Waymo wants to come to New York City. The driverless-ride company, owned by Google’s parent, Alphabet, has begun testing its electric Jaguars, with a person operating the cars as state law requires, in a pilot program.
Waymo operates smoothly in cities including San Francisco, Los Angeles and Austin, Texas, so why shouldn’t it be the same here?
One big difference is those cities aren’t as dependent on mass transit. In San Francisco, just 22 percent of people took public transportation to work in 2023, and in Austin, under 2 percent, according to American Community Survey data. So in Austin, a Waymo that — through price, convenience and comfort — lures people away from their own vehicle or an Uber or a taxi isn’t a new vehicle on the road adding to traffic.
Continue reading the entire piece here at The New York Times (paywall)
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Nicole Gelinas is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor at City Journal. Follow her on Twitter here. Nicole is the author of Movement: New York’s Long War to Take Back Its Streets from the Car, available now.
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