Mission Local – How did Waymo get onto Market Street?
See original article by H.R. Smith at Mission Local
On April 10, the office of Mayor Daniel Lurie made an announcement: Waymo, the autonomous taxi company once known as the Google Self-Driving Car Project, will soon be driverlessly driving down Market Street.
“Market Street runs through the heart of our city, and we’re making sure it continues to evolve with the times,” Lurie said in the release. “By welcoming Waymo, we’re adding another safe and sustainable way to access shopping, theaters, hotels, and restaurants.”
This was greeted by surprise in some quarters. As mayor, Lurie is the boss of many things. None of those things are Market Street.
Closing Market Street (or, more precisely, the roughly 10 blocks of Market between 10th Street and Embarcadero Plaza) in 2020 required a majority vote of the Board of the SFMTA and the Board of Supervisors.
When Waymo began operating in the city in 2021, it followed the example of most other cars in San Francisco, including those operating under the auspices of other ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft. It drove through intersections to cross Market Street, but not down it.
Among those perplexed about Lurie’s announcement that Waymo would have access to Market Street is former Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, who voted to approve the Better Market Street plan that closed Market Street, to great fanfare, back in January 2020.
“If you had asked me, ‘What did you vote to ban on Market Street?’ I would have said to you, ‘Cars!’” said Peskin, with the verve of someone who has spent the last few hours hot on the trail of a thrilling mystery. “And the answer appears to be that the action that the Board of Supervisors took and that the SFMTA took previous to that was to ban private vehicles from Market Street.”
More precisely, the Better Market Street Plan had a carve-out for commercial vehicles which, in the ancient days of five years ago, were mostly delivery vehicles and licensed taxis.
Unlike Lyft and Uber, whose drivers use private cars, Waymo has its own fleet, with commercial plates. Technically, Waymo could have driven down Market Street anytime it wanted. So could anyone who drives a vehicle with commercial plates.
When contacted by Mission Local, a representative of the mayor’s press office asked not to be identified by name or quoted directly, but confirmed that nothing, legally, has changed about the Better Market Street plan. They directed this reporter to focus on the use of the word “welcoming” in the April 10 press release.
Until now, they continued, Waymo had stayed off of Market out of politeness, rather than push the legal gray area. But the mayor wanted to make it clear that Waymo belongs on Market, because the mayor cares about Market Street. If Waymo were encouraged to drive down Market, rather than dropping off and collecting people where Market intersects with other streets the way that other ride-hailing companies have to, that will make more people likely to come downtown, hang out, and possibly spend money on things like adult beverages.
Peskin, for his part, doesn’t think Waymo is likely to do much for the fortunes of Market Street. “The actual hustle and bustle of an American downtown, the No. 1 thing to get that is to have more people go to work,” he said. To have that happen, he added, building owners “must face reality“ and bring down their exorbitant expectations of rent.” If they lower their rent, he adds, that may affect the value of their building, but they are welcome to go down to the assessor’s office and request a commensurate reduction in their property taxes.
The mayor’s welcome of Waymo coincides with a number of cuts to public transit, specifically Muni’s recent plan to truncate several bus lines that currently run down Market Street. These cuts are not mentioned in the April 10 press release; Waymo’s presence on Market is described as something that “will complement the city’s existing transportation options.” The release devotes an entire paragraph to touting Muni’s recent successes, including the increase of 13.5 million passenger trips from 2023 to 2024 (158 million total!) and its high approval ratings.
Chris Arvin, vice chair of SFMTA’s Citizens Advisory Council, is unmoved by flattery. Muni is facing a fiscal cliff, Arvin points out. There is little hope of a state or federal bailout. The Lurie administration could do quite a bit to stabilize Muni’s fortunes — Lurie absolutely is the boss of a significant chunk of the city budget — but he has yet to make a move to do so.
“Part of getting voter support means keeping Muni as good as it has been recently,” said Arvin.”Not cutting service and making it worse. If you want to revitalize downtown, Muni is crucial to that.“
“SFMTA is literally taking one of its most successful lines, the 5-Fulton, lopping off a chunk of the route that goes down Market Street, and de facto replacing the bus line there with Waymos,” former Supervisor Dean Preston wrote on BlueSky. “What happened to Transit First?”
The proposed service reductions, which the SFMTA board will vote on next week, will require several buses that used to travel down Market Street to turn back before they reach it. Arvin regularly takes one of those bus lines (the 6-Haight/Parnassus; they recommend the Rumpus Room to anyone looking to personally revitalizing a little downtown).
To Arvin, it is not civic-minded to invite Waymo onto Market at the same time that bus riders trying to get there are told that many of them will need to get off and wait to catch a transfer when they need to, say, go to the Ferry Building. “What’s happening,” said Arvin, is that the city is “shifting the priority from rides that are efficient and cost $2.75, to rides that are going to clog our streets and cost $20.”
What makes it more frustrating, said Arvin, is that they often see Waymos blocking Muni buses. Arvin has a whole collection of photos documenting this, and they are not the only one. “These are not very intelligent vehicles,” said Arvin. “And they’re, I think, being tweaked to be less safe in a lot of ways.”
Recently, said Arvin, they’ve seen more Waymos stopped in crosswalks and in bike lanes. “They’ll actually be waiting to pick up a passenger in the bike lane,” Arvin said. The cars have a long track record of rolling gently but persistently into situations where their presence is extremely unwelcome, like firefighting.
Cars driven by humans get in the way of Muni buses and streetcars and emergency vehicles all the time. But since the Better Market Street plan, most cars haven’t been allowed on Market at all.
Waymo doesn’t need to clear the (admittedly low, very low) bar of being better than a human driver. Waymo has to be better than almost no cars, human-driven or otherwise. Nearly any argument that could be made in favor of expanding Waymo’s reach to Market, like increased convenience for travelers with mobility issues, can also be made in support of Muni, which has infrastructure like wheelchair lifts.
Last summer, when then-mayoral candidate Mark Farrell ran on a platform that included bringing private cars back to Market, architecture critic John King wrote a deep dive on how, since its inception, Market has rarely been smooth sailing for any driver.
Intersections don’t match up. Lanes vanish with little warning. Since the Better Market Street plan was implemented, King added, the time it took a bus to make it down those 10 blocks had dropped by four minutes. Collisions had dropped by 40 percent.
When asked by Mission Local what the next steps would be if Waymo turns out to slow down transit times, and if Waymo would be sharing any data with the city during the mapping phase or after the summer roll-out, the mayor’s press office directed this reporter back to the press release, specifically the section that read, “Throughout the process, the city and Waymo will work collaboratively to maintain safety and accessibility, while maintaining reliable and efficient Muni service.” They declined to elaborate further.
On Jan. 9, a few short months ago, Lurie had an inauguration party. It was spectacular. Thousands of people came to Chinatown to be a part of it — the kind of crowds that, right now, Market Street can only dream of. That night, two Waymos froze in the middle of traffic. One of them blocked a 1-California bus, which was forced to drop off and pick up passengers in the middle of an intersection, 100 feet away from its stop.
Was that night an aberration? An omen? Market Street is about to find out.
See original article by H.R. Smith at Mission Local
