CPUC Announces Expansion of Paid Robotaxis in Bay Area & LA

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) announced on Friday that Waymo, a Google-backed self-driving car service, would be able to expand their paid car service from just San Francisco into several other cities on the Peninsula, highways in San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

The announcement comes after a rocky several months from both Waymo and the GM-backed rival Cruise. Last year, despite many problems, CPUC allowed the expansion of Cruise in San Francisco. However, this soon proved disastrous. Many new accident reports came flooding in, and less than a month later Cruise cut the number of robotaxis in the city by half because of the incidents. Despite this, further accidents harmed people, resulting in many protests. By late October, the California DMV ordered Cruise to stop all operations in the state because of safety concerns over recent accidents. With San Francisco in doubt, and Los Angeles looking at ways to reign in robotaxis, Cruise announced on October 27th that they would be suspending operations nationwide because of safety concerns.

CPUC continued to backtrack their hasty decision, fining Cruise, just as the company began massive layoffs because of the San Francisco failure. CPUC was then sued by the city of San Francisco because of the failure. During all of this, Waymo generally fared better. However, just like Cruise, a number of new accidents soon occurred, including a high profile accident in San Francisco earlier this month where a Waymo car hit a bicyclist and an incident that led to crowds burning a Waymo car during a San Francisco celebration. Only a week ago, CPUC had announced that Waymo expansion plans into San Mateo County and Santa Clara County had been halted. However, despite the growing number of issues, CPUC announced on Friday that Waymo could expand.

According to CPUC, Waymo can now collect charged fares not just in San Francisco, but on highways in San Francisco, some nearby cities, as well as in some parts of LA. “Waymo may begin fared driverless passenger service operations in the specified areas of Los Angeles and the San Francisco Peninsula, effective today,” said CPUC in a letter.

“We’re grateful to the CPUC for this vote of confidence in our operations, which paves the way for the deployment of our commercial Waymo One service in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Peninsula,” said Waymo in a statement on Friday. “As always, we’ll take a careful and incremental approach to expansion by continuing to work closely with city officials, local communities and our partners to ensure we’re offering a service that’s safe, accessible and valuable to our riders. We’re incredibly grateful for the riders and community partners who have supported our service to date — including more than 15,000 rides thus far in LA — and we’re looking forward to bringing the benefits of fully autonomous ride-hailing to more people.”

However, the CPUC approval was met with mostly negative reception. The City of South San Francisco, the County of San Mateo, and the Los Angeles Department of Transportation were amongst local government organizations, citizens groups, and unions blasting the decision, saying that neither Waymo nor CPUC cared about public safety and that CPUC reneged on their previous decisions to halt Bay area expansions made less than two weeks before.

Backlash against CPUC

“I thought CPUC gave us 120 days to sit down with Waymo and discuss our concerns here in San Mateo County,” noted San Mateo County Board of Supervisors vice president David Canepa on Friday. “I’m confused and a bit suspicious that the CPUC took only 11 days to change its mind on the suspension. I find this to be egregious and disingenuous. We have had no talks to address our concerns and it says to me that neither Waymo nor the CPUC care about local concerns the public safety of our residents. This is why we need SB 915 by state Sen. Dave Cortese to pass in the Legislature. We need some local control over how rob taxis operate in the county because we know our roads and highways the best.”

Others vowed to get a reversal of the decision as soon as possible.

“We still have these self-driving cars causing accidents and hurting people,” added Elaine Warner, a travel advisor in Los Angeles, to the Globe. “Waymo does have a better record than Cruise, but it still needs to be looked into more, to see if the same problems will happen. But nope, CPUC is throwing caution into the wind. CPUC really needs to take the ‘Public’ out of their name, as they obviously don’t give them any consideration anymore.”

However, there are signs that Friday’s expansion could be short-lived. Several bills going after self-driving vehicles, including some imposing more limits and more regulations on the industry, are expected to be heard soon in San Francisco. Local outrage in both the Bay Area and Los Angeles could also halt at least some service early on as well.

“We’re in the Titanic scenario right now,” added Warner. “Ships didn’t have a lot of regulations regarding passenger safety until the Titanic sank. We’re at that point right now with self-driving cars. We thought we had learned our lesson with Cruise, but no, now we have to go through the same thing with Waymo. That means more people are going to be injured.

“There are people at these companies saying that these cities are giving them a “warm welcome“. Then why are so many Government groups against them? Why are so many citizens against them. No one is saying that they should just not exist. We’re saying that they need more time to develop to really make a judgement on them. We’ve seen so many accidents with them so far, so much more than what is being reported on in the news. But the state thinks they are ready when they obviously aren’t. It’s like the Governor is really buddy-buddy with these Silicon Valley tech companies and allowing this to happen for their benefit or something.”

More on the Waymo expansion is to come out soon, including possible lawsuits against CPUC over their decision.