San Francisco Balks at Expanding Driverless Car Services on City’s Roads

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Over the past year or so, a jarring sight has become common in San Francisco: driverless cars buzzing around the city’s streets with no one at the wheel and an expensive array of electronic sensors guiding the way. But a plan by two companies to expand driverless taxi services in San Francisco has met stiff resistance from city officials and some activists. The fight has become a Rorschach test for local tolerance of the tech industry’s new ideas: Are the driverless cars an interesting and safe transportation alternative? Or are they a nuisance and a traffic-blocking disaster waiting to happen? With more than 800,000 residents, hilly San Francisco is the second most densely populated city in the country. Whether self-driving cars can succeed in the city will be a harbinger for their viability in other communities. And success in San Francisco could provide, for the first time, a signal that the billions invested by the tech and auto industries into autonomous driving technology could eventually pay off. The California Public Utilities Commission, the state agency responsible for regulating self-driving cars in the city, is set to vote on Thursday on a plan to allow General Motors-owned Cruise and Waymo, which is backed by Google’s parent company, Alphabet, to charge for driverless rides throughout the city, round the clock. Right now, Cruise can offer paid rides late at night in the northwest part of the city, while Waymo offers only free rides.