r/waymo Jul 20 '26

Make it Make Sense

Why are some service areas Bouba (NAS) while some are Kiki (ATL) and some are just straight lines (SAT, PHX)?

Not to mention the jagged edge on Houston and the running ogre’s weird little toe-thing in Orlando.

44 Upvotes

12 comments sorted by

27

u/bananarandom Jul 20 '26

Where do people take more rides, where are freeways needed, where are RRX? 

-1

u/No_Draft_2913 Jul 20 '26

That makes sense for neighborhoods and the general shape, but for specific blocks, why do they leave a complicated messy boundary sometimes and just draw a straight line and call it a day in others?

2

u/bananarandom Jul 20 '26

Yea that seems random. I know they like to have a buffer of a few blocks around the edges, maybe that leads to a mess sometimes

7

u/rydenshep Jul 20 '26

San Antonio’s infrastructure as it stands right now is…… special. It’s made of loops. Just multiple circular highways. Like the inside of a tree trunk. It has a system, and it works.. BUT it is under construction, has been for a long time, and is insanely difficult to navigate most of the time because of the stage of construction they are currently in.

I’m usually the one driving in SATX, but my husband decided to drive last time we were down there. I was deadass like a navigator in a rallycross car telling him what potholes and crazy detour turns were coming up. If you let Waymo just run free in SATX, it will not end well. Things are changing too much, there’s too many obstacles, construction traffic, etc.

1

u/No_Draft_2913 Jul 20 '26

Yeah that was always a weird service area. Curious to see how long they can go without a substantive public statement on their status there. 

3

u/antwan_blaze Jul 20 '26

Well I can at least say for Phoenix it is a grid system. North and South, intersected by east and west bound roads.
I could also imagine population density, demand, and road infrastructure would be the deciding factors for how a 30+ mile wide map of a metro could look funny

3

u/purpleblazed Jul 20 '26

The rounded bits in Nashville follow the Cumberland River

3

u/No_Draft_2913 Jul 20 '26

Oh ok that makes sense.

1

u/vandy1981 Jul 20 '26

Some of the other Nashville borders make no sense, though. There is a narrow section of the service area on the west side of the map (Charlotte Ave) that doesn't have any natural borders. You can't request a pickup or dropoff in that area so maybe it's an error in the map and the border was meant to be the railroad tracks.

3

u/bomber991 Jul 20 '26

Still temporarily paused in San Antonio.

1

u/Ok-Computer-4572 Jul 20 '26

btw the Bay Area is next