Waymo wants to come to New York City. The driverless-ride company, owned by Google’s parent, Alphabet, has begun testing its electric Jaguars, with a person operating the cars as state law requires, in a pilot program.
Waymo operates smoothly in cities including San Francisco, Los Angeles and Austin, Texas, so why shouldn’t it be the same here?
One big difference is those cities aren’t as dependent on mass transit. In San Francisco, just 22 percent of people took public transportation to work in 2023, and in Austin, under 2 percent, according to American Community Survey data. So in Austin, a Waymo that — through price, convenience and comfort — lures people away from their own vehicle or an Uber or a taxi isn’t a new vehicle on the road adding to traffic.
In New York, though, 48 percent of workers rely on public transportation. If they didn’t, permanent gridlock would ensue, because we cannot fit more cars on the roads.
But the prospect of a car ride, if it’s cheap enough, can lure people away from subways and buses. We saw this in the mid-2010s, when Uber and its smaller competitor Lyft, in the absence of city regulations capping the number of for-hire vehicles on the road or requiring minimum driver pay, engaged in a price war for market share and strained the congested streets even more with cheap rides.
Speeds on Manhattan’s streets slowed down, ride-hail apps replaced subway and bus trips and there was major disruption to economics of the taxi business.
In 2018, the city, under Mayor Bill de Blasio, finally capped the number of vehicles, and the next year, the city instituted a minimum-pay rule enabling a living wage for drivers. Congestion pricing, too — a $2.75-per-ride surcharge in core Manhattan for non-taxi, for-hire vehicles starting in 2019 and an additional $1.50 per trip beginning this January — has calmed the chaos.
It’s not just congestion pricing that thwarts demand for Ubers and Lyfts. The rules on driver pay make rides expensive — prohibitively expensive on a regular basis. (I know this because I recently broke a leg, so I was taking Uber a lot.) A 3.5-mile trip from Midtown Manhattan to downtown, for example, can net the driver $25.
This punishing cost is good — it means that most New Yorkers don’t regularly take cars unless they are superrich or unless they absolutely must. That means more room for bicyclists and pedestrians, and safer streets for everyone. (If you live in an area of the city without much public transit, having your own car is probably cheaper than regularly taking Uber.)
Cars without drivers could disrupt this fragile calm. The mayor and City Council should make clear before Waymo or its competitors attempt to gain authority to offer for-hire rides: Driverless cars are free to compete on quality and comfort, but not on price. Every ride should levy a surcharge equivalent to the cost of the driver-pay regulation. Some of those funds, too, could go to drivers who lose jobs or income because of consumers’ abrupt adoption of new technology.
A major story of the 2010s across the country was the embrace of new technology without much thought to the consequences — and the later regret. When Uber came to town, New York was naïvely giddy, allowing technology to govern the city. This time, it should be the other way around.
Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor for the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.
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Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor for the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.
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