Kelly said he asked driverless taxi company Waymo about its interest in Chattanooga at a Google event earlier this year.
"They are very much working their way down the list of major markets," Kelly said in an interview following a panel about autonomous cars at the Chattanooga Connect conference Tuesday. "I still hope they come here at some point."
Waymo, a subsidiary of Google, uses self-driving cars to take passengers on rides booked through a rideshare like Uber or its own app, depending on the city.
Waymo is set to come to Nashville next year through a partnership with rideshare company Lyft. The driverless taxis launched in Atlanta via Uber over the summer and were joined last month by a competing service. Chattanooga could complete that sandwich, Kelly said.
"At some point, somebody's going to take a Waymo to Chattanooga from Atlanta or Nashville. I'm sure it'll happen," Kelly said. "If it's not them, this is a space where there's a lot of other players developing."
Kelly said bringing Waymo to Chattanooga would be an economic development play, a way to bring a big tech player to a midsize city. The taxis also wouldn't require any added infrastructure or commitment from the city, Kelly said.
So will Chattanoogans be able to hail a driverless ride anytime soon?
"Eh," Kelly said during the panel. "I mean, I think we're on the radar."
Kelly said he sees Chattanooga, where university researchers are working on smart street technology, as a good place to test autonomous driving. Sometimes, it's hard for midsize cities to attract companies doing cutting-edge work, he said, but Chattanooga's access to EPB, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga researchers, the Tennessee Valley Authority and the nearby Oak Ridge National Laboratory should be an advantage. Volkswagen is also developing a small autonomous bus, Kelly said.
"My pitch was, look, this is belt-and-suspenders," Kelly said. "You could learn a lot of secondary and tertiary things about the system."
Systems like Waymo can also help cities track where their streets and infrastructure need maintenance, said Ben Levine, market development director for the infrastructure software firm Bentley Systems.
"Waymo will know more information about infrastructure degradation, about code violations, about down signage. Google Street View knows that," Levine said during a panel Tuesday. "We have a current business using dash cameras to ingest information about signage and what is visible from the street, from cameras, in order to inform maintenance."
Autonomous driving could also help improve Chattanooga's public transit system, officials said.
The Chattanooga Area Regional Transportation Authority is also getting ready to add self-driving features, chief executive Charles Frazier said during Tuesday's panel.
Ideally, downtown Chattanooga would operate something like Walt Disney World, Frazier said — where you can drive in, park your car once and not see it again until the end of your trip.
"Let us get you to where you want to go. You don't need to drive all over downtown," Frazier said. "And the way in which we'll do that is a reimagined shuttle network."
CARTA bought a Karsan e-JEST electric shuttle earlier this year for its North Shore Express route. Frazier said that shuttle can become self-driving with an autonomous vehicle kit. That means soon, there may be a real autonomous vehicle in Chattanooga that people can touch and feel, Frazier said.
"People are not rational creatures," Kelly said. "It matters if the bus is cute.
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