SF Standard – Uber threatens to sue San Francisco over Waymo access to Market Street
Editors note: Uber complaining forcefully was inevitable. The issue isn’t that Waymos are autonomous. It is that they are simply cars, just like Uber and Lyft.
See original article by Josh Koehn at SF Standard
The rideshare firm accused Mayor Daniel Lurie of favoritism, calling the Waymo deal “legally unacceptable.”
Uber is threatening to sue San Francisco after Mayor Daniel Lurie announced that Waymo robotaxis would be given near-exclusive access to Market Street, according to records obtained by The Standard.
The mayor’s April 10 announcement of the Waymo deal was framed as a way to revitalize the downtown core, which has been slow to recover from the pandemic. Thousands of workers have not returned to offices, and Market Street has become a ghost town during the evenings and weekends after being closed off to private vehicles just weeks before the 2020 shutdown.
But Lurie may have underestimated how upset Uber, Lyft, the bicyclist community, and safe-street advocates would be with his decision to hand Waymo the keys to Market Street. Stakeholders were given a heads-up less than a day before the deal was announced. Uber officials learned that morning that the mayor’s office had quietly worked out an exclusive deal with the robotaxi company to provide rides on the city’s historic downtown thoroughfare, which has been restricted to Muni buses and streetcars, commercial loading vehicles, and taxis.
Unless the city reconsiders opening Market Street to Uber, Lyft, and other rideshare companies, she added, Uber “will have no choice but to explore legal action alongside the 60,000 drivers who have served San Francisco over the past year.”
Charles Lutvak, a spokesperson for the mayor, issued a statement saying that the city is exploring options to revitalize downtown.
“Market Street has the potential to help power our downtown recovery, but there simply aren’t enough people going there,” Lutvak wrote. “While Waymo conducts mapping as permitted under existing law, we’ll continue to look at ways to bring people back to Market so our incredible city can have an equally incredible downtown.”
While the mayor’s office did little outreach until just before its announcement, Lurie and staff quickly launched into damage control. The mayor had a conversation with Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi the day after the announcement, according to an email sent by the company’s head of public policy and communications, Ramona Prieto. Uber officials also met with Ned Segal, the mayor’s policy chief in charge of economic issues, Thursday at City Hall, according to calendars obtained through a Public Records Act request.
Uber officials described these conversations as educational, discussing how the company could track and limit vehicles on Market Street, similar to how it handled logistics for last year’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago and the Paris Olympics.
“We’ve been in active conversations with the mayor’s office and hope to land on a fair and balanced solution for Market Street,” an Uber spokesperson said in a statement. “Rideshare drivers move thousands across the city every day and they deserve the same opportunity to serve downtown as any other transportation provider. We remain optimistic that the city will take an inclusive approach in revitalizing the downtown core of San Francisco.”
Lurie also spoke with Lyft CEO David Risher following the Waymo announcement. Alex Tourk, a representative for Lyft, said the pair had “a direct and productive exchange” about the future of Market Street.
“They agreed to work collaboratively in the planning and long-term vision moving forward,” Tourk wrote in a statement.
Lurie’s team has argued that Waymos were prioritized in part because the vehicles are safer than human drivers. But the mayor and his staff have close ties to Ruth Porat, president and chief investment officer of Alphabet, which owns the robotaxi company. Officials close to the mayor have argued that Waymo robotaxis have commercial license plates, which make the vehicles eligible for operations on Market Street under the 2020 plan. Uber and Lyft are mostly operated by people driving their own cars.
However, Uber also partners with taxis, and the company’s Uber Black offerings are classified as commercial vehicles.
“This double standard undermines not only the rule of law but the City’s own credibility — and sends a troubling message that City Hall will be in the business of hand-picking winners,” Hazelbaker wrote in her letter to Lurie.
Robin Pam, a founder of KidSafe SF, which has opposed reopening Market Street to more cars, said the mayor’s office “opened a can of worms” with its Waymo announcement. Market Street is now used mainly as a public transit hub for buses and streetcars. The Municipal Transportation Agency is facing a severe financial cliff, and it’s unclear how increased vehicle traffic to Market Street might affect Muni ridership.
“We know everybody is very focused on downtown recovery, and we want that too, but adding cars back to Market Street is not going to solve our economic problems — it’s going to just create new problems,” Pam said. “If these companies get their way, that could be a real loss for pedestrian safety and public transit support.”
See original article by Josh Koehn at SF Standard
