The Portland Bureau of Transportation wants to be ready for Waymo and the potential onslaught of autonomous vehicles. After the Google-owned company approached city officials last fall to share their desire to operate on our streets, PBOT realized it was time to update their administrative rules that govern the new form of transportation.
PBOT last dug into AVs in 2017 with the passage of their Smart Autonomous Vehicle Initiative, but a lot has changed in the industry since then. And with Waymo’s aggressive expansion plans — they recently raised $16 billion in venture capital and want to launch in 20 more cities this year — PBOT officials want strong local regulations that balance innovation with public safety. And simmering under all these conversations are Portlanders with strong feelings about AVs and city council members who are skeptical to say the least.
PBOT Mobility Innovations Section Manager Jacob Sherman (formerly the city’s e-scooter program manager) stopped by the Bicycle Advisory Committee last night to share the city’s stance on Waymo and hear from members what they think of AVs in general. He was joined by PBOT Transportation Planner Hannah Morrison.
“We see automated vehicles as just the next evolution of this broader industry [of rideshare companies like Uber and Lyft], and we think that we need to get ready for it and have a conversation about what it could mean for Portland,” Sherman shared at the BAC meeting last night. Sherman said he was relieved a state bill that would have preempted local control of AVs died in the state legislature last month.
“We think these [AVs] should be regulated as for-hire vehicles — just like taxis and just like Uber and Lyft. And we need to maintain our local control to be able to do that,” Sherman said.
Like students getting ready for a big test, PBOT has been studying-up on AVs. In the past few months, PBOT officials have talked to over a dozen other cities to better understand the pros and cons that come with robotaxi services like Waymo. “We took pieces from other cities and tried to do this in a Portland way,” said Morrison, when explaining PBOT’s new draft rules.
Sherman describe the “Portland way” as, “Trying to propose a thoughtful, collaborative approach that could let companies come to market, but also do so in a way that kind of protects the broader public good.”
To be clear, PBOT isn’t anti-AVs. The benefits they see include: safety, more efficient traffic flow, a good option for folks who can’t drive themselves, and the fact that AVs give riders more time to themselves. But the perils loom large as well. PBOT is concerned about: how robotaxis will interact with other road users, the impacts on the job market, increased congestion (in California, about 40% of AV miles are without a passenger), who has access to the videos and photos the cars take, how AVs could induce sprawl, and so on.
To stay in the driver’s seat when it comes to regulating AVs, Portland’s plan is to set a strong set of ground rules before any testing or operations begin. Here’s a general outline of the draft rule PBOT is seeking comment on (taken from a PBOT presentation to the BAC last night).
To understand companies’ intended operations, they must provide a description of the conditions they will operate under, including: time of day; environmental conditions (e.g. weather); and a description of restrictions on operations, including: speed of travel, roadway type, and a map of their intended operating area.
To ensure that the City permits safe companies and not possible bad actors, companies must: provide a statement of testing or deployment experience, comply with robust insurance and liability requirements, comply with all state and local laws (including traffic laws and parking regulations).
To ensure widespread access, AV companies must: provide reasonable accommodations to passengers with disabilities and host at least two public outreach events annually.
To ensure companies are supporting the City’s Vision Zero goal, they must: provide a Passenger Safety Plan; provide a First Responder Interaction and Disengagement Plan and host at least one in-person training annually; provide PBOT with copies of NHTSA collision reports; comply with all federal, state and local laws (including traffic laws and parking regulations); do not pick-up or drop-off passengers in a vehicle or bicycle lane; comply with federal AV requirements; submit documentation on annual vehicle inspections.
To ensure that companies are committed to data privacy and data sharing, they must: share trip level data with the City (like taxis, Uber and Lyft, BIKETOWN, e-scooters, and car-share); comply with the Oregon Consumer Privacy Act; submit a privacy policy showing how they will safeguard passengers’ information. AV companies should also work with the city to integrate our data about street closures, school zones, work zones, and first responder conflicts.
To ensure that AVs contribute to the City’s decarbonization goals: all AVs must be fully battery electric vehicles.
Standard private for-hire permit and per-trip fees will apply to for-hire AVs, just like taxis, Uber and Lyft. These fees support administration and maintenance and operations of transportation system.
Addition of a for-hire AV permit. To receive a permit for commercial operations, AV companies must either:
- A) Start with a Portland AV Testing Permit and complete at least 500,000 automated miles across their fleet without their permit being suspended or revoked OR
- B) Have tested/deployed in at least 5 other U.S. cities, have completed at least 500,000 automated miles, and have no permit suspensions or terminations in the U.S. in the last three years
Permits can limit fleet size. Permits can be suspended or revoked for noncompliance.
The response from BAC members was mixed. One member, Alon Raab expressed serious concerns — both about basic things like safety (he doesn’t like that you can’t look robotaxi drivers in the eye when negotiating an intersection) and deeper societal issues the vehicles represent. “I find this technology alarming,” Raab said. “Six companies own the market. I don’t feel comfortable in a world where six companies own a market. It’s a philosophical issue.”
“This is a big question of what kind of world we want,” Raab continued. “And I don’t feel comfortable with this world where machines drive and don’t have any responsibility and where a few people make all the decisions.”
BAC member Sabrina Freewynn had a much different take. “I am a total supporter of autonomous vehicles. Absolutely love them,” she said. Freewynn, who’s ridden in a Waymo in Phoenix, said people need to get more familiar with them, “So I like that idea of having them tested in Portland.”
The issue of traffic law enforcement came up several times during the meeting. If a police officer wanted to issue a citation to an AV, how would that even work since there’s no driver to cite? Sherman with PBOT said, “Oregon law doesn’t answer that question right now. That’s a piece of law that needs to be clarified at some point.”
There remain many questions surrounding the future of AVs in Portland. That’s why you should pay attention and consider sharing your comments with PBOT. The comment period will be open through April 4th and there’s a public hearing today (Weds, March 11th) from 6:00 to 7:30 pm at the Portland Building downtown (Zoom also available). Learn more about the draft rule change and opportunities for feedback on PBOT’s website.
Thanks for reading.
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That seems like a red herring concern.
If that is a real concern, at least consider that it means folks are choosing to take AVs to come back into the City to work and/or play.
Making it easy, which usually means prioritizing, people who come in and out of the city to work and play is sprawl. It wastes resources and destroys the destination. It is one of the main reasons downtown Portland is in the desperate situation that it is now.
Does it really, though?
Unless Waymo is using shell companies to hide ownership of their vehicles, there doesn’t seem to be a problem assigning liability if the photo enforcement guide is any clue. Since there is no driver, straight to Waymo. Same as if an officer issued a citation although, has that ever happened?
“Oregon Law authorizes the citation issued to your business or public agency to be dismissed if you complete the Affidavit of Non-Liability identifying the driver. However, if you do not fill out the Affidavit of Non-Liability with accurate and complete driver information, the citation will not be dismissed and your business will be responsible for the citation.”
I would take a totally different approach — rather than issue individual fines/tickets, I would lodge the incident with the appropriate regulator who can investigate and ensure that the appropriate company updates their software or, if they won’t/can’t/don’t, the regulator can impose an appropriate corporate sanction, including large fine or withdrawal of operating license.
Obviously there needs to be a mechanism in place for this, but the concept of “tickets” doesn’t really make sense in the context of AVs.
It doesn’t make sense at all, I agree. I guess my thinking was that we don’t really need to expend a lot of time or resources trying to invent a system for Waymo when there are systems working just fine in 10 cities. I was just trying to show there are plenty of regulations that apply to Waymo already codified under Oregon law and at most would just need a little tweaking. If there was ever a time to just cut and paste from what the other cities are doing with Waymo, this would be it.
It seems from some of the reactions in the article that people believe we need a unique solution to AVs that are no longer unique and are now operating smoothly in 10 varied cities.
Imagine how the driver ‘black points’ system – for a jurisdiction with such – for moving violations would work for a robo car…points are issued, but then the corporation [‘whom’ now has human citizen level lobbying rights, thank you very much SCoTUS!] says of that “driver” ticketed does not work here anymore. [That robot was “SAE Level 4, ‘OS: Prune Dust’ ” but it is now…”SAE Level 5 ‘Wet Prune’ “…etc. etc.]
What benefits?
Safety: Waymo does better, but Teslas self driving is very much more crash prone that humans: https://futurism.com/advanced-transport/tesla-robotaxis-crashing-more-human-drivers
Efficient Traffic Flow: robotaxis increase VMT: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2026/03/05/study-academics-agree-avs-will-super-charge-vmt-driving-car-dependence-autonomous-vehicles-waymo
Option for folks who can’t drive themselves: willing to give them this one
More time to themselves: We probably have enough time to ourselves in our metal boxes https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/29/extreme-car-dependency-unhappiness-americans
How do AV’s navigate pick-up and drop-odd locations? Uber/Lyft are very comfortable using bike lanes or stopping in-lane. Will AV’s do that if requested? That seems like something the City could preemptively address.
There are certain parameters that can be set/changed, but generally there’s no discretion.
Probably.
I had the same question. If a rider summons an AV and the rider is standing next to a bike lane, does the AV somehow wave the rider around the corner to a safe-stopping place? Maybe the permit should designate EVERY SINGLE pick-up and drop-off (Russian chauffeur?) location and AVs are not allowed to stop anywhere else. That seems like a manageable programming task.
What about a simple question of “Will the operation of these vehicles likely increase overall the number of motor vehicles on our streets, which will thus increase pollution, traffic, and other public health problems?” If yes, do not approve.
I agree with Lois. And would add, to what extent will the adoption of AVs crowd out other, desperately needed transportation upgrades?
PBOT can’t afford to pave the potholes let alone put up a wall around the city. I’m afraid cars are going to continue to come into the city, robotic or not.
That sounds like a problem that should be addressed.
I’d like to see a requirement of the permit be that every vehicle is equipped with a GPS tracker that uploads data to the city. This would allow the city to independently determine things like are these vehicles obeying the speed limit, are they getting stuck and clogging up the street in places, are they stopping to pick up drop off in places that don’t have parking spots etc.
Like they do with city vehicles? That still park in bike lanes. That still speed. That still act like people are driving them?
I’m pretty sure Waymo knows where all its cars are at all times. Meanwhile, the city can’t enforce rules and regularions on the city vehicles it already tracks. How would the city adapt to handling all the data you would want Waymo to share them?
The linked post doesn’t seem to say that the bill died in committee. Or am I missing something?
The time ran out. It didn’t get the work session it needed in time.
“(in California, about 40% of AV miles are without a passenger)”
This is the biggest issue to me. I was recently in Phoenix and used public transit while there. The frequent-service transit corridors I rode (bus and light rail) were teeming with empty Waymo cars. I saw dozens of them, but only noticed passengers in them a couple times. As you noted, zero-occupancy vehicles increase traffic congestion even further than single-occupancy vehicles! One thing you didn’t mention: More vehicle miles also increases the wear and tear on our streets–something Portland cannot afford to see right now.
(It was interesting that Waymo had so many cars on corridors already well served by transit–by American standards at least. I rode a couple non-frequent bus lines also, but didn’t notice Waymo cars along those streets.)
AVs in general probably will result in safer streets over time (I was gratified to see that the empty Waymos were moving at or below the speed limit, while the human-powered cars were zooming past them). But I think they need to pay for road usage by the mile, and they should not be allowed to “cruise” when traffic is heavy.
Now transit riders can complain about ‘all those very empty robotaxis’…just like the empty seats in SOVs more common in our cities before Waymo. 🙂