It’s certainly a large investment for this to be just a “field of dreams” project. If this will be a parking deck that can also serve non-autonomous cars this makes sense, but I don’t see anywhere that it says it could be for general parking.
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“Drivers enter their cars into a loading bay, then onto a pallet, and operate a kiosk where the the garage system parks the car for the driver by itself. ”
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Yeah I think the driverless car angle is just salesmanship. The only difference between driver and driverless cars is, well, the driver, so you’d need a way for the cars to pay for themselves. Your costs are just tied up in that system.
That doesn’t explain why they’d go to the press about their marketing plans first though. There’s like 5 driverless car companies, you go to them first. I continue to think this is just treated as infrastructure for the rest of the development but it’s odd and says something that they think they need to upsell the garage itself with sleight of hand
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To be fair, we really could have benefited from a Waymo type service during the pandemic. It would have been a safer way to travel for those without cars.
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I’m seeing Waymos fairly regularly in Charlotte and have literally never seen anyone actually inside. They just drive around unoccupied.
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Before launching service, Waymo has their cars drive around empty for a good while so that they learn the area and all of its quirks and idiosyncrasies. The same happened here in Miami Beach. They were all over the place 24/7 as they “learned”.
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I’m a huge fan of an autonomous vehicle future, but if you ever get stuck behind a Waymo that’s glitching it’s a terrible experience.
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Autonomous cars are the worst possible outcome imo. Everything still has to be designed around cars, but those of us who are actual gearheads and enjoy driving will likely see the ability to drive be further and further regulated out of existence.
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Fire Station #1 will be relocated to this location as well. A few preliminary plans were made available.
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I’m having trouble visualizing where this is..???
I see it now! Thank you
how’s the soundproofing backstage at the mmcpa?
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It can’t be worse than living behind Cornerstone (or whatever they are calling that heap these days).
Not to mention that autonomy still leaves a lot to be desired. I’m a Telsa owner and I won’t use FSD in the city. Too many interventions. On the open road, it’s a different story. Telsa quotes numbers that FSD is x-number of times safer, but that’s because a substantial number of Tesla owners will use FSD only on the open road where the miles accumulate much faster.
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A lot of tree removal and brush clearing at City Gateway today. This is really going to open up the view into downtown coming South to North. RIP trees, but hopeful this area continues to grow to add density for the South side.
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MLK exit ramp closed, as was foretold here, for this develiopment:
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/business/real-estate-news/article315565860.html
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yeah this has been super annoying for me given that person st is also closed @ mlk 
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Got excited when they said new development but it’s just a street and eventual parking deck lol.
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Plans for the City Gateway district have changed over the years. At one point, they included a 10-story building called the Gateway Center that would have housed Exploris, a K-8 charter school. After that plan fell through, Exploris bought three quarters of an acre on Kindley Street from Capital City Urban Development in 2022.
Read more at: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/business/real-estate-news/article315565860.html#storylink=cpy
This is news to me. I had wondered what Exploris was going to do after the original development plans fell through. Does anyone have any more information? Is Exploris working with another firm to get their own building up?
(Full transparency: I’m mostly interested because the sooner Exploris gets their own building, the sooner the huge plot of land they occupy in SE Raleigh opens up for a potential grocery.)
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