 years old, but we’re actually sitting in the first technology park ever been created in the state of Georgia.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Wow, cool.

Brandon Branham:
Huge, rich history in innovation. The modem was actually founded here eight buildings down from where we’re sitting.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
No kidding. Pretty cool.

Brandon Branham:
And so using that is our guiding path, how we look to do our implementation and then focusing on the private-public partnership. Government’s not traditionally known for innovating. We all know that.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
This is true, right.

Brandon Branham:
But the private sector is, so how do you bring those together, take use of the public infrastructure that the cities own, operate, maintain, and that’s our bread and butter and then bring in that experience from the private sector to help how roll these technologies out to the community.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Sure. I’ve got to imagine there’s a number of cities looking at you right now and Peachtree Corners saying, “We want to duplicate this. These guys got it going on.” Right?

Brandon Branham:
Yeah, we’ve had a few of them visit us. New Orleans was here not too long ago. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg was here about four months ago now.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
No kidding. Wow.

Brandon Branham:
Yeah. CIO of the USDOT was here three weeks ago.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Very cool.

Brandon Branham:
I had some calls with LA and Philadelphia. Good contacts out there. All of us looking to better the lives of our residents. So in it together.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
That’s very cool. Very cool. Congratulations.

Brandon Branham:
Thank you.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
So Peachtree Corners has recently partnered and joined PAVE’s Advisory Council. Adam, tell us about PAVE and what your mission is and how the partnership came about.

Adam Howell:
Absolutely. So we’re a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. We’re made up of members from the autonomous vehicle industry, major manufacturers, technology companies, startups as well as nonprofits. So we have Mothers Against Drunk Driving who are members, Governor’s Highway Safety Association. And really our goal is to elevate the conversation about AV technology, what it is, what it isn’t, inform the public. It’s a very frontier sort of technology that is just starting to reach the public eye. And it’s really important for us and our members that we provide a good context around what the possibilities are for the future, but what the realities are now.
We’re just really thrilled to have Peachtree Corners as a Public Sector Advisory Council member, because part of education includes public sector education. So policy makers, regulators. There’s an emerging policy and regulatory framework that is evolving in the same way that technology is and it’s very, very important to have really good test cases and models out there for the rest of the country when it comes down to people who are actually doing this on the ground in an innovative way. Peachtree Corners is just a wonderful example of the possibility when public-private partnerships and technology and that data ecosystem come together to really serve the public in an exciting way. So we’re very excited that they’re a part of PAVE’s Advisory Council, and we’re looking forward to so many great things coming out of Peachtree Corners in the future.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Yeah, that’s fantastic. How long have you been part of PAVE?

Brandon Branham:
Just joined a few months ago. As we’ve developed our approach to autonomous automated vehicles and interaction felt that this was a great organization for us as a municipality to join. They’ve been helping lead the education component around automated autonomous vehicles and so saw that as a great fit with the work we were doing together.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Yeah, very cool. Do you have other cities and other municipalities on board, Adam?

Adam Howell:
So we have other public sector officials in different areas. I wouldn’t say directly in terms of cities, but we have several state DOT representatives on our public sector Advisory Council, and really from all levels of government. We work with USDOT, Transportation Research Board, and a lot of others too to cover the pantheon of what is public sector education. They’re really great in terms of guiding our efforts and messaging what is useful for those groups that actually operate infrastructure and build infrastructure, and what that means for autonomous vehicles and how we can better educate those people on the public sector side.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Sure. That’s great. Brandon, what impact will a partnership like this have on the Peachtree Corner residents and business owners?

Brandon Branham:
Part of the hesitation really, the roll out of autonomous vehicles, we hear a lot in the news about Tesla, it’s a forefront in the news.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
That’s right.

Brandon Branham:
So educating the public on the safe adoption of autonomous vehicle deployments in their community. Taking the knowledge that PAVE’s been able to gain over the last few years on how to properly educate your constituents, and then we partnered with a company, Beep, to help us operate it. And we also brought out the public safety aspect. You’ve seen the shuttle. There’s no steering wheel, it’s a side entry door. So how do you respond in an incident if there is one, knock on wood, we have never had one yet in three years.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
So is it what’s referred to as a level 5 autonomous vehicle?

Brandon Branham:
So NTU would classify this as a level 3, level 4 because there’s still a steward on board. So there is a safety steward on there that can take over operations.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
But that’s the only reason, otherwise the vehicle could be level 5.

Brandon Branham:
Yeah, it could drive totally autonomously.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
That’s very impressive. Because I know that in terms of Mercedes-Benz and so many other companies out there that are trying to get to that level 5, it’s a very high bar, as you all know.

Brandon Branham:
It is.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
I mean, I’m not telling you something you don’t already know. But the auto industry is just working diligently to get there. And then when they get there, of course the big factor or the big question is how much does something like this cost? But like anything else, just like EVs, they’ll come out with $150,000 EV and then in a couple of years, it’s 30 grand and they’ve already announced that. So it’s like anything else. But it sounds like Peachtree Corners are going to have the first in the state of having completely autonomous vehicles running around.

Brandon Branham:
Yeah, we were actually the first in the world to put a fully autonomous shuttle on a public roadway.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Really? First in the world?

Brandon Branham:
Yeah, up until Peachtree Corners they’d been operated in parking lots, closed private sections of roadway.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
That’s big time.

Brandon Branham:
So yeah, one of our first. We’ve had a few and that was one of ours back in October of 2019

Jim Fitzpatrick:
And no accidents, no incidents? Just incredible.

Brandon Branham:
No accidents, no incidents. Just fun experiences.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
That’s right. That’s right. We’re headquartered here. It’s great seeing it move along. And it gets a lot of eyeballs and I feel like I’m in The Jetsons, where you’ve got these vehicles just passing you by on their own. If you’re coming out of the office complex, it stops and it waits, and it’s pretty impressive. It really is. So who’s funding these autonomous vehicles and added technology that we see out there?

Brandon Branham:
As we think about really the development around it, it’s not just the vehicle as we start to think of the infrastructure that supports it. So we’ve got our partnerships through T-Mobile, OVHcloud. What do we do with the data off of autonomous vehicles? How do we process it? And then our connected vehicle environment. So feeding additional information to the vehicles. These are funded through public-private partnership. We take that all the way through. So we’ve got some public funds that go towards it and then our private companies also invest in this project because there’s interest from them to learn and develop around it.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Right. Right. That is a perfect scenario for when public and private get together and do good things.

Brandon Branham:
Yeah.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Because everybody’s always skeptical of that, but you guys are living proof of it actually happening and working well. That is fantastic. So what is your goal in regards to technology over the next few years?

Brandon Branham:
Yeah, it’s really twofold. One, working with PAVE on our educational development of autonomous vehicles here. We’re on our second platform of autonomous vehicles. So we’re getting to review a different style of autonomy and we’ll have another one joining us here shortly as well. So getting to evaluate the different types of technology stacks, because they’re all different. All AV companies have their own build and model to how they develop them. We see it here in Tech Park now. Focusing on that connection with infrastructure so we’re a fully connected vehicle environment, so our traffic signals are talking to the shuttles to let them know, “Hey, I’m turning red.” Or, “Hey, there’s a pedestrian in this crosswalk.” So giving them advanced notice of that. Then we can take it to our next step and that is actually to connect it to our downtown. So getting it up to our town center where we’ve got 1000 hotel rooms right here on our doorstep, let’s get them up, get them in our town center and experience the fun of Peachtree Corners.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
That is incredible. Really. I mean the future is happening right here at Peachtree Corners, there’s no question about it. Wow.
For people that are listening, and we do have people from all over the country that watch our show, mostly here in Georgia and certainly Atlanta, they’re going to be interested in seeing how this works. I mean to come and see it actually live is really amazing. We are very fortunate to be in Peachtree Corners and see this every day. But this is where the future is happening right now.

Brandon Branharmm:
Right here.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
And as we know, the car manufacturers right now are all about the connected vehicle, right?

Brandon Branham:
Yeah, it’s a big conversation in the OEM market, and FCC just made their decision on how connected vehicle band goes. So it’s at the forefront of conversations I know at PAVE and what they’re doing and then the conversations we’re having both with the telecoms as well as some of the OEMs that are building the connected vehicle infrastructure.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Very, very exciting times. This is fun stuff to report on so that we can look back at this reporting five years and go, “Remember when we were just doing the little autonomous… Everybody was excited about it.” You guys are going to have drones flying in, right?

Brandon Branham:
They’re coming.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
With nobody in them, by the way.

Brandon Branham:
That’s right, that’s right.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Just delivering things. That’s the future. So Brandon Branham, who’s Peachtree Corners’ Chief Technology Officer and Assistant City Manager, and Adam Howell, Director of External Affairs at PAVE, thank you so much, gentlemen, for joining us on the show.
Love to do a follow up on this and see how things are moving along. Because they are, no pun, they are moving along literally with nobody driving. So that is really cool stuff. This has been a real treat. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Brandon Branham:
Thank you.

Adam Howell:
Absolutely. Thank you.