By Gus Saltonstall
A self-driving taxi car was spotted recently on the Upper West Side.
Waymo, an autonomous driving vehicle company, is already up and running across the United States, including in California, Texas, and Georgia, and now the driverless service has made its way to New York City.
On August 22, the city’s Mayor’s Office announced that the Department of Transportation has granted Waymo its first-ever permit to begin testing a limited number of the driverless vehicles as part of a pilot program in sections of Manhattan and Downtown Brooklyn.
There are currently eight autonomous vehicles in the pilot program covering Manhattan south of 112th Street and Downtown Brooklyn. During the pilot program, there will still be humans in the front seat to assess the performance of the vehicles.
The pilot is set to conclude near the end of September, when it will then have the possibility of being extended.
“We’re a tech-friendly administration and we’re always looking for innovative ways to safely move our city forward,” Mayor Eric Adams said in a news release. “New York City is proud to welcome Waymo to test this new technology in Manhattan and Brooklyn, as we know this testing is only the first step in moving our city further into the 21st century.”
Waymo officials are using the pilot program to evaluate how its driverless vehicles deal with factors such as jaywalkers, cyclists, carriage horses, and the overall New York City congestion on the roadways.
The official announcement of the Waymo pilot program approval in New York City only took place at the end of last week, but a sharp-eyed West Side Rag tipster sent in the above photo of a Waymo vehicle on West 75th Street, between Amsterdam and Columbus avenues, on August 14, before the official announcement.
“Spotted on 75th between Columbus and Amsterdam August 14th, before any public announcements,” Joshua Sills wrote to the Rag in an email. “As soon as he saw me taking a photo he pulled out.”
Similar to Uber or Lyft, there is a phone app that customers use to hail a Waymo for a taxi ride.
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How is a Waymo car going to navigate the intersection at Amsterdam and 96th, where there are two turn lanes with their own signals going left and right, a separate protected bike lane with its own left turn signal plus three lanes of uptown traffic? How is a Waymo going north on Amsterdam going to make a left safely there?
The Waymo’s are all over San Francisco and they are way better drivers than the human drivers I have to admit and still can’t believe it.
People will get hit like Phoenix, Austin and San Francisco, only MORE
Most likely, “better than the humans do.”
No you obviously don’t drive.
Do you really think most drivers do well at this example lol I as a 20+ year driver in nyc I know Waymo is better than most allowed on the road and will do better at most examples maybe not all right away but clearly above the average .
How does it decipher the parking regulations?
Do Waymos park?
In the words of Fat Tony, “In order to avoid certain legal complications, the cars are always rolling.”
Only those who are validated can hail taxis; that’s the plan.
So no flagging down for people likek me without smartphones.
No. You have to have the app. Your initials will be in the top. You will love it.
How large do you think is the subset of the population that is both reticent to have a smart phone in this day and age, but at the same time so into tech that they are ok with jumping into a driverless car?
Eeek, I don’t like this. Last week, while having dinner with friends just south of our neighborhood on 9th Avenue in the West 50s, a dog suddenly darted into traffic. Motorists, taxi drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians all stopped to help, and thankfully the dog was safely reunited with its owners. But it was luck and quick instincts that saved the day — and I’m not sure I trust technology enough to cede control of such unpredictable shared spaces.
No worries, we already have robot dogs in the military and the NYPD. I’m sure the tech already exists for robo dogs as pets that can be better at empathy than real dogs. They don’t need to poop and likely speak back to you in any language you want it to.
We just need another start up with fashionable synthetic fur/breeds with a per month subscription. Facebook will buy them for billions, and sell your deepest thoughts and values. Ain’t tech great!
Waymos have better instincts than most humans….
That’s not a valid reason to impede innovation.
Everything is a valid reason. We owe nothing to “innovation.” And this is just hijacking the taxi industry again, creating more unemployment. How stressful is it to ride in a car with NO DRIVER?
Also, I’m pretty sure that this is very much one of those things that autonomous driving has proven to be significantly better than humans at.
I was sold when I saw a Waymo in testing mode in SF about 5-6 years ago stop on a dime when a plastic grocery bag blew in front of it. Since then I’ve been sharing the road with them and they are far more law abiding, predictable and courteous than human drivers.
And was the human-driven car behind it able to stop on a dime when the Waymo made that unexpected (and unnecessary) stop. An algorithm that can’t tell a plastic bag from a solid object needs work.
Teslas’s are great at protecting animals. It sees them before drivers do.
Did the owners know about leashes ?
I’ve been told they are effective.
A Waymo self-driving car stopped instantly to avoid a dog that ran out into the road.
The AI system is evaluating all moving objects that are on the street or even sidewalks.
That said
The AI system has hit a dog in the street that was considered an impossible collision to avoid.
I’m waiting with trepidation for the first time the AI system hallucinates and mows down someone’s grandma because it mistakes her for a pigeon.
Waymo uses lidar sensors which is like sonar but using light. It can see in all directions and respond much faster than any human can. It’s far safer than regular drivers; especially since humans are constantly on their phones while driving nowadays.
These cars are not safe. At all.
And the companies behind them routinely hide accidents to prevent liability
https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/nhtsa-robotaxi-cruise-pay-penalty-failing-report-san-francisco-crash-involving-pedestrian/
I don’t care that this was GMC and not Alphabet/Waymo
These vehicles should not be on the street. This is a last minute gift from Adams to a megacorp
In that case, a jaywalking human was hit by a human hit and run driver and thrown into moving traffic in front of the Cruise.
I believe the jaywalker got around $6 million settlement from GM and the human hit and run driver was never identified. Cruse technology was retired and isn’t being used anywhere anymore.
They may not be perfectly safe, but they’re an order of magnitude safer than humans.
Anti car urbanists are being used as useful idiots for people who want self driving electric cars on our streets.
If you place a large traffic on top of the hood it will disable the Waymo
I just got back from San Francisco. It has plenty of these self driving cars, you can see several in one intersection.
I hang out at a bar in SF that attracts lots of tourist traffic. Believe it or not, they’re a tourist attraction!
Can’t wait for these to be everywhere. Waymos are amazing.
Maybe when we’re all out of work we can come to your house to eat and sleep
The lawless e-bikes may have finally met their match!
They’ll just learn that Waymos will always brake for them and the Waymo will never be able to move. The only hope is that eventually Waymos are cheap enough to do these deliveries on their own and then no more humans deciding to break the law.
Ha ha no its actually the opposite. waymos will be slamming on their brakes every time an ebike cuts in front of them. Cab drivers aren’t going to be too happy either. Imagine a Waymo heading uptown trying to make a right at 96th and Broadway, it has the green but pedestrians are crossing 96th so it waits, then the light changes to red more waiting, then before it changes back to green people are already crossing, it will be there for weeks lol
Cab drivers won’t be too happy that Aphabet has come for jobs either.
I think the problem is going to come in the fact that they have computerized response times, whereas the people behind them are human and their response time and likely to crash into them if a bloody bag floats across the road in front of them. Judgment calls cannot be made in certain situations realistically there are things that computerized systems. Can’t really handle well. A bird flying across the road hopefully there’s been enough testing and finessing that these things are not going to cause pile ups in the middle of Manhattan. Good luck everybody.
Gretchen,
It’s the e-bike drivers who are lawless. Not so much the e-bikes; the legislature and governor AC legalized the fire prone “bikes” in early 2019.
These things are a nuisance. We need the Tesla Robotaxi.
The Tesla Robo Taxi in Texas made several mistakes, and is dangerous at this time. You can google it.
No thank you. Elon has cheaped out on his self driving tech. Cameras are not safe for self driving, and will endanger every New Yorker. Plus, he’s gotten enough handouts
Just took one on a visit to SF
Amazing
Can’t wait for them to come to NY
My first reaction to Waymo was negative. But I took one in Phoenix and I appreciated the experience.
Too many NYC cabbies are rude and won’t turn on the AC (or turn it on too low). Not a problem with Waymo.
If cabs want to compete, then compete. Drivers should be courteous. Otherwise, I’m taking Waymo over a yellow cab.
Obviously you are clueless on this…. Arizona has had endless problems with them crashing into polls, backing up and crashing back into them …..they go down alleys and get themselves stuck…..no thanks…..you don’t think to much of your life…..
I think enough of my life to know the difference between “to” and “too”.
I also understand the difference between “poles” and “polls”.
But hey, that’s just me. Tell us more about yourself.
Will my Waymo come around the side of the car and open the door for me as a human taxi driver did recently when I was juggling a cane and a pile of packages? Will it open the trunk and put my luggage inside before taking off for the airport? Will it engage me in a conversation about what life was like when it was driving in Turkey or Jordan? Sincere questions.
Then you should continue to take a cab. I never suggested that Waymos are always better than regular cabs.
You do you.
It’s about choice and competition.
I can’t wait until the 100K taxi medallion is made even more worthless. Why pay people? Why should people be allowed to make a living?
What a bizarre interpretation of my post. Did I say people shouldn’t be allowed to make a living? People should be good at their jobs. If they are, great. If not, competition will win out.
That’s called reality.
Maybe Ai and tech will replace our need for you as well, but I am assuming you are retired and don’t have much better to do 🙂 Try being nice to the cab drivers next time, they might turn out to be good people
Another interesting response. You make two assumptions about me – one is that I’m retired and idle, and the other is that I’m not nice to cab drivers.
Not surprisingly, both assumptions are incorrect.
But you know what they say about assumptions…
City insists there is a need to reduce cars, need to eliminate parking spots.
But somehow City is allowing a Waymo pilot.
And somehow the City has allowed an increase in Uber.
And the City is creating loading zones for Amazon and supporting ecommerce which is a contributor to the increase in vehicles.
The hypocrisy is truly unbelievable.
all aligned with reducing the number of cars.
Good Humor,
The examples listed do not align with reducing vehicles – they generate more vehicles.
It is for example, concerning that in one of the most walkable sections of NYC more and more able-bodied people are ordering more and more ecommerce – instead of walking a few blocks to buy Cheerios….
It’s cheaper to order Cheerios on Amazon because the corner stores are so overpriced these days
Wondering about opinion from UWS Dad?
Sorry to keep everyone waiting!
I have mixed opinions here, more cars in NYC would clearly be bad. On the other hand, in SF at least it seems technology (which uses cameras + LIDAR) is safer than human drivers. Waymos would probably be programed to respect the crosswalk and not run red lights like I see drivers do all the time.
Which UWS Dad’s opinion are we summoning. Is it the real one?
A 4,000 pound vehicle with no driver using only GPS and a computer to navigate the busy streets of NYC.
What could go wrong?
Oh, I don’t know, I guess a lot more people get to live a full life maybe?
1.35 million fatalities from vehicular violence each and every year.
All gun violence, murders and suicides combined with military conflict fatalities total less than half a million deaths annually.
I know NYC and UWS is special because we fear cyclists and ebikes more than human car drivers.
JL,
A daily dodge of bicyclists and near misses – particularly Citibike – who endanger pedestrians. Bicyclists routinely ignore traffic rule, go through red lights, wrong way, ignore bike lanes, weave around pedestrians.
Multiple family and friends have been hit by bicyclists- none by cars.
Yes cars inherently more dangerous but most drivers follow rules.
And nope- I don’t drive.
And don’t use Uber.
Of all the problems in the world that need to be solved, replacing human drivers with robots is not one of them.
July 2025:
.
A tourist was temporarily stuck inside a Waymo in a multi-level parking garage. A representative was able to override the car and get the passenger back on route.
A few problems so far that could happen in NYC.
Fortunately, there are no isolated incidents of human-driven cabs having problems.
What nyc residents need is more entry level jobs, I know the taxi wage isn’t great, but its better then nothing.
We dont need robots, we need work for human who live here and we need the money earned to stay in the city.
All these apps, they’re little money vacuums, they suck the money out of the city and dont even have to launder it through a human.
That sucking sound is the absolute destruction of local economies.
Tech bros can eat the dogs leavings off the sidewalk
Uber is already sucking the money out of the taxi business and has made taxi rides so expensive I’m not sure who takes them anymore. An entry level job implies there is upward mobility – what is upward about being an Uber driver? You work your way up to 5 stars and get more rides assigned to you at the same percentage fee system? Even before Uber, Taxi medallions getting traded for over a million had dashed most drivers’ hopes for scaling up their driving business.
At least with Waymo there will be less pedestrian deaths. I’d be more worried about entry level college grad jobs currently getting killed thanks to companies thinking they can replace them with AI – that will have a more destructive force on the life of a large city IMO.
Tell that to my bank tellers, my toll collectors, my legal secretaries and paralegals (both slammed by tech) and all the guys working the waterfront (there used to be 30,000, not counting Brando).
Did you know that 40 years ago, under Reagan, the great small government conservative, and when we had 220 million people, there were more federal civilian employees than there are today, when we have 340 million people ? By close to 200,000?
Automation, tech, the obsolescence of dozens of job classifications.
Life is change. Yet more and more jobs keep getting created.
Will they pay the congestion fee, these driverless pests? I thought we were moving away from cars. They will sit in traffic and clog up our city. Who’s gonna go for this nonsense?
The “move” is away from privately owned and driven cars. And it’s less a “move” than an aspiration of a few who think they’re the majority.
What will happen is that some of us will conclude that it’s cheaper in the long run to use cars ad hoc, through for hire and rentals, than to own, insure, maintain, and store our cars. And it’s true, for some the alternative will be cheaper and more convenient.
For some.
Yes more cars/drivers do clog up our city, interesting people readily acknowledge this when its robot cars. What if we had less cars of all types?
What about thousands of taxi and Uber and Lyft drivers, who make their living in the city? What will happen to them?
Screw em’ right. Why should New Yorkers be allowed to make a living when Google could be taking the profit?
Per the statement that “Waymo officials are using the pilot program to evaluate how its driverless vehicles deal with factors such as jaywalkers, cyclists, carriage horses, ” If the way the vehicles deal with jaywalkers, say, is to not see them and run somebody over, I guess the trial will end pretty abruptly.
I have a family of four and I hate sitting in the front seat – there is always various junk sitting on that seat and the driver groans and is forced to move it aside as I sit down.
Waymos are clean, don’t pollute, and safer than taxis. They cost a bit more than Ubers in San Francisco.
I have seen this before.
It’s called an Industrial Revolution.
Same complaints, like watching tv re-runs.
I recently spent a few months in the LA area and the neighborhood I was living in had Waymos everywhere. I wanted to hate them. Other than the weird feeling of not having a driver to make eye contact with to ensure they see you, I cannot find anything to complain about. The non-driver was never on their phone, never “changing the radio”, never distracted in any other way. The time I was most impressed was when a section of Venice Boulevard was closed for a street fair. The Waymos dropped passengers off right where they were supposed to. Navigated a tricky turnaround perfectly, despite loads of unpredictable pedestrians and cyclists and the best part, not a single honking horn. I am not certain that the concept will work here in NYC but I would encourage folks to keep an open mind. They are statistically safer (by a significant amount) than vehicles operated by humans. Safer streets benefit all road users, even other drivers.
If Waymos don’t honk then that’s a reason to like them.
There’s a reason why we don’t have automated subway trains despite the MTA wanting them. People overseeing vehicles makes them safer. Are drivers perfect? No, far from it. But automated systems are not necessarily safer.
Unions
No it’s because the MTA union would never allow it because their main purpose is to keep tax payers paying for their unnecessary jobs. Automated subway trains exist in other cities and are perfectly safe.
Unions perform a very critical function. Something urbanists hate.
Question. How does the rate of using a Waymo compare to an Uber or taxi?
I found this info online (AI of course):
Cost:
A 2025 study found Waymo rides were 41% more expensive than Lyft and 31% more than Uber when comparing the same routes at the same time.
Demand:
Waymo uses a “pure supply and demand” pricing scheme, with pricing heavily influenced by the availability of cars.
NO TIPPING.
Does that study include the tip?
I abhor the idea of these Waymo self driving taxis being shoved down our throats by a corrupt Mayor currying favor with tech bros instead of protecting the livelihoods of hardworking taxi drivers. Typical.
I hope that Waymo is avoiding Tesla cars!
Waymo uses a special car model designed by Jaguar.
As bad as some drivers in NYC are, I still don’t want and don’t trust driverless cars.
Terrifying prospect!
Safer is always the narrative. This is what these AI/advances tech companies want us to think. A friend of mine’s mother was going for eye surgery and had the option to have it done using an AI robot which was slightly more expensive but safer because of the human error element. She opted anyway to have a human doctor do the surgery.
Safer is a scary narrative and a slippery slope on the way to human uselessness. AI should be used as a tool to help us do things better. Not replace us.
sorry, but the waymo hate is ridiculous. it’s incredible technology, and resisting it because a lot of people drive cabs is the height of self defeating ludditism.
the waymos don’t speed, don’t hit pedestrians, don’t make illegal turns. they will never cut off other drivers, run red lights, or not see a bike in the bike lane. they will never drive distracted, drunk, or angry. they will never harass a woman in the car, or make someone feel uncomfortable with comments (as has happened to my wife plenty of times with drivers). they are much safer than human drivers. the cars also don’t need to park overnight for a driver to sleep, meaning less parking space is required. the benefits are myriad.
i’m a huge proponent of reducing the number of cars on the road and the amount of road deaths. the best way to do that is improving transit and accessibility, but i’m not a fantasist – i know there will be plenty of times where folks need to drive, and if we can reduce the number of private cars and replace them with robots, i’m all in favor.
My nephew tells me he feels safer and more comfortable in predictable, careful Waymos than cabs. But I think of the driver who went out of his way to return my phone to me after I left it in his taxi – I made it worth his while, but that was so valuable to me, and not a negotiation you can have with a robot. I think of when , as a young mother with many bags, a kid, and a stroller the driver couldn’t manage to unfold on a snowy side street I handed my 8 month old in her snowsuit to a grandfatherly Sikh driver who didn’t have a lot of English, so I could get family and baggage set up, pointed in the right direction, andover the piles of snow to our door. What non human exchange of understanding and trust could match that experience?
Colossal lawsuits are needed to stop this. A permit should never have been issued. How can any vehicle be allowed without a licensed driver? These have no licenses, no drivers. It’s the same as turning on a motorcycle or car and sending it driving on its own, legally speaking, I should think. Software cannot be licensed to drive.
People make the argument that the autonomous cars will hit people. It’s not a problem caused by the cars, it’s caused by people who don’t pay attention while crossing the street and/or cross on a red light, thinking that they will always have right of way and/or not giving a damn.