Following six-and-a-half hours of public comment, the California Public Utilities Commission decided this evening to give both Cruise and Waymo unfettered access to San Francisco streets for their driverless cars.
As a result, the city could see hundreds or even thousands more self-driving cars picking up and dropping off fee-paying passengers.
With Commissioner Karen Douglas’ absence today, four commissioners took part in the voting. This included Commissioner John Reynolds — who has been through the revolving door twice, first serving at the CPUC from 2013 to 2019, then becoming Cruise’s legal counsel from 2019 to 2021, then rejoining the CPUC in 2022. He did not recuse himself from the vote.
The commission voted 3-1 in two votes, one for Waymo and one for Cruise. Commissioner Genevieve Shirona was the lone holdout, saying she wanted Cruise and Waymo to offer specific information about how they would prevent their driverless cars from interfering in emergency scenes.
“I ask the commission not to vote on the resolution today,” Shirona said, asking that the vote be delayed another three months, to November 1.
Her concerns followed testimony on Monday from top representatives of both police officers and firefighters in San Francisco, who had reiterated their view that the autonomous vehicles were “not ready for prime time.” The San Francisco Fire Department has, in the last year and a half, logged 55 “unusual occurrences” of self-driving cars interfering with fire equipment of fire personnel, moving abruptly or almost hitting fire hoses and firefighters, or blockading fire trucks within fire stations.
During today’s hearing, however, the public testimony was mixed: Groups affiliated with the driverless car companies — wearing yellow “Safety for All” shirts and packing the auditorium — spoke out in favor of the expansion, as did some labor unions.
Others criticized the robo-taxis’ effects on jobs, safety, and accessibility.
A representative with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 6, whose members are likely to gain jobs servicing self-driving car hubs, said, “We call on the CPUC to approve Cruise and Waymo’s application to expand.”
And several members and representatives from SEIU Local 87, which represents janitorial workers, said the expansion of autonomous cars would “bring a new era of jobs.”
Both the IBEW Local 6 and SEIU Local 87 have signed labor-union agreements with Cruise as of Thursday, saying in a press release that the company will employ “dozens of workers who will construct and staff Cruise’s car-charging facilities.”
Many more unions, however, spoke out against the expansion, including, SEIU 1021, Teamsters and the California Labor Federation. It’s “affecting the livelihood of millions of American families,” they said in a joint statement.
The California Labor Federation, San Francisco Labor Council, other regional labor councils and around a dozen unions sent a letter to the CPUC on Wednesday, decrying the use of “automation and artificial intelligence to replace and de-skill workers.” The unions urged the state body to postpone the vote until it can gather more safety evidence and there is “a better understanding of the displacement of workers that will result.”
Some members of the public commented on Reynolds’s work at Cruise, too — but the commissioner defended his actions.
Reynolds said he had recused himself from autonomous vehicle votes for the first year following his stint at the company, but was now using his “familiarity with this emerging technology” to make decisions. He accused opponents of autonomous vehicles of using “anecdotal data analysis lacking sufficient rigor.”
Bob Stern, who co-wrote the Political Reform Act of 1974, said in an interview that Reynolds was indeed legally in the clear; the prohibition against him voting lasted just one year, he said.
The vote follows a months-long delay, during which several San Francisco officials and groups have urged the state body to pump its brakes on the rollout: The entirety of the Board of Supervisors opposes the expansion, city transportation and planning officials sent a letter to the CPUC imploring it to limit the planned rollout, and taxi drivers have frequently protested the expansion of the robotaxis as a threat to their livelihoods.
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency has logged 600 incidents involving autonomous cars since June 2022, when self-driving tests started in San Francisco, involving unexpected stops or other traffic disruptions.
It will likely herald a massive expansion of self-driving cars on San Francisco streets: Cruise’s CEO said on a July 25 earnings call that the city could handle “several thousand” Cruise vehicles on its streets — an expansion of perhaps tenfold or more from its current total of 303 Cruise cars permitted to operate in San Francisco.
Waymo did not outline an expansion plan beyond saying it would grow “in a very measured way” from its 250 cars in San Francisco today.
The Vote: 3-1
For: Alice Reynolds, Darcie L. Houck, John Reynolds
Against: Genevieve Shiroma
Additional reporting by Joe Eskenazi.
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Terrible decision, not surprising, but still infuriating. These things obviously aren’t ready and put us all at risk.
Silver lining is that it may be a Pyrrhic victory for the robotaxi companies. They’re already unpopular in San Francisco because we see every day how defective and hazardous they are (hence the hours of public comment in opposition today). That’s only going to become more obvious and undeniable, and GM and Google/Alphabet are going to have to wind down these money-losing divisions if popular pressure doesn’t manage to stop them first. I just worry about the injuries (and worse) they’re going to cause along the way.
Scott you are smart enough to know “hours of public comment” have nothing to do with the popularity of a proposal. If that were true, you’d have to believe housing for low income people is very unpopular!
Absolutely. It’s hard to understand how they are going to ever be profitable by eating Uber/Lyft/cabbies’ lunch. Nobody is asking for this technology and it’s clearly far from ready to be deployed like this. CPUC’s ignorance and corruption will become clear.
In a rational world – absolutely a scenario how this could play out. But then, consider the Trump situation: When a deeply flawed character like this can make POTUS, you’d got to think that Cruise, Waymo et al might be in a position to simply shove this down people’s throats, until in a generation from now, these things are considered “normal”.
Former mayor Willie Brown is on the Cruise board of directors. These companies knew how to grease palms.
Gotta love that the commissioner moving back and forth between the commission and one of the companies with a proposal under consideration before said commission did not recuse himself. While it may legally be okay, the optics reek of corruption.
For years now, one key complaint is the lack of transparency, lack of data sharing by the autonomous vehicle operators. For Reynolds to come out dismissing opposing arguments as being based on ““anecdotal data analysis lacking sufficient rigor” is a complete (fill in the blank). Let’s keep civil and call it a disservice to the public.
This d*ck needs to go, and the legislature needs to get off their behinds and “fix” this by requiring the operators to share the pertinent safety data, all the way back and into the future.
There’s also a totalitarian feeling to the ‘enterprise’, a takeover of public space by a growing squadron of autonomous, robotic vehicles whether we the people want it taken over or not.
Yo, Scott Feeney: I’m with you on the potential silver lining of a “Pyrrhic victory.” At the current stages of what is a rushed implementation of something not ready for prime time, one could be encouraged to fervently wish for such a “victory” for Cruise, et al.
AVs are part of the future; but it’s beyond shameful they’re being thrust upon the SF populace, especially without allowing *any* meaningful input from that populace, which has to live with what is the dangerous beta testing of an immature vehicular product.
I will continue to call flesh and blood cabbies for the foreseeable future.
I am Jack’s complete lack of surprise
Commissioner Reynolds is, in fact, a rat. May no one cede ground to these Roomba$.
I have a sneaking suspicion and heard rumors that the new bike lane design for Valencia Street was influenced by the new robot-taxi services to aid their operation.
Just another example of how technology in the 21st century has driven our economic inequities. Driverless cars will bring great wealth to a few people and will make it so working class people will lose out omce again. San Francisco is not a liberal city. It is a Libertarian city. You pay to play and the techies get the tax breaks.
I’m loving that Folks are using robot cars as hook-up venues.
San Francisco is a pirate town at this point. We will never get our soul back. It all started when they allowed shitty building like SalesForce Tower and One Rincon Hill.
If I could move, I would.
Autonomous Self-driving Cars – get ready to meet Autonomous Self-Flying Eggs!
Can’t wait for having more cars available, I’m sick and tired of Uber drivers cancelling rides just because I have the gall to go to an “unprofitable destination”
If you think you’d be treated differently when your ride isn’t worth it, think again.
Looking forward to trying this out again. I had the privilege of trying Cruise out late last year after randomly meeting an employee at some recreational event. Was a fun experience despite the very conservative driving nature of the AV.
So what was “fun” about sitting in the back seat of a car driving conservatively? (While you no doubt were staring at your cell phone the whole time.)
This is a great leap forward for civility on city streets. These cars have respect for speed limits, crosswalks, stop signs, pedestrians, and bicycles.
I personally don’t use rideshare (a BS PR name) and ride a bike. Human drivers are a daily threat to my life.
^Cruise, Waymo has entered the chat.
Yes the only question is if they are human employees or AI robots.
As a pedestrian walking through crosswalks the Mission, I’ve almost been hit by cars that blew through a stop sign so many times I can’t count. Sometimes the driver is looking at their phone instead of driving. But, in my experience, the driverless cars always stop at the stop sign and always stop for pedestrians in a crosswalk. Maybe we’d all be safer with fewer humans driving while texting/drunk/high/distracted?