No robotaxis for Rochester—yet

On a gray day in November 2025, when Rochester roads were slick and the lawns still coated with early winter snow, something new rolled down the avenues. The spinning LiDAR receptor on the roof, plus more on the fenders, were bouncing millions of laser beams off surrounding objects. Multiple cameras plus radars fed into an onboard computer digesting and verifying all this location information  and commanding the vehicle to drive down the street (although there was a human stand-by driver onboard for this run). The sight was odd enough for WROC to report it on the news. This Waymo self-driving taxi (robotaxi) was headed for Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva for an exhibit arranged by state Sen. Jeremy Cooney (for his alma mater). Waymo is a division of Alphabet, the company formerly called Google.

At that time, there was hope that Rochester would soon be one of the upstate cities Gov. Kathy Hochul was about to approve for robotaxi tests in her upcoming February 2026 yearly budget. Waymo, along with competing companies Tesla and Zoox (Amazon), awaited her sign off. The first step was not a big one: Waymo would be allowed to conduct very limited tests with human standby drivers behind the wheel. There would be no charge for the rides. At the time, there were more than 1 million weekly paid robotaxi rides in big cities around the U.S. The governor had been unsuccessful introducing robotaxis to New York City because of taxi union push back. Now she was proposing a few baby steps with a pilot program limited to upstate cities. But even here, labor opposition was too strong. At the end of February, Hochul suddenly pulled the robotaxi initiative from her budget.

Opposition from taxi and Uber driver associations called it a major win, while Cooney commented, “This is not science fiction; rather, a real opportunity to increase driver and pedestrian safety across our state.”

Safety has been an issue with autonomous drive vehicles, including robotaxis, with wide press coverage of every crash. A letter to the Beacon on March 10, 2026, from representatives of the Limousine Bus Taxi Operators of Upstate New York points to robotaxis “stalled in traffic lanes …  interfering with emergency responders … mishandled school bus stops and striking a child near an elementary school.”

All this is true, but tells only one side of the story. Waymo’s own statistics show the driverless taxis crash rate for serious injuries or worse is 95% lower than human drivers (based on more than 178 million miles driven with passengers to June 2026). Not for comparison, but sobering, is the human driver performance on all vehicle crashes in New York City only in the month of September 2025. There were 7,385 crashes with 4,581 injuries and 21 fatalities. The cause of 2,036 of these was “driver inattention/distraction.” Similarly, Department of Transportation national figures list the leading causes of accidents as “recognition errors, decision errors, performance errors, and non-performance errors”

In spite of continuing problems being discovered like yielding to emergency vehicles and understanding police hand signals, the Waymos (and Teslas and Zooxs) are proving popular. Although banned from Rochester, service continues to expand around the world. At the same time as Hochul’s announcement, Waymo was already serving 11 cities with 3,000 vehicles and  providing 500,000 paid trips a week. Twenty more cities are already signed up on the waiting list for service.

The fear of labor unions about robotaxis displacing human drivers is also debatable. A post by Mario Herger, who writes on transportation issues contends that the introduction of robotaxis has actually lifted demand for all forms of ride sharing including Uber and Lyft. His explanation, based on statistics, shows that the popularity of robotaxis is cutting into rides that would otherwise be taken in private cars whereas the Uber/Lyft ride share market cuts into for-hire rides that would formerly have been in traditional taxis. He concludes that, as we become more dependent on all forms of ride-share and robotaxis, we find more uses.

Robotaxis can’t yet pick up your meal with DoorDash, they can’t help you with your groceries, and they can’t load or unload your luggage. Wall Street Journal travel writer Dawn Gilbertson noted her recent Waymo ride to the Phoenix airport took over three times longer than an Uber because it only took local streets and never learned precisely where to pick her up. Lyft has proclaimed a “hybrid future” in which Lyft cars and robotaxis will work together from a common app and dispatch whichever vehicle is most appropriate to the assignment.

Robotaxis are coming to Rochester—sometime. We can’t resist the future, whenever it actually gets here. But how can we prepare for it? Adjusting to the age of autonomous drive robotaxis will be a disruption to our community assumptions much greater than the supposed threat to current taxi and Uber drivers. The safety issue will slowly fade, but very slowly. It’s a terrible fate being hit by a car, but worse being hit by a robot? Will tort lawyers sue machines? Will robotaxis be the focus of future remonstrations like data centers are now?

One of the shifts will be the diminished need for two-car families. Because of the changes already trending with Uber/Lyft, many municipalities are switching to “demand parking” in commercial areas because they have, in the past, overestimated parking needs. This allows a developer to judge, based on impact studies, how much parking is actually required for the next CVS or supermarket instead of accepting current municipal fixed formulas. Panorama Plaza in Penfield is a good example of the old thinking. Is that lot ever even near full?

As we choose to call up a robotaxi on our phone, we will start to question more whether we need a second car? The AAA now estimates the annual cost of car ownership at about $12,863. Keep your car until the end of it’s seven-year loan payments and it will cost you $90,041. Wow! That means your $40,000 new ride has depreciated at least 50% to $20,000 or less, so it has cost you out of pocket an additional $70,000. Compare RTS maximum daily bus fare at $3. Do the math. Of course, most of us would prefer to ride in our own private car than a bus. At these prices, a private robotaxi is inviting—and you don’t need to park it.

Even with more one-car families, the proliferation of robotaxis could initially add to congestion. But in the longer view, municipal traffic regulations will adjust to favor autonomous drive vehicles, both private cars and robotaxis. All these cars will communicate with each other (V2V) to assure better traffic flow and actually improve utilization of existing express highways without the need to build more. No more stop and start congestion (“rubber banding,” as transportation experts call it). If traffic on our downtown portion of I-490 could diminish by even one-third, it would go from roughly 46,500 vehicles per day down to about 31,000. Would every day seem like Sunday?  Elon Musk says, “Human-driven cars will become like horses today—largely ridden for fun.”

The price of a ride in a robotaxi, much like Uber and Lyft, will be set by demand pricing. As robotaxis proliferate, prices should decrease to stoke demand. If current patterns in places like Beverly Hills, California and downtown Austin, Texas, are the models, the first areas of Rochester to embrace robotaxi service may be the affluent suburbs. Median income in Rochester is $47,000. Brighton exceeds with $85,000. Irondequoit has $79,162, Greece is at $79,863, and Pittsford tops them all at $145,58, according to 2020 Census updated estimates for 2025. These may be the first areas to see convenience above price.

Every parent complains about running their own taxi service to school, sports, piano lessons, dance lessons and play dates. How wonderful to call a Waymo to do the driving. Parents may worry about entrusting their kids to an unknown human driver in an Uber, but will they feel more peace of mind with a robot? Studies of Waymo rates compared to Uber/Lyft are difficult because of dynamic pricing. A study this year of comparable rates in San Francisco show Waymo rates across the board significantly higher than Uber/Lyft by several dollars. But as Waymo points out, there is no tipping.

Embracing the future also means changing our ideas about “not in my backyard.” Robotaxi dependability rests on building staging areas where the cars can be gathered until sent out on a call. In order to guarantee fast pickup of no more than a few minutes, these staging lots will need to be placed in single residence housing areas as well as commercial areas. If Waymo bought a lot on Allen’s Creek Road in Pittsford, demolished the house, and put up a parking lot—how would residents react?

The weave of local zoning laws is now patterned to keep unwanted development out. Brighton’s zoning code lists 22 different zoning districts. Irondequoit has 16. Greece has 24. The city of Rochester manages to get by with only 13. Will the suburbs adjust to a new technology that needs to be accessible for everyone everywhere?

All of this is coming in the future where we must grapple with community change and convince ourselves it is worth letting go of worn-out assumptions. Will we change zoning laws? Do we need centralized shopping districts like 12 Corners or The Mall at Greece Ridge that were planned and built for the personal automobile age? Once parking is not an issue, will robotaxis revitalize downtown? Will robotaxis take us on vacation?

Twenty years ago there were no smartphones. In the past year we’ve become accustomed to looking up everything on Google AI. Even with the deletion of Hochul’s proposal about testing robotaxis, how long can the the taxi unions or anyone else hold back the tide?

I wanted to discuss questions about robotaxis’ future with Cooney, along with his outlook on further legislation to bring them to Rochester, but his office said he declined to be interviewed.

In 2017, Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the state budget taking effect on June 29, giving Uber operating permission upstate by July 4. It greenlighted “Uber to operate in communities outside New York City … in largely untapped markets such as Buffalo, Rochester and other counties. While the yellow cab industry is restricted to stringent regulations, drivers fear that the more lax companies like Uber will steal their fares in the already-crowded city streets.” Brown’s observation, “it’s deja vu all over again” seems to apply.

There is an excellent book by Lawrence Burns, a former General Motors engineer who writes about the history and development of autonomous vehicles over more than 20 years. That research led to the Waymo. One of his chapter headings is “A pessimist is someone who believes the glass is half empty, an optimist is someones who believe the glass is half full. An engineer is someone believes the glass is twice as big as needed.”

Sage words for those of us who worry that the future will harm us and those who argue that it will enhance us. And finally, those who accept that it will be what it will be.

Robert Lovenheim is a township supervisor in Pennsylvania and a former Rochesterian.

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