Waymo autonomous vehicles rolled into Daly City, Broadmoor and Colma on Wednesday without much warning, according to San Mateo County Supervisor David Canepa.

“If Waymo gives our police and fire chiefs just one day to understand how to deal with robot cars navigating our streets, then there’s a problem,” Canepa said. “Little notice, little transparency and little public outreach have been Waymo’s strategy from the beginning. This is an underhanded company trying to monopolize a market that is not for sale.”
The service extension from San Francisco to San Mateo County covers surface roads only. Freeway travel is not included.

Waymo did not speak to the public or police or fire departments before launching the service, according to Bill Silverfarb, a spokesman for Canepa. He said the company sent an email on Monday and contacted law enforcement shortly before the service was launched.

“The best case scenario is to get it right, do the training and then put it into practice,” said Broadmoor Police Chief Michael Connolly, who was visited by a Waymo ambassador on Monday to talk about training officers to handle emergencies involving autonomous vehicles.

Connolly said they will hold a future course to teach officers how to handle incidents, including how to disable a broken-down vehicle and move it.

“I think Waymo has made some improvements and preparations in this area that they should look at,” he said.

Waymo LLC, a self-driving car company owned by Google parent Alphabet, has been operating in San Francisco since 2022. On Jan. 19, the company asked the California Public Utilities Commission for permission to expand into San Mateo County, which the commission granted despite protests from local governments.

Waymo spokesman Ethan Teicher said the launch in San Mateo County will not immediately add more cars, but rather will be an expansion of the existing pickup and delivery zone.
On January 9, Senate Bill 915, the Autonomous Vehicle Service Deployment and Data Transparency Act, was introduced by Dave Cortese (D-San Jose), chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee.

The bill would have placed regulatory authority for autonomous vehicle services in the hands of local governments. San Mateo County has joined Los Angeles County in passing resolutions in support of the bill.

Cortese withdrew the bill from committee on June 17, saying the law had been amended in committee to strip local governments of the authority to regulate autonomous vehicles.

“We fought hard for the bill and got it through the Senate, including all the committees and votes. But then it went to the Assembly for a hearing and the Chair of the Transportation Committee, Lori Wilson, vetoed it,” Cortese said.

On April 9, San Mateo and San Francisco counties filed an amicus curiae brief in the state Court of Appeals, saying the CPUC failed to adequately consider, respond to, and address the public safety concerns raised by Waymo’s expansion, an abuse of discretion, and contrary to law.

“Because the CPUC approved Waymo’s expansion in San Francisco, Waymo’s application to expand into San Mateo County did not require a full Commission review,” the letter states. “Instead, the Consumer Protection Enforcement Division had the authority to approve the expansion without Commission review, and did so.”

The report goes on to say, “Given this even more abbreviated process, stakeholders like San Mateo County had even fewer opportunities to provide input and evidence relevant to the expansion, resulting in the CPUC further erring in its conclusions regarding the need for public safety protections in San Mateo County.”

Before the CPUC’s approval on March 1, Waymo representatives met with three members of the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors and with the county executive to discuss the company’s interest in expanding its operations to San Mateo County. According to the company, the meeting included a 12-slide presentation showing how the technology would work. One slide included a map of the larger service area across the peninsula.

“As you can see on slide 11, they showed the map of Waymo’s expansion plans on the Peninsula,” a Waymo spokesperson said in a Feb. 15 email.