San José, CA will forever hold a very special and unique place in our hearts here at Glydways, as it is the first city to award us a contract for their airport connector project. The background about how we got to this point is pretty fascinating.

Being the heart of Silicon Valley, San José has had a front-row seat to virtually every significant high-tech innovation over the past few decades, extending back to well before the Internet. As a result, the City and its surrounding areas have endured massive, high velocity growth. It is now the tenth largest city in the United States—bigger than its neighbor to the north, San Francisco.  

Significant growth that happens quickly is usually a nightmare scenario for transportation infrastructure planners because, for better or worse, transit usually follows development, not the other way around. For over 20 years, San José has sought a transit solution that connects two critical access points in the region: the Norman Y. Mineta International Airport (SJC) to Diridon Station near Downtown San José, which are just over three miles apart. With growth projections remaining up-and-to-the-right, The City and regional leaders, following the classic Silicon Valley playbook that produced iconic companies like Hewlett Packard, Apple, Meta, Intuit, and more, decided to invent their way out of their problem. Glydways was their proverbial “Edison.”   

Reducing Travel Time by 30 Minutes

In April 2023, the City awarded the San José Connection Partners the contract to connect San José Mineta International Airport to Diridon Station near downtown. This consortium was established as a multidisciplinary private team of top firms with infrastructure design, construction, financing, and operational capabilities, and Glydways as the technology provider.

Utilizing Glydways’ autonomous, battery electric vehicle and Automated Transit Network technology, this Airport Connector project will allow riders to travel non-stop from SJC to Diridon Station in under 10 minutes, where it currently takes 30-40 minutes via transit. In addition to connecting the two major transportation hubs, there will be intermediate stations along the 4.3 mile route to expand connections to communities underserved by public transportation. Best of all, riders transiting directly between SJC and Diridon Station will bypass all interim stations, and enjoy a direct, point-to-point journey.  

The features of Glydways’ transit technology provide riders an unparalleled, premium transit experience. We offer an on-demand, direct to destination service in Glydcars which are our small, autonomous, battery electric vehicles. Glydways’ electric vehicles accommodate riders of all ages and mobility levels, providing comfortable seating for up to four adult passengers, with luggage. Glydways leverages commercially available off-the-shelf components to deliver a fully bidirectional vehicle design that complies with relevant standards, including ADA accessibility. The entire Glydways system is designed and optimized to provide an exceptional personal experience.

Turning Vision into Reality

The Glydways vehicle is not this project’s only innovation. The Airport Connection is a public-private partnership (P3), which allows the public sector to optimize project costs by transferring risk to private sector partners in the delivery of public infrastructure projects. A P3 project leverages market knowledge and experience, and provides a faster schedule for implementation to minimize public funding.

Overall, the project consists of multi-phase Pre-Development Agreements. In Phase 1, initial planning and design work will be done to assess the comprehensive financial requirements of the project. Phase 2 focuses on significant engineering design and environmental clearance. Phase 3 finalizes the public-private implementation agreement that sets the terms for the long-term, market-risk revenue design-build-finance-operate-maintain (DBFOM) contract. 

In the near future, there will be many different and varied projects around the world that will utilize the Glydways solution. But you never, ever forget your first, and we will be forever grateful to San José and its visionary leaders for giving us this spectacular opportunity.