Waymo has been fighting for years to break into the D.C. market with its driverless taxis. But D.C. Council members aren’t convinced the company or others like it should get a green light.
Council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6) on Tuesday introduced a new version of his robotaxi bill, which would legalize self-driving taxis in D.C. One of the key changes would allow drivers for ride-hailing apps and robotaxi maintenance workers to unionize in the District.
Despite not having enough support from other council members on the transportation committee, Allen said he plans to move forward with a committee vote on the bill set for Thursday.
The bill would also require robotaxi companies to begin adding wheelchair-accessible vehicles; enforce a limit of 200 robotaxis per company and 800 total vehicles citywide; and impose a vehicle miles tax on robotaxi companies, with a quarter of the revenue going for three years toward drivers negatively affected by driverless vehicle deployment. The new bill would halve the mileage tax to 7.5 cents per mile traveled.
Allen said the bill has “the most progressive” worker protections of any robotaxi legislation in the country. “I’m not sure what else people are looking for,” he told The Washington Post on Tuesday.
But Allen doesn’t appear to have enough support from the four other members of the transportation committee, which he chairs. Council member Christina Henderson (I-At Large) said she supports the revised bill, but Elissa Silverman (I-At Large) and Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5) told The Post on Tuesday that they plan to vote against it.
The committee’s fifth member, Mayor-elect Janeese Lewis George (D), came out in opposition to robotaxi legislation in October, citing job-loss concerns. “Rushing the legalization of autonomous vehicles is irresponsible,” she wrote in a social media post.
Parker told The Post he supports authorizing autonomous vehicles in D.C. but that he doesn’t think the new version of the bill addresses all of his concerns. “I don’t know if we have a full answer for the potential job loss question raised by Mayor-elect Lewis George,” he said.
Silverman told The Post she opposes the new bill because she wants the city’s new administration to weigh in on it. “I’m not against Waymo. In the end, I just want us to do this right. And I’m concerned about doing it in the interregnum, when there’s a change of administration,” she said.
In a joint statement Tuesday, the International Association of Machinists and unions representing D.C.-area public transit workers and property service workers said the bill’s changes were “rushed quick fixes that don’t provide sufficient safeguards against job displacement, guarantee labor standards or passenger safety.”
To pass, the bill would need to make it through the transportation committee before coming to a full council vote. Allen said Lewis George and her administration would have the opportunity to thoroughly review the legislation if it passes.
“If it’s not successful — I hope it is — but if it is not, then if there is a possibility to move forward in the new year, so be it,” Allen said.
In 2012, Washington became a national pioneer on autonomous vehicle policy, when the council passed one of the country’s first pieces of legislation outlining protocols for driverless cars.
But since then, the capital has fallen behind, even as Waymo, the industry leader, has expanded to commercial operations in 15 U.S. cities. Waymo has been testing its cars in D.C. since 2024 with human drivers behind the wheel.
Waymo said its vehicles have driven more than 300,000 miles around the District. Since January 2025, Waymo said its cars have been involved in six crashes in D.C. that resulted in minor property damage.
A Waymo spokesperson welcomed the new version of the robotaxi bill and said autonomous vehicles would create safer roads and good jobs in the District. “We will continue working with the Council to get this right so we can deliver those benefits to District residents,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
Greg Rogers, executive director of the Innovation Majority, a nonprofit that advocates for advancing transportation technology, said the bill’s workforce provisions make it the strongest pieces of robotaxi legislation he has seen in the United States in a decade.
“This bill has a ton of firsts,” Rogers said. “D.C. could really be a leader in imagining the future of AV regulation.”
Allen said Monday he disagrees with the argument that the District is rushing the robotaxi bill. “I think that it’s just strategic. That it sounds softer to say, ‘Let’s just wait. What’s the harm in waiting?’” he said. “That’s when I keep asking the question, ‘For what? What is it you’re waiting for? What is it you would like to see in here?’ And I haven’t had anybody come say, ‘Well, this is what’s lacking.’”
The battle over the future of robotaxis in the District has proven to be a contentious issue — one that represents thousands of jobs and vast sums of money across the U.S. In 2025, the venture capital firm Bond reported that Waymo had absorbed 27 percent of San Francisco’s ride-hailing market in 20 months.
A mysterious group with unclear funders and origins has been involved in opposing Allen’s bill. Another group with unclear funders has spent more than $2.6 million on political ads to combat the bill, according to data from the ad-tracking firm AdImpact, making the group the District’s biggest political ad spender this year.
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