Op-Ed: San Francisco Should Not Give Free Curb Space to Waymo
The following submission was in response to “Waymo Speaks: We Have More In Common With Urbanists Than You Might Think” by Arielle Fleisher, Waymo’s Policy Development and Research Manager.
The Deadheading Problem
Ride-hail services such as Uber and AV operators such as Waymo share a structural problem: a large share of the miles are driven empty between drop-off and pick-up. A recent piece by a Waymo representative cites a figure that roughly 40 percent of ride-hail and AV miles run empty. Those miles add to vehicle miles traveled (VMT), congestion, and pollution. Even electric cars still generate brake and tire particulate and contribute to traffic.
Fleisher’s proposed fix is staging: letting AVs park at the curb between rides instead of continuously circling. Staging is already allowed, as cars can pull over to the nearest empty curb space while waiting for the next ride, as long as they follow existing parking rules and fees. Fleisher argues cities should create a specific permitting standard to formalize staging, similar to how taxi stands work.
The centerpiece of the argument is a study, funded by Waymo, by researchers at UC Berkeley and UC Irvine modeling how staging affects VMT for a simulated San Francisco AV fleet. The model simulated roughly 1,700 AVs and found that banning staging and forcing vehicles to circle instead increased daily VMT by more than 200,000 kilometers. That’s a strange comparison, since staging isn’t currently banned in San Francisco. Waymo notes it self-restricts to one staged car per block, but the real concern seems to be a lack of available curb space, not any city law banning staging.
Who Pays for the Curb?
One question the op-ed never answers is whether Waymo wants free curb space or is proposing to pay for it. The premise of modern curb policy, based on Donald Shoup’s The High Cost of Free Parking, is that curb space is a scarce public asset that should be priced to increase turnover. San Francisco already runs a dynamic-pricing meter pilot on that logic. There’s no reason one of the most valuable companies should get free access to a public right-of-way that residents pay for.
The Local Business Claim Doesn’t Add Up
The op-ed also claims staging is a net positive for local businesses: “the cumulative value generated by staging far exceeds that of a curb space occupied by a privately owned vehicle.” For a commercial district, staging could supposedly mean eight to ten times as many potential customer visits compared to space reserved for private vehicles.
I don’t see how an empty Waymo idling outside a storefront generates more value than a parked private car, whose owner at least has some chance of being a customer. The argument rests entirely on total curb turnover, as more vehicles cycling through a spot, in theory, means more potential trip origins and destinations nearby. But that’s a claim about vehicle throughput, not foot traffic to any specific business the AV happens to be parked in front of. An AV staging on a block isn’t necessarily dropping off or picking up passengers on that block, it might just be the nearest available spot. Treating idle Waymos cycling through a space as a proxy for customer visits seems unsupported.
Who Uses the Staging Spaces?
Another question underlies both of the above: are staging zones meant to be exclusive to Waymo and other AV operators, or could locals park there too? I’d assume the former, since the pitch depends on reliable curb availability for the fleet. If so, the “benefit to local business” argument gets weaker: the city wouldn’t just be adding turnover to a general-use curb, it would be converting public spaces into a private company’s dedicated spot. That sounds less like curb management and more like a request for exclusive use of a public asset.
None of this means staging is a bad idea, but a version of this proposal centered on effective curb management would focus on pricing a scarce resource appropriately. A priced staging system could still cut deadheading substantially, since a modest curb fee is likely cheaper for an operator than driving empty, while generating public revenue instead of giving away space for free.
The op-ed’s argument for staging access reads a bit like an ultimatum: “deadheading can never be fully eliminated, so the real question is how many empty miles the public should tolerate in exchange for AVs’ benefits.” That framing positions the VMT and congestion increase caused by AVs as a necessary price for a service that seems to mostly exist to give relatively wealthy people another option to get around in a private vehicle. It also avoids the more obvious lever for cutting AV-generated VMT: limiting how many AVs are on the road in the first place.
San Francisco has no legal permitting authority over AVs. Fleet size, operating hours, and where AVs can drive are all decided by the DMV and the California Public Utilities Commission, not City Hall. In the wake of the July 4th Waymo meltdown, Mayor Lurie called on the state to tighten restrictions on AVs. Maybe it’s also time to give cities authority to manage them.
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Chris Kucera is a climate and transportation advocate based in San Francisco’s Alamo Square neighborhood. He holds an MBA in Sustainable Solutions.
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