San Francisco mayor pushes for tougher rules after Waymo traffic fiasco

It turns out that even San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie, who once said the city should be a testing ground for emerging technology, has his limits. Especially when this emerging technology creates a massive hours-long traffic jam that leaves thousands of people stranded.

Mayor Lurie called on state regulators to tighten rules on self-driving vehicles nearly two weeks after the Waymo robotaxis stalled in heavy Fourth of July traffic, ran out of power and blocked major roads, further exacerbating gridlock. The traffic jam, which trapped city buses, became a city-wide problem affecting thousands of people.

In his letter to the state Department of Transportation, seen by TechCrunch, Lurie pointed to two events — a widespread power outage in December and the Golden Gate Bridge fireworks show on July 4 that drew 100,000 spectators — both of which resulted in dozens of stranded Waymo vehicles and traffic gridlock. The San Francisco Chronicle first mentioned in the letter.

The events, he said in the letter, “demonstrated that California’s current regulatory framework does not adequately address how autonomous vehicles operate in major incidents, planned or not. California’s challenge now is not only whether autonomous vehicles can operate safely under normal conditions, but whether they can perform reliably in an emergency.”

Lurie said autonomous vehicle manufacturers should be able to demonstrate four “core operational capabilities” and called on the California Department of Transportation to establish statewide standards to prevent future problems like the July 4 gridlock incident.

According to Lurie’s vision, companies should immediately remove or relocate robotaxis from active travel lanes to keep people moving and be able to adjust in real time by adjusting their routes, service area, and pick-up and drop-off locations. Companies will also have to share real-time operations data with local agencies, including service outages, stationary robot locations and recovery efforts, and demonstrate through testing that they can handle large influxes of people and traffic.

TechCrunch has reached out to Waymo for comment. The article will be updated once the company responds.

Any company looking to operate a robotaxi service in California must successfully navigate two testing and installation permit processes, one administered by the state Department of Motor Vehicles and the other by the Public Utility Commission. California’s existing regulatory framework is stricter than that of other states like Texas and Arizona, but that hasn’t stopped companies from trying to do business there.

San Francisco and the greater area that stretches south into Silicon Valley have long been a testing ground for autonomous vehicle technology. Six companies, including Nuro, Waymo and Zoox, have driverless testing licenses, which allow vehicles to drive without a human safety operator behind the wheel.

But the area has also become the launch pad for commercial services, which requires other permits from the DMV and CPUC.

Waymo is the largest, with about 1,000 robotaxi operating in the Bay Area today. However, there are several others either testing or about to launch commercial operations, including Amazon-owned Zoox as well as a premium robotaxi service to be operated by Uber. Tesla has a branded robotaxi service, but it does not use driverless vehicles, nor is it licensed to do so. Instead, Tesla has a charter transportation license, which allows its own drivers to pick up and drop off riders throughout San Francisco in vehicles equipped with the advanced driver assistance system instead of fully autonomous software.

Waymo’s scale has made it the focus of regulators in San Francisco and beyond. The company now operates in 11 cities and has said it completes more than 500,000 paid rides each week. In San Francisco, Lurie noted that Waymo had agreed to limit its July 4 service near the waterfront and had even assigned a representative to the city’s emergency center. But that wasn’t enough to keep Waymos away from the heavy traffic that occurred outside of that area.

Lurie said those voluntary actions are no longer enough — a reflection of how large Waymo’s fleet has become. He said the four proposed requirements “will not undermine autonomous vehicles, they will strengthen them.”