SAN FRANCISCO – 4.13.2025
UPDATE
Excerpted from San Francisco Standard Power Play 4.13.2025
Daniel Lurie has spent his first three months as mayor trying to engage people all over the city’s political map. But in a departure from this painstaking strategy, he unilaterally granted Waymo robotaxis access to a mostly car-free Market Street.
It may come as little surprise that jilted stakeholders — from safe-street advocates and the SF Bicycle Coalition to rideshare companies Uber and Lyft — are peeved. This is San Francisco, after all.
Uber officials didn’t get word until right before Thursday’s announcement, while Robin Pam, cofounder of KidSafe SF, said she got a heads-up just the evening before.
Charles Lutvak, a spokesperson for the mayor, suggested that Waymo’s fleet has commercial license plates — unlike Uber and Lyft drivers, who use their private vehicles — and this would have given the robotaxis the ability to provide rides on Market Street with or without the mayor’s permission. Waymo supposedly chose to honor the car-free policy instituted on Market Street in 2020.
But Uber and Lyft officials aren’t buying that argument, saying Lurie is playing favorites. Uber has a higher-end service that features commercial vehicles. There is suspicion across the political spectrum that Lurie is playing favorites with Waymo because his policy chief, Ned Segal, is tight with Ruth Porat, president and chief investment officer of Alphabet, which owns the robotaxi company.
Porat was tapped to serve on the Partnership for San Francisco, the mayor-aligned group advising City Hall on revitalizing downtown. Its other leaders include philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs and Katherine August-deWilde, a former president of First Republic Bank.
Lutvak said he wasn’t sure if Waymo officials or the mayor’s office reached out first about getting robotaxis onto Market Street. He added that he probably wouldn’t share that information even if he did know. Stay tuned for more on the situation Monday.
Lee Heidhues 4.10.2025
The billionaire San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie is no friend of the movement for pedestrian car free areas. He is kowtowing to the motorists and their enablers.
His most blatant move to date is his unilateral decision permitting Waymo driverless vehicles to pollute Market Street. A thoroughfare which former Mayor London Breed made a car free sanctuary six years ago.
This is the same Daniel Lurie who opposed Proposition K, approved by 55 percent of the voters last November, which mandated the creation of the newly named Sunset Dunes Park. A two mile pedestrian/cyclist oasis along the city’s shoreline.
This is the same Daniel Lurie whose campaign lawyer Jim Sutton is leading the lawsuit to overturn the voters mandate creating Sunset Dunes Park (Matthew Boschetto v City and County of San Francisco – CPF25-518967).
Excerpted from The San Francisco Chronicle 4.10.2025
San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie will soon allow Waymo robotaxis on Market Street, a move intended to revitalize the downtown artery, though it will also bring car traffic to an area where private automobiles remain banned.
The move comes at a moment of tense debate over the future of Market, six years after the city’s seismic decision to remove cars from the eastern portion.
District 9 Supervisor Jackie Fielder underscored that point in a social media post Thursday: “Waymo should be taxed to fund public transit,” she wrote. Pedestrian and bicycle groups expressed their dismay in a statement, calling autonomous vehicles “a step backward to a chaotic, dangerous Market Street that serves no one’s purposes, including businesses.”
Supporters view car-free Market as a win for pedestrian and cyclist safety and note how it’s improved the speed and reliability of public transit. Some view the incursion of Waymos as an attempt to replace high-capacity Muni buses with low-capacity self-driving cars, especially given the timing: Muni is slated to make service cuts this summer that would have some bus routes turn around when they reach Market Street, obliging riders to transfer.
“Market Street runs through the heart of the city, and we’re making sure it continues to evolve with the times,” Lurie said in a statement Thursday, presenting the autonomous ride-hail vehicles as a tool to invigorate the troubled corridor — and in particular the theaters, hotels and restaurants whose owners have begun lobbying the mayor to reinstate car access.
Over the next few weeks, Waymo will begin mapping Market Street for its vehicles, enabling them to start operating there as soon as this summer. Waymo’s electric Jaguar SUVs would then be welcomed onto the two-mile “car-free” stretch east of 10th Street.
Lee's Perspective 