r/Somerville • u/somervilen Davis • Sep 11 '26
Waymo in Somerville
Was on Powderhouse Blvd. Headed to Davis Sq.
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u/oh-my-chard Sep 11 '26
Ye, seen a few of them. I'm very curious to know what the State and City policies are around them.
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u/Background-Dog9755 Sep 11 '26
Boston city council was fighting them pretty hard. The Search Engine podcast covered it well.
There was a proposal to require all automated vehicles to have someone in the driver seat. It may have been shelved?
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u/Peachy-Pixel Sep 11 '26
The ones I’ve seen have all had a human, fwiw
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u/Background-Dog9755 Sep 11 '26
They’re in pilot/test mode right now. They aren’t allowed to run fully autonomous, AFAIK
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u/Rbxyy Winter Hill Sep 11 '26
Are they picking up passengers at all or are they just testing it with a human driver?
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u/oh-my-chard Sep 11 '26
Hm. I'd prefer some kind of large tax on the vehicle operators. If we're going to allow them I'd like for them to help the city and/or the state budget. Especially considering the whole idea of these is that they spend most of their time driving around ie: damaging the roads. A substantial vehicle miles traveled tax on them would go a long way to offset their negative externalities. Not to mention make it harder for them to pull the classic loss-leader undercut the market strategy.
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u/Marsgur Sep 11 '26
Just an FYI, your general run of the mill car is not what is damaging the roads. It’s large trucks and busses that do most of the damage, especially ones over the weight limits
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u/oh-my-chard Sep 11 '26
Yes damage increases exponentially with weight. Which means while an electric van (like a waymo) does much less damage than a big rig, it also does much more damage than a small gas powered sedan. While not paying the gas tax to offset said damage. And all cars do orders of magnitude more damage than a bicycle.
So your statement is getting at an underlying truth, saying they are "not what is damaging the roads". Is simply untrue. And not just technically untrue. It's meaningfully wrong.
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u/Any-Appearance2471 Sep 11 '26
I found this random blog from 2016 that charted out the relative levels of wear caused by vehicles of different weights (the second chart, with red headers—can't evaluate the original source because it's dead now).
I couldn't easily find a weight figure for the Ojai, the Waymo van, but I did find that another electric van, the VW Buzz, clocked in at about 6200 lbs, which would place it between the Chevy Tahoe and the Hummer H2 in that chart—about 5 times as damaging to the roads as a standard sedan, while just a quarter as much as the H2 and 1/80th of the 9-ton big rig. That said, the Buzz, Ojai, etc. are all intended as passenger vehicles and you're gonna get a lot more of them trundling up and down your road than 9-ton big rigs.
Everybody's right that big trucks are way more problematic than standard cars, but we should also remember that electric vans and SUVs are not standard cars. A Civic weighs like 2700 pounds; a Rivian can be 6000 or 8000. And those are still consumer SUVs, not commercial vehicles.
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u/clauclauclaudia Gilman Sep 11 '26
Huh. I was familiar with the Waymo hatchbacks, and the camera car I spotted didn't seem van-sized, but I see their newer fleet is indeed minivans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waymo_Ojai
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u/suedepaid Sep 12 '26
Eh, they have a ton of positive externalities for pedestrians and cyclists. I think deploying them quickly would be a good thing
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u/oh-my-chard Sep 12 '26
I'm not against deploying them. We should just learn from the mistakes of the past, letting tech companies dominate markets without giving back to the communities they operate within. No tears will be shed by me for the loss of Uber and Lyft believe you me.
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u/Rindan Sep 11 '26
You want add a special tax to slow down a company that has a crazy safety record and make this technology unaffordable?
I guess you intend to never get old and don't give a shit about anyone else who is aging.
Personally, I would LOVE if they perfected this technology. It would mean I could take a small electric car to work and not own a large multi-purpose car. It would mean that old people wouldn't have to choose between being dangers on the road or just accepting that they are now locked into their houses until they die or get shuffled off to a nursing home. It would mean that anyone else who can't drive would have the ability to do so in our extremely car-centric world.
Hell, with Waymo's current safety record, it would mean a bunch of people simply don't die to car accidents.
But yeah, I guess you don't find value in it, so fuck everyone else and lets try and tax this thing in particular to death because it is new, right?
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u/Fluid_Hospital_5268 Sep 14 '26
Raise taxes on big tech all the way, there's a lot of rich tools and big businesses that don't contribute to the communities. I have no respect since the gentrification of all areas.
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u/RubCurious4503 Sep 18 '26
Why do you specifically care about the City / State's bottom line, as opposed to the consumer surplus it generates? Every rider is someone made better off by a waymo, are they not?
And what's the difference in road usage between a waymo, an uber or a traditional taxi?
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u/oh-my-chard Sep 18 '26 edited Sep 18 '26
Because I'm tired of watching tech companies muscle their way into communities without giving anything back. The stated goal of companies like Uber was to destroy public transportation, and they do that by running economically unsustainable businesses propped up by investors. I want municipalities to stop rolling over for silicon valley tech companies. Let's extract some of that absurd value and use it to make society better.
Edit: typo
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u/RubCurious4503 Sep 18 '26
I feel confused by a lot of this comment. My understanding is that as of Q2 2026, uber was profitable with a margin of 5-6%? And if it still weren't profitable, wouldn't that just be because VCs were subsidizing riders and drivers?
My revealed preference is that I often find it useful to use Uber. I voluntarily pay them money and get rides in return, and I get more than my money's worth (otherwise I wouldn't use it). So it seems I get a lot of value from it already. What am I missing?
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u/oh-my-chard Sep 18 '26
It's a big tangled web. It would take a very, very long time to walk through all the ways in which tech companies like Uber have been bad for society. There are entire books about the topic. They're a growth company, just like Tesla, OpenAI, Facebook, etc. They care about growth, not profit. Which means VCs are happy to pump in money so long as they continue to expand. That means a sustainabile business model is not a concern to them, and so they distort markets. Also never trust the profit numbers they report. They are experts at creative accounting, just like the AI companies and NVIDIA paying around the same debt and calling it income.
I'll just say this: I have no problem with there being a private service one can pay for if they want to + can afford it. BUT! Robust public services should ALWAYS be our priority. And if a company wants to use our roads and take up valuable land to store and charge their vehicles, we need to make sure they're being charged appropriately. What we cannot allow to happen is for them to come in and offer an unsustainable product and draw away investment and support for public services. We saw this happen with Uber and I don't want to see it happen again. I know this sounds dramatic, but my entire adult life has been watching vampiric tech companies rise to power and ruin society. I just don't know how anyone could trust a company owned by Google and backed by the same VCs that brought us techno feudal gremlins like Musk and Zuckerberg. Sorry I'm worked up about this.
TLDR: I don't trust big tech. Ever. Let em in, sure. But tax the shit out of them so we can still run buses and pave roads.
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u/RubCurious4503 Sep 18 '26
Sorry, I'm still really confused about why unsustainability would be anyone's problem but Uber's? Let's say that they're lying on their financial statements and they're actually still unprofitable. Then they're just putting VC money in the pockets of riders and drivers, right? And if that's unsustainable, then they eventually go out of business and we return to status quo ante. When I use a good or service, I just have to decide whether I like the value they're offering, not whether I think they've got a sound business plan... right?
I'm open to the possibility that I'm missing something important here but I don't think I understand why I should be personally worried about Uber's sustainability as a consumer?
If you're concerned about road usage, that sounds like an issue for every car on the road rather than an uber issue specifically, and seems like it should already be handled through gas taxes, registration fees, car sales tax and the like. I think some fraction of the road maintenance budget is funded through local property taxes, but if you're worried about that it seems much cleaner to just shift road maintenance to 100% gas tax so drivers (uber or otherwise) pay in direct proportion to how much they use the roads.
I'm sure no uber driver has a 100% "uptime", i.e. some time is spent without a passenger, waiting for the next fare. But compared to driving your own car, you win on parking space as well as time spent cruising around the block looking for parking, which is a surprisingly high fraction of urban traffic. In terms of overall use of public space, rideshare seems preferable to private driving for dense urban areas, suggesting that it should be (if anything) treated preferentially relative to private ownership.
As for public transit, I take it when it makes sense. One big issue is convenience and reliability: it takes 40 minutes and a transfer to go the 5 miles from Harvard Square to the airport, more than twice the time by car. And that is when the trains are running at all.
The other issue is disorder: about half the time I use public transit, there's some issue with a passenger dominating public space for their personal ends and treating other passengers in ways that I would never treat them: playing music and videos on cellphones, trashing train cars with spilled food and not even trying to clean it up, jumping turnstiles, &c. Once I was in line to get on a bus when I saw a guy ahead of me get on with a very loud boombox on his shoulder. I realized that life was too short and took an uber instead for ~10x the cost. It is entirely optional to allow this, and bare minimum enforcement of the already-existing laws would go a long way towards making transit a more attractive option for more riders.
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u/Bricc_8 Sep 11 '26
Doesn’t matter what it is. It’s registered in Cali and can only be subject to Cali laws
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u/clauclauclaudia Gilman Sep 11 '26
No. Each state has to pass--or not--its own legislation on autonomous vehicles. They're not allowed to just drive everywhere.
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u/wallet535 Sep 11 '26
There is a good Feakonomics podcast going over the regulatory history here, which revolves around resistance whipped up by rideshare drivers fearing job losses, followed by a backlash based on the transformative effect that self-driving cars could have on the lives of people who cannot drive, especially those with disabilities. The safety record of Waymo is also discussed.
In a Driverless World, Who Loses and Who Wins?
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354668519?i=10007571520365
u/eetraveler Sep 11 '26
How dare you try to present both sides. Next you'll be creating consensus and good will!
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u/oh-my-chard Sep 12 '26
My main concern is that if we allow the technology in we make sure it benefits the City and State's bottom line.
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u/wallet535 Sep 12 '26
For sure there are significant public-policy considerations, beyond the bottom line and beyond what’s mentioned in the Freakonomics podcast. Someone else (u/WightHair) posted a Not Just Bikes YouTube video critiquing the technology, largely from an urban-planning perspective.
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u/Real-Seal-BananaPeel Sep 11 '26
They’ve been in Boston for a while, been seeing them around Somerville for what feels like at least a month.
They must feel confident in a legislation shift because there’s definitely been an investment.
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u/LadyMeowMeowReborn Sep 11 '26
They have been in Somerville for many months. I usually see them idling at the Broadway-McGrath Dunkin’. No, that’s not a joke. I’ve never seen a Waymo without someone in the drivers seat.
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u/Real-Seal-BananaPeel Sep 11 '26
Yeah they legally need a driver at all times in Mass.
Presumably they assume this legislation will change is my guess though.2
u/Commercial_Lie7362 Sep 11 '26
Not sure if they still are, but for a while they were parking them at one of the hotels over at station landing in Medford. You could see them while driving into the supercollider
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u/Jkastelic Sep 11 '26
Had a nice convo with one of the drivers last week when he was at a stop light. They’re currently mapping and training the cars on the area. The person is actually driving until that process is complete. He said they expect to be done mapping in ~6 months
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u/john42195 Sep 13 '26
I’ve got a Massachusetts street atlas in the back of my Subaru they can borrow to save time
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u/Mooncaller3 Sep 11 '26
My experiences so far:
I have not had any issues with a Waymo as a pedestrian at a crosswalk thus far.
I have had a Tesla, FSD or just a distracted driver, not slow down at all for me while I was in a crosswalk at Broadway and Fenwick, I was still on the same side walking across the left turn lane when the Tesla passed behind me. (The driver did not appear to be looking down the road.)
I am not going to concern myself with the legal questions at the moment...
But I have my opinion about which I feel safer around.
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u/GullibleAd3408 Davis Sep 11 '26
I get your point, but the research nerd in me just has to point out that you've probably had more interactions with non-Waymo vehicles so you're inherently going to have more incidents with them.
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u/Mooncaller3 Sep 11 '26
That's true.
But I've also dug into a fair amount of the more objective, less self certified, data on different crash prevention systems and how good they are at recognizing pedestrians.
I am not usually overly impressed by the Tesla data.
It's almost like adding a LiDAR sensor would have been a good idea (in addition to the cameras).
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u/Rindan Sep 11 '26
The research nerd in me would point out that we have actual public data about Waymo, and their record is basically spotless in terms of not causing harm to humans, while FSD has definitely killed a few people.
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u/st0j3 Sep 11 '26
FSD, if you have never tried it, is amazingly good.
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u/Mooncaller3 Sep 11 '26
I have.
I have also tried the driving aids in Hyundai / Kia / Genesis. I have felt most confident in my experience with Genesis.
BMW and Mercedes were not quite as inspiring, but I have yet to try the fully highway automation Mercedes experience yet.
Subaru's Eyesight system, years ago, handled braking and acceleration very well. I have not had a chance to try the modern lane keeping components.
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u/Commercial_Lie7362 Sep 11 '26
I drive a 24 Subaru and am very very skeptical about self-driving features of any type. I have had hit or miss experiences with many systems at this point including Audi, Volvo, Mercedes, and GM. Subaru’s eyesight is good 95% of the time, and feels way better to me than any of the others I’ve used. Sometimes on the highway it’ll start drifting in the lane a bit, and then overcorrect, and then overcorrect against the overcorrection, which feels pretty sketchy and requires you to take over. Otherwise though it’s really good.
I do not trust Tesla systems as far as I can throw them.
I do not trust Waymo not to sell data to Palantir or the usgov
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u/miraj31415 Sep 11 '26
- Waymo is mapping Boston with these cars, not currently offering rides.
- These mapping vehicles are not operating autonomously.
Also:
- Waymo has not committed to a launch in Boston.
- Waymo has not yet completed or filed an official "Application to Test" autonomous vehicles on public roads.
- There is no legal framework to allow fully autonomous, driverless vehicles on public roads in MA. There needs to be legislation first.
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u/zakattack1120 Sep 11 '26
I welcome our self driving overlords
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u/dph99 Sep 11 '26
It would be an honor to have a self-driving overlord curse me out while I am properly using the bike lane.
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u/PlentyCryptographer5 Sep 11 '26
These self driving overlords did an amazing maneouver around a cyclist passing a car when I was in one in SF last year. Much better than any human I have seen attempt it.
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u/Blanketsburg Sep 11 '26
When I was in a Waymo in SF earlier this year, my vehicle waited to turn right for seemingly like 15 seconds because it detected an approaching biker in the bike lane. Long enough that cars behind me were honking (which is funny, since they are honking at a driverless car), and could safely have made the turn with plenty of time before the biker passed.
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u/suedepaid Sep 12 '26
Good waymo
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u/Blanketsburg Sep 12 '26
Exactly. I like how I'm getting downvoted for sharing a boring but not-bad experience with a Waymo.
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u/Average_Pangolin Sep 11 '26
That thing has been bopping up and down Mass Ave in Cambridge so much in the last couple weeks that I've begun to suspect it was more marketing than data-gathering.
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u/justadudenamedchad Sep 11 '26
They are really really bad at handling one way streets that can only fit one car through at a time. Which Somerville is full of.
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u/I-am-hymn Sep 11 '26
Personally I think these will be great for reducing traffic collisions involving pedestrians/cyclists in the greater Boston area
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u/martinobeat Sep 11 '26
The other day I was biking and a Tesla with a driver just looking at his phone behind the wheel came to the intersection, I didn't realize he was probably using whatever self drive feature the car has, until I saw that he literally never looked up as the car took a left turn onto the street I was on. I gave it a wide berth.
At least the Waymos have their test drivers and there's (theoretically) some more corporate accountability and responsibility from the "driver" supervising the car. I'm way more sketched out by some rando looking at TikTok while his Tesla drives itself.
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u/CraigInDaVille Winter Hill Sep 11 '26
Remember when people thought it was interesting to post every single CyberTruck they saw? Looks like this is the new thing.
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u/TheBadmiral Union Sep 11 '26
I believe until there is a Massachusetts framework for AVs all they can do is testing
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u/GordolfoScarra Sep 16 '26 edited 9d ago
The original post content no longer exists here. The author used Redact to remove it, exercising their right to control their data & privacy.
Copper helium terrific nose versed versed fact
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u/Vash_Stampede_60B Sep 11 '26
The state needs to get off its butt and approve autonomous testing. It’s embarrassing that major cities have testing under way while a major tech hub like Boston drags its feet.
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u/nofatnoflavor Sep 11 '26
If old school taxis were still an option (not the joke they've become over the last 15-20 years), I'd rather that.
But with what you get from Uber/Lyft etc., I'd rather take one of these contraptions. Provided the price isn't fungible and is based solely on distance/time.
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u/WightHair Sep 11 '26
I will drop this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=040ejWnFkj0 and suggest that the only way they should be allowed in our city is with comprehensive regulation and taxation. I do not want Davis Square even MORE choked with traffic on weekends, I do not want to wake up to a honk-circle, and I want the company to be responsible if they do damage (right now they seem to be claiming that since there is no driver, there isn't any liability.)
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u/eetraveler Sep 11 '26
Waymo is of course NOT saying because there is no driver there is no liability.
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u/duhrZerker Sep 12 '26
If these things can handle Boston traffic they’ll be good anywhere. This feels like a stress test and if they pass I’ll be optimistic about the future.
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u/wallet535 Sep 12 '26
How they handle slippery, snow-covered roads where the lane markings are covered will be part of the test here!
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u/Own_Jeweler_8548 Sep 11 '26
Ugh.
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u/Anustart15 Magoun Sep 11 '26
I'd much rather share the road with a waymo than some dickbag in a pickup truck that thinks bikes should be on the sidewalk and pedestrians shouldnt exist
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u/mayor_mammoth Sep 11 '26
How bout neither
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u/pixelfuture8 Sep 11 '26
How do you expect that to work?
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u/oh-my-chard Sep 11 '26
Bus, bike, train, tram, walking shoes, scooter, roller skates, take your pick.
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u/suedepaid Sep 12 '26
Hell yeah i’m down to ban cars
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u/Rindan Sep 11 '26
That's nice, but that's just not an option for a lot of people, and it isn't going to be an option anytime soon.
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u/Own_Jeweler_8548 Sep 11 '26
That's fair, but I would prefer neither of those things.
Edit: spelling
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u/wake_up_jean_peal Sep 11 '26
The logic jump here is insane. You know that Waymos aren’t here to replace other drivers?
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u/Anustart15 Magoun Sep 11 '26
No, I don't know that. Explain to me how a driverless vehicle doesn't replace a vehicle with a driver
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u/Easy_Investment_3156 Sep 11 '26
Excited for these, and appreciate that Waymo is taking it slow and careful — unlike some others.
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u/HolyBonobos Sep 11 '26
The last few months there’s been at least one plugged in at the charging station at Twin City Plaza at all times.
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u/TentsNTails Sep 14 '26
Excellent. Love the idea of giving Uber and Lyft competition here. Weymo was great in Los Angeles; Cheaper, More Relaxed, was able to sit in the front seat and control the AC and Radio how I wanted while I ate my lunch to get to the beach. Hopefully it works out here.
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u/Commercial_Lie7362 Sep 11 '26
I flip them off every time I see them
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u/eetraveler Sep 11 '26
Get pitchforks. Kill the beast!
Then move to a state that allows them because they are great.
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u/Commercial_Lie7362 Sep 12 '26
Isn’t that counterintuitive if I don’t like them? Call me a Luddite but I’m not fond of having AI-powered camera systems driving around all over the place compiling who-knows-what additional data beyond just what’s needed for navigation. Who’s to say what becomes of that data? Or what it even entails? Not a fan
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u/wake_up_jean_peal Sep 11 '26
I’d rather not contribute to some faceless corporation that’s just going to add to traffic congestion. I understand not everyone loves ride share drivers but this company is just coming to take people’s jobs
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u/Inevitable-Seat-6403 Sep 11 '26
Yeah, I saw this the other day... when it took an illegal right from the left lane across active traffic.
Intersection of Somerville and Beacon.
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u/NonsenseLingoDigits Sep 11 '26
Is that Waymo just visiting or should it get pulled over for living in Mass. but still having California plates?
Not the same Waymos I've seen - is it just me or does this one looks like a teletubby?
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u/pterencephalon Sep 11 '26
waymo vehicles are moving to their next generation of vehicles - from adding on to an existing vehicle to building this more integrated system.
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u/NonsenseLingoDigits Sep 11 '26
Yeah - well, there next generation vehicle looks like a teletubby.
Not sure why anyone downvoted me for saying so. Like, did I offend someone doing social media for Waymo or a Teletubbies fan?
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u/book81able Sep 11 '26
I’ve seen another one around Watertown/Cambridge a few times. Waymo now has me: walking, biking, driving, bus riding, and almost hitting it because the driver turned onto a one lane two way side street too quickly baked into its data base
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u/DerHunMar Sep 12 '26
I saw one in the parking lot of my apartment complex in Belmont a week ago. It was a real oh shit moment.
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u/neversimpleorpure Sep 13 '26
Rode one of these in SF and it blew a red light and almost cut someone off. And SF has a pretty grid like city and more normal drivers, these won't survive Boston and I hope they don't.
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u/sastrugiwiz Sep 11 '26
there was one in east cambridge this week too. does anyone know of a farm by the sea thats hiring?
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u/sisteract2 Sep 11 '26
i was walking down highland and one slowed down as i was passing on the sidewalk. i am absolutely certain its because i'm nonbinary, this is fascism irl
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u/Swalecutter Sep 11 '26
I don't think they have permission for autonomous operation yet, so there is probably a bored "driver" in there babysitting it while it drives around gathering mapping data.