"SF Mayor Daniel Lurie announced the permit's signing on Tuesday, about six months after Waymo won a permit to map the airport's roadways. The new document outlines three phrases, per the mayor's press release. First, Waymo will test its vehicles around the airport with a human driver. Then, the company can test without a human driver, with designated passengers who work at Waymo and the airport. After that, Waymo will be able to begin picking up and dropping off regular passengers."
"The company has permission from state regulators to connect the two areas and grow further in the region, but has opted for an incremental expansion. In SFO, the permit expands Waymo to an extremely popular destination for ride-hailing. In late 2023, Uber and Lyft were combining for more than 750,000 rides to and from the airport per month, SFGATE reported in a story on the fees that SFO charges ride-hailing companies."
"Service at SFO will also give Waymo a chance to peddle their autonomous cars to tourists - while the Uber and Lyft apps have already spread across much of the country, Waymo is only available in a handful of cities. In a " Tourism Report " that Waymo released in March, the company wrote that there were 13,366 searches for SFO in the Waymo app the previous December, and that 718 people had installed the app while at the airport."
Waymo secured a permit to operate at San Francisco International Airport, initiating a three-phase rollout: human-driven testing, driverless testing with designated Waymo and airport employees, and full passenger pick-ups and drop-offs. Waymo currently operates mapped services that skirt SFO, with routes covering San Francisco to Burlingame and Menlo Park to Sunnyvale, and holds regulator permission to connect those areas while expanding incrementally. SFO is a major ride-hailing hub, with Uber and Lyft combining for over 750,000 monthly rides in late 2023. The SFO permit offers Waymo exposure to tourists, with app searches and installs recorded at the airport.
Read at SFGATE
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]