The rise of the robotaxis is inevitable.
Among the many questions that assertion raises are complex systems concerns and sociological issues, both addressed in this piece from Bloomberg's CityLab, January 9:
Outgoing transit agency head Jeffrey Tumlin reflects on how self-driving cars from Waymo, Cruise and Zoox affected the city’s other transportation modes.
Few Americans have had more direct experience with self-driving cars than the residents of San Francisco. For four years, robotaxis from companies like Waymo, Cruise and Zoox have traversed the city’s famously hilly streets as they conduct test runs, transport passengers and travel empty toward pickup locations (known as “deadheading”). Anyone can request a driverless ride by tapping an app on their smartphone, much as they would an Uber.
While some San Franciscans have celebrated robotaxis for heralding a safer, easier future of urban mobility, others complained that they obstruct emergency response, block traffic and entrench transportation networks already biased toward automobiles. In 2023, an activist campaign encouraged Bay Area residents to disable robotaxis by “coning” them — placing traffic cones atop their hoods, which froze the vehicles in place.
As the director of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency since 2019, Jeffrey Tumlin has been immersed in his city’s self-driving saga. With unified oversight of transit, taxis, curbs and streets in San Francisco, SFMTA is more powerful than most urban transportation departments. Still, Tumlin and his colleagues struggled to handle robotaxi companies that are accountable only to state and federal regulators, not city officials. Clashes over self-driving cars were a hallmark of Tumlin’s tenure at SFMTA, along with his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and controversies around dedicated lanes for bikes and buses.
Tumlin departed SFMTA at the end of 2024. CityLab contributor David Zipper spoke with him about his attempts to manage San Francisco’s robotaxis, and what his experience portends for other cities where self-driving cars could soon arrive. Their conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
You had worked in the transportation sector for decades before joining SFMTA, and you were already familiar with autonomous vehicles. What have you learned about self-driving technology in the last few years that most surprised you?
As a regular Waymo user, I have watched the cars become better than I am at seeing pedestrians hidden from view and predicting their behavior. I didn’t think that was going to happen. I am surprised by how sophisticated they are with erratic human behavior, which I had assumed would be very challenging.
Overall, are robotaxis a positive or negative for San Francisco?
So far, there is no net positive for the transportation system that we’ve been able to identify. The robotaxis create greater convenience for the privileged, but they create problems for the efficiency of the transportation system as a whole.
What do you mean by that?
What I like about Waymo is that the user interface design works well. I don’t have to talk to a human, and the vehicle’s driving behavior is slow and steady. I think robotaxis offer the potential for significant upsides for personal convenience, but it remains to be seen whether they offer any overall benefit to the transportation system.
How would you respond to those who say robotaxis are making San Francisco a better city because the experience of using them is superior to other ways to travel?
I agree that there are qualities or Waymos that outperform other modes. The vehicles are very nice. The driving behavior is slow and steady and predictable, and there is chill music.
But those are qualities that you can replicate in any mode. If we mandated speed governors, passenger cars can be slow and steady. If we regulated taxis in order to optimize for user convenience and safe driving behavior, taxis could emulate those same qualities as well. Similarly, if we had massive private funding, we could achieve the same level of quality in public transit.
Was there a robotaxi moment over the last several years that prompted you to think, “I cannot believe this is happening”?
In my first meeting with the original CEO of Cruise [Kyle Vogt], I was in City Hall trying to lay out the case why good data supports public trust, and explaining why I didn't expect robotaxi companies to be perfect. San Francisco streets can handle a good deal of chaos, but I can’t have dozens of Cruise vehicles being immobilized in traffic and blocking my train lines.
He leaned across the table from me, pounded his fist on this heavy oak table, and said, “Jeff Tumlin, you are the single greatest threat to the American autonomous vehicle industry.”
I can handle myself in almost any situation, but I was just tongue-tied. I was trying to be a good bureaucrat while supporting the industry — being a partner with prudence. I didn’t even know that he had any idea who I was. So it was a very strange first meeting, and I think it set the tone for the challenges that we had following that with Cruise.
[After a San Francisco woman was badly injured on Oct. 2, 2023 by being dragged beneath a Cruise vehicle, California regulators accused company officials of withholding crash information and rescinded its operating permits. General Motors announced in December that it was terminating its investment in Cruise, and that the company would cease offering robotaxi service. A Cruise spokesperson declined to comment.]
Waymo recently ran a promotion offering riders a discount if they traveled to one of several Bay Area transit stations. For public transportation, are robotaxis an ally or a threat?
One of the things that I find fascinating about the robotaxi industry is it appears to have learned nothing from the experience of Uber and Lyft.
Less than 1% of Uber and Lyft trips in the Bay Area connect to transit. But in the late 2000s, the companies made all these lofty promises that they were going to be a critical first/last-mile connector to public transportation. They believed that the existence of ridehail would allow people to shed cars because there would always be a vehicle there when you need it.
Not only did none of those promises come true, the opposite actually occurred. The San Francisco County Transportation Authority did an analysis in 2018 showing that almost half the increase in vehicle miles traveled in San Francisco was due to Uber and Lyft. They were displacing transit, walking and biking trips, they were adding to deadheading miles, and they were significantly increasing traffic in the most congested parts of the city.
If San Francisco eventually has 20 or 50 times as many robotaxis as it does today, how would the city be affected?....
....MUCH MORE
For me the question is simpler: Will there be any Western manufacturers of the darn things when all is said and done?
Also at CityLab:
