“Waymo has filed a request to the California Public Utilities Commission to expand robotaxi service in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles region. In the SFBA, it grows from just San Francisco to the whole peninsula, all the way to Sunnyvale but not including Marin, the East Bay and Santa Clara/Cupertino/San Jose. The LA area includes everything north and west of Compton, but not the San Fernando valley.”
This is massive I’m not really sure what the writer is on about with the title.
Waymo have been in the background making slow and steady progress for years. So much so most people probably don’t even know the extend of their self driving (without a human behind the wheel) developments.
This could be the beginning of the big push to actual serious market infiltration.
While walking, cycling, electric mobility, and trains are a must for a healthy city they do run into problems. Mainly the last mile problem and unexpected journeys, self driving cars will make a huge impact on the health of cities, traffic and ease of getting around.
We need both.
Autonomous cars improve things over regular cars, and should reduce the need for parking. They might be able to be deployed quickly and can unblock changes to repurpose parking.
Transit and walkability are much more important for a healthy city but can take a very long time to change. As we improve those, we should be able to relegate autonomous cars to the suburbs, or last mile not yet served by transit
As long as they are not owned by private individuals and are actually shared. I can totally see people instead of parking their car, just having them circle around in traffic. It would be hilarious to watch in a morbid curiosity way though.
They still cost money to operate…… although yeah, I could definitely see sending the car home. Of course then you need to schedule it to come back and if you’re not ready to leave yet, driving around might be the only option