There are some interesting transportation options in Atlanta these days. 

There’s always the Marta train which is helpful for getting to certain locations around the city. The train system was built in 1979 with a north-south axis and an east-west axis. If you want to go somewhere on an axis, it’s helpful. If you want to go somewhere between the axis legs, it’s rubbish. Luckily for me, we live within walking distance of a Marta train station (we did that on purpose) and I work within walking distance of a train station. This makes it easy for me to take the train to work if it’s raining or if I’m just feeling lazy and don’t want to walk to work.

Uber and Lyft are convenient options if you want a more direct trip. Uber arrived in Atlanta in 2014 and was, by and far, a much better option than the local taxi service. Uber was great in the beginning, but I found that the service degraded over time as I started getting dirty, run-down cars when the gig economy took off. Lyft is generally better and cheaper (but does anyone else remember the giant pink moustaches from the early Lyft days?).

Atlanta used to have Zipcar and City Carshare. I used this service a lot. For example, I would take Marta to work and then use Zipcar to go to a doctor appointment in the middle of the day. I think Uber killed this.

For a while there was a bike-share program. Bikes were located around the city and you could use an app to check one out. And then scooters came along.

The scooter craze hit Atlanta in 2018 when thousands of these things were dropped around the city. This was a big mess with scooters all over the place, blocking sidewalks. It was as if cicada carcasses had fallen out of the sky all over the city. Scooters reigned supreme, and people were riding them EVERYWHERE, until Covid.

Flash forward to today.

Scooters are still around. I don’t see people using them as much, but they are still used. The scooter companies now have bikes.

But here’s the best part. Atlanta now has delivery robots and driverless cars.

The delivery robots are from Serve Robotics and are used for food delivery through Uber Eats and Doordash. I see them all over the place in downtown Atlanta because Georgia State University has its main campus buildings here, and there are tons of restaurants that do take-out for students. I also see these cute bots closer to my house in Old Fourth Ward along the beltline.

Every robot travels on sidewalks, waits patiently at red lights, uses the crosswalks, and pauses to let humans pass by. Each robot also has a unique name, which makes these little guys seem like adorable pets.

Driverless cars also arrived in Atlanta last year. These cars are by Waymo, and every one is a white Jaguar sedan with loads of navigation cameras. They are available through Uber, which might be the smartest thing Uber has done in a long time. The cars are much safer than human-driven cars, because they obey all traffic rules, they don’t drink and drive, they don’t text, they pay attention to pedestrians crossing the street, etc. After some of my experiences with Uber drivers, I would totally take a Waymo instead of a human driver.