Self-Driving Cars Coming To Reston

RESTON, VA -- Self-driving cars will be arriving in Reston soon, thanks to a developer that has partnered with a Boston-based self-driving car company.

Developer Brookfield Properties has partnered with Optimus Ride, and in June tenants of the Halley Rise development at One and two Reston Crescent will be able to reserve rides that will service the 36-acre property.

Three self-driving cars will transport tenants between the office buildings and the parking lots, and an operations team will monitor and maintain the vehicles, the company said in a statement.

It's part of a pilot project that could involve deploying self-driving cars to Brookfield properties nationwide.

“Brookfield is constantly exploring innovations that can improve the experience of our tenants," Greg Meyer, Executive Vice President of Brookfield Properties, said in the statement. "We are excited to engage with Optimus Ride to deploy this program in an effort to increase mobility and add convenience for our tenants in their day-to-day lives.”

Halley Rise, a development formerly known as Reston Crescent, will be fully completed by 2026 and consist of 1,500 residential units, 1.5 million square feet of office space, 250,000 square feet of retail, and five acres of public open space. Construction is set to begin in mid-2019, and the first phase should be completed by 2022, the company said.

"We will deploy our self-driving system at Brookfield’s Halley Rise location this summer to provide users with autonomous mobility access between office buildings as we continue to scale our business, Ryan Chin, founder of Optimus Ride, said in the statement. "In the future, we will advance our partnership by deploying our self-driving systems at additional Brookfield sites around the world.”

Optimus Ride is a spinoff company from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that was founded in 2015.

(Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)