Waymo, the company synonymous with self-driving taxis on the West Coast, is now allowed to start testing out the congested streets of New York City.
The Department of Transportation issued a permit on Friday allowing the company, which is owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, to test out eight self-driving cars with a driver in the vehicle. The pilot period is expected to last through September, but in a release the city said the company can renew its permit.
For now, the company will not be allowed to pick up passengers. It is permitted to cruise around Manhattan south of Central Park and in parts of Downtown Brooklyn.
The company operates its driverless ride-hailing cars in Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix. Its vehicles are used by Uber in Austin, and it plans to launch in Miami and Washington, D.C. next year, according to Waymo. The company reports it has 250,000 paid rides each week.
Mayor Eric Adams called the move a “first step in moving our city further into the 21st century.”
Critics of the company call it a free promotion for a tech company that’s not ready to operate on the city’s congested streets.
“This is about the finance side of big tech and political favoritism coming together to create advantages for this multi-billionaire corporation at the expense of workers,” Taxi Workers Alliance President Bhairavi Desai told Gothamist. “We’re not ready as a society, as a city we don’t have a plan to address the impact on workers, consumers, or the environment.”
The company argues its cars are far safer, compared to the crash rate of human drivers.
“With over 10 million rides completed in five major U.S. cities and a strong safety record, we’re proud to be working with leaders to lay the groundwork to bring this lifesaving technology to New Yorkers one day,” Annabel Chang, Waymo’s head of U.S. state and local public policy, wrote in the city’s release.
The company didn’t immediately respond to a request for further comment.
The city opened the permit application process last year, and noted autonomous vehicles must “not unduly impede traffic flow, pedestrian and cyclist movement, transit service, or emergency response.”
Desai, who represents taxi and for-hire vehicle drivers, recalls when Uber arrived and decimated the yellow cab business. Medallions to exclusively operate on city streets once worth $1 million plummeted in value as riders chose the cheap and convenient ride-hailing services.
But this time she thinks it could be different.
“ What you’ve seen from the Uber experiences, they started out with low prices, once they monopolized, the prices went up, and so I think consumers are going to be much more skeptical this time around,” she said.
Still, Adams believes this is a good move for the city.
“We’re a tech-friendly administration and we’re always looking for innovative ways to safely move our city forward,” Adams wrote in a statement.
State Sen. Bray Hoylman-Sigal, who represents parts of Manhattan, is skeptical about the pilot. He questioned how it will affect New Yorkers, how safe the technology is for pedestrians, how cheap the fares will be and who is liable when there’s a crash. He introduced a bill last year that would require the Taxi and Limousine Commission to create rules around autonomous taxis and to issue special licenses to operate them.
“My goal would be to get more vehicles off the streets of Manhattan, not add more of them,” Hoylman-Sigal told Gothamist. “The future is public transit, not private driverless vehicles.”
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