In a uniquely San Francisco-in-2023 incident, several drivers illegally motored down the center bike lane on Valencia Street last night in order to swerve around a frozen autonomous Waymo, according to a Twitter video from the scene.
The short video shows a Waymo One flashing its lights, an indication the autonomous car encountered some insurmountable difficulty while driving and stopped dead in its tracks, blocking a lane on Valencia.
“There’s a Waymo stuck in the road,” says the person who filmed the incident, as car after car bypasses the stalled Waymo and drives into the center bikes-only lane. The bike path is a controversial new addition to the street that official launched just last week, though it has been effectively open and in use since April.
Five cars drive down the bike lane during the 30-second video, easily fitting between the K71 plastic bollards that the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency has installed up and down Valencia Street. The bollards, easily crushed, are in short supply and have not been fully installed along the corridor. Bikers along large stretches of Valencia are instead largely protected by black rubber bumpers.
But on this stretch of Valencia, the bollards were in place — and the cars drove between them nonetheless, easily moving over the black bumpers and into the center lane.
It is hardly the only time vehicles have occupied the bikes-only lane: Several cyclists have posted pictures online of cars, delivery trucks, and fire engines driving through, or parked in, the center lane. And the bike path is technically an emergency lane, meaning fire engines, ambulances, and other vehicles can speed down it in an emergency, forcing cyclists into car traffic on either side.
The controversial bike lane pilot project, originally given tepid support by neighbors and the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, has seen a troubled rollout. Several bikers have crashed and at least one was hospitalized, a prankster put up protest signs to call attention to large construction posts blocking the lane, and the bike coalition is now urging cyclists to send complaints to the MTA.
One Canadian-Danish urban design expert called the lane “an abomination” and “the worst infrastructure I have ever seen anywhere in the world.”
And the rollout for San Francisco’s self-driving cars is set to see its own development this week: The California Public Utilities Commission will vote on Thursday, Aug. 10, whether Waymo (owned by Google parent company Alphabet) and Cruise (owned by General Motors) will gain the right to charge passengers for hailing rides in their self-driving cars anywhere in the city.
Currently, Waymo and Cruise can test their cars in the city, but may not charge for taxi services. A small pool of users already has the ability to hail the autonomous vehicles, but the vote would allow any paying passenger unfettered access.
Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt has already outlined how his company could “blanket” San Francisco should the vote go Cruise’s way, saying the city could easily handle “several thousand” Cruise vehicles on its streets — at least a tenfold increase from the 303 Cruise cars permitted to operate in San Francisco today.
Waymo, too, would win the right to charge customers — and presumably see a significant increase in the size of its San Francisco fleet.
Waymo did not respond to a request for comment on what precipitated the incident, what precautions were in place for testing on Valencia Street, and whether it will continue testing on the corridor.
The MTA did not respond to a request for comment on how it envisions drivers and cyclists navigating the scenario that occurred last night.
The agency did say that driverless technology is “still in development” and “simply not ready to operate 24/7 in the city,” adding it is opposed to the expansion of both Cruise and Waymo in San Francisco.
“We don’t want CPUC to issue permits for 24-hour service across the entire city at this time.”
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Finally bicycled down that stretch of Valencia last week a few times. It didn’t feel terribly safe or comfortable even without anything happening. And I’ve not seen anything like this in most parts of Europe. It’s an experiment that never should have left the drawing board. PS. It’s also slowed up car traffic on Valencia, but in an aggravating way. . Not exactly a win-win situation
Just want to remind folks that this situation is not unique to self-driving car failures. The same thing happens any time a delivery driver illegally double parks to pick up an order, or an uber illegally double parks to pick up or drop off a passenger, which is likely hundreds to thousands of times a day along that stretch of Valencia. But of course those situations don’t get those sweet anti-tech outrage clicks.
Here’s an example of a driverful car stopped on Valencia causing a disruption to the flow of traffic: https://twitter.com/Dylan_Why_/status/1688622222892740609?s=20
I am ideologically consistent: I’d be happy if CPUC banned these cars from San Francisco from 9am to 10pm as well.
Am I viewing your video correctly. Does the new design have a true fire lane going counter to traffic or have they simply neglected to paint it out?
Sometimes anti-tech outrage is appropriate and warranted.
It’s not at all about being “anti-tech”; I’ve worked in AI/ML for many years and I still wouldn’t have put these cars out on the road in the Wild West way that it was done here. At the very least, emergency personnel need some sort of override that allows them to take over when they’re actively causing trouble in public due to bugs, hackers, etc.
Yep. If you can jailbreak a Tesla – a consumer product with massive liability that engineers have had years to try to protect – I shudder to think what can happen to these alpha/beta wagons.
Yea, Max, of course not. Because those stories get the sweet, anti-typical self-absorbed SF driver clicks. There’s plenty of things to complain about in SF, complaining is not zero-sum.
With humans, there is recourse. How many tickets for these violations have been issued to autonomous vehicles? Who pays them?
Yeah, sure, but those are situations where you can easily explain the ‘why’, and the ‘why’ is transparent to many. And the ‘why’ is also something systemic that can be solved with modal shift, dynamic curb management, better planning, better local governance, parking regulation. So I would not catalogue reporting and the need for transparency of malfunctions as ”anti-tech- outrage-click” efforts so quickly…
But the delivery driver shortly comes back and moves the car. At any rate, there can be immediate accountability. But not with these all-too-common driverless stalls. They’re still dumb robots—why defend them?
Same story different day from what I experienced on Saturday. But with a Cruise car. People were videotaping what was going on but no one was able to do anything. I called 911 because I was worried about cyclists getting killed by cars driving towards them suddenly in the center bike lanes. This is half a block from mission police station on Valencia btwn. 16th & 17th. Cop shows up while I was away and parks behind the car. No one directing traffic, I didn’t see the police officer though he could have been in his car. I was super concerned in particular because my spouse was going to be traveling by bike in the opposite direction and I knew he wouldn’t be anticipating cars driving towards him with no place to go on his bike. Really a terrifying scenario & one of so many I’ve seen. I really don’t trust these vehicles to make life or death decisions. There is no transparency and accountability. I have submitted comments to the CPUC. Thank you dearly for reporting on this fiasco.
Sunday during the day we sat at Sisig’s parklet and watched a human-driven car do the exact same thing. There was some sort of emergency (unclear what, but ambulance was called), they stopped and sat, with blinkers on for the better part of an hour. Lots of honking ensued, and lots of cars went through the center lane. Was a total mess, but not just a self-driving car problem.
Saw a motorcyclist take it at highway speeds the other day, too; it’s certainly not just about the AVs – although they add the additional obnoxious twist of a vehicle whose owner you can’t give a citation to.
It’s a hard time all around for bollards these days.
Friday afternoon, Aug 4, I was biking the center lane at 23rd street when two northbound dirt bikers (no plates, no helmets, faces covered, you know the style) rolled around me FAST in the bike lane at about 35 mph, complete with wheelies. When they saw the cop car heading southbound at 22nd street they slowed, moved to the vehicle lane, and calmly proceeded. The cop, of course, did absofuckinglutely nothing. Traffic enforcement should not be an optional service of the SFPD.
Wow! So unexpected! Who’d have thought this center lane was a bad idea? I can’t imagine.
Do they write an article every time a human delivery driver does this same thing?
FIRE TUMLIN!
Tumlin is horrible
“And the bike path is technically an emergency lane, meaning fire engines, ambulances, and other vehicles can speed down it in an emergency, forcing cyclists into car traffic on either side.”
It’s not “technically” an emergency lane, it was designed to also be an emergency lane as the giant words painted on the ground of the bike lane indicate. Emergency vehicles, like fire trucks, driven down the bike path by city workers also don’t “speed down” the bike path and bikers are not forced to move into the car lane. The design allows bikers to remain (stopped) in the bike lane as emergency vehicles safely passed as I’ve witnessed several times now.
But yes, let’s continue to ignore the amount of mothers and fathers with their children who use this bike lane on the daily and safely get around…
The drivers behind the stopped Waymo were not “forced” into the bike lane. They chose to ignore traffic rules & drive in the bike lane because they didn’t want to wait.
Yeah sure, you’re expected to wait forever behind a stalled car? What planet are you from?
“In a uniquely San Francisco-in-2023 incident”
Not really, you can find this in Phoenix and any other second-rate city that lets these tech corps bully them into turning public space into an experiment
Sir or madam —
I don’t think Phoenix has a center-running bike lane, but thanks for playing.
JE
Phoenix does have a “Burrito Plan” bike lane, same arrangement suggested for Valencia by Burrito Justice, following best practices that this city somehow never noticed.
I’ve never called mymom “sir” but we live in flexible times.
This design has rendered the traffic lane, which cyclists are entitled to use at all times, much more unsafe for cyclists than the previous design.
I’d prefer to breeze through the stop signs on Capp than to contend with this SFMTA clusterfuck. Someone needs to get photos of any incidents with Manny’s in the background and socialize them widely.
Oh god, just stop. The Terror! Somebody’s Gonna get KILLED! overdramatization is getting old. And all it demonstrates is that some true believers are getting desperate to have this project be a failure. It’s starting to wear thin.
Sure, the cars had to go over a barrier and into the bike lane. And I’ll bet they knew they were doing wrong and were being pretty careful not to pull out into bike traffic. It is what it is, but it isn’t the anarchy people are making it out to be.
And Oh noes! Emergency services need to use that lane sometimes! What is wrong with you people?
Making bike lanes wide enough for fire trucks and ambulances is the ideal way to make sure that they’re never delayed when saving lives. Unlike cars, bicyclists can just get off their bikes and step sideways so emergency services can do their jobs. We should be doing more of this, not complaining about it.
When’s the last time you saw pissed-off, delayed drivers carefully go around an obstruction? No, they gun it!
Where are cyclists expected to go to yield to emergency vehicles? Into the traffic lanes? Are cars in traffic required to stop when emergency vehicles are in the grade/bollard separated bike death chute?
Yes.
It’s not that hard. When you hear a siren, you pull to the side and stop till the ambulance goes by. That applies to the cars too. Why is this so hard to understand?
And you should really stop trying to make “death chute” happen. If anything’s a “death chute” it’s the section of “protected” lanes from Market to where the new lanes start.
So lemme get this straight, you all are terrified of cycling in the previous bike lane configuration because of cars, demand all manner of engineering, but expect for cyclists to dismount and make themselves as skinny as possible while a multi ton emergency vehicle in a rush occupies 95% of the center bike lane, backed up against traffic.
You should probably remain safely under covers in bed if separated bike lanes that the SFPD demanded or the previous configuration of Valencia scare you. Government is not your little therapist friend to help you through your unsubstantiated fears.
Jesus. you dismount and stay to the side. Plenty of space. Can we stop with the manufactured outrage?
@chandru – Why not dismount your car and stay to the side? After all, motorists have the advantage of a motor, so that’s who should have the extra time to spare for such nonsense.