Alphabet’s (GOOGL) autonomous driving unit Waymo launched its fully driverless ride-hailing service in San Francisco. The move marks an attempt to catch up to rival Cruise, which opened its fully driverless ride service to the public in the city a month ago after initially rolling it out to its staff.

Similarly, Waymo is also offering fully driverless rides to its employees in San Francisco before opening it up to the public. Waymo’s autonomous taxis have been operating in San Francisco for months in a test program, with a human driver behind the wheel. It is now removing human drivers, so the cars will be moving alone to pick up and drop off riders.

While it is the first time Waymo is offering fully driverless rides in San Francisco, it has been offering the service in parts of Arizona’s capital Phoenix, for a few years. The launch in San Francisco comes as Waymo also prepares to expand the service to more areas in Phoenix.

$39 Billion at Stake in Robotaxi Market

Cruise and Waymo have their sights on the potentially lucrative robotaxi market, whose global size is forecast to exceed $1 billion in 2023 and reach $38.6 billion by 2030. Removing human drivers can enable companies to cut their operating costs, which could lead to a more profitable business.

Cruise is initially offering the public free rides as it awaits a regulatory green light to charge fares. Waymo is already charging customers for taking its fully driverless rides in Phoenix.

Cruise and Waymo are units of Alphabet and General Motors (GM), respectively; however, both have also received funding from outside investors. Waymo is backed by Silver Lake, Andreessen Horowitz, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, and Mubadala Investment Company. Meanwhile, Cruise is backed by SoftBank, Honda Motor Company (HMC),Microsoft (MSFT), and Walmart (WMT).

What Does Waymo’s Move Mean for Alphabet’s Stock?

Waymo belongs to Alphabet’s Other Bets division, which houses mostly experimental ventures, such as Verily in health technology and Loon in internet service. Other Bets revenue declined to $181 million in Q4 2022, from $196 million in the same quarter the previous year. But the division’s operating loss increased to $1.45 billion from $1.14 billion a year ago.

Alphabet may be able to reduce its Other Bets losses once Waymo begins to charge customers for its fully driverless rides in San Francisco and expands the service in Phoenix.

Wall Street’s Take

On March 29, Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Nowak reiterated a Buy rating on Alphabet stock without assigning it a price target. The analyst cautions that the Russia-Ukraine war could reduce online ad spending.

Consensus among analysts is a Strong Buy based on 30 Buys. The average Alphabet price target stands at $3,490 and implies upside potential of 22% to current levels. Shares have gained 38% over the past year.

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TipRanks’ Stock Investors tool shows that investor sentiment is currently Very Positive on Alphabet, with 2.6% of portfolios tracked by TipRanks increasing their exposure to GOOGL stock over the past 30 days.

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• The company is initially limiting the rides to its employees before opening up to the public.
• Waymo’s autonomous vehicles have been operating in San Francisco, but with safety specialists in the driver’s seat.
• The company first began offering autonomous rides in Arizona in 2017.

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Google’s self-driving startup Waymo has begun operating fully driverless rides in San Francisco, the company announced on Wednesday.

The company said that the service is just for its employees at the moment, but it hopes to open the service to the general public soon. The company’s vehicles have been operating in the city for years, but with safety specialists in the driver’s seat.

“This morning in San Francisco, a fully autonomous all-electric Jaguar I-PACE, with no human driver behind the wheel, picked up a Waymo engineer to get their morning coffee and go to work,” the company said on their website.

The company first began offering autonomous rides in the East Valley are of Phoenix, Arizona in 2017. It went fully driverless there in 2020 when Waymo took human safety drivers out of the vehicles.

In addition to San Francisco, the company will now expand its fully automated services to downtown Phoenix, the company said, again initially with company employees before opening up to the general public.

“We’re particularly excited about this next phase of our journey as we officially bring our rider-only technology to San Francisco — the city many of us at Waymo call home,” Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said in the announcement.

San Francisco has been the location of a number of automated vehicle trials, with California officials allowing a record number of them in 2021. Collisions involving autonomous vehicles also increased sharply that year as a result.

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In the immortal words of Queen, “Bike, bike, bike… I want to ride a bike!”

Those were my thoughts as I pedaled out of Golden Gate Park from Outside Lands last night, past crowds of attendees saluting hundred-dollar Ubers and the enticing smell of bacon-wrapped hot dogs sizzling on grills. No disrespect to Lizzo’s “Squid Game” costume, but remembering the slow roads on the 30-minute drive home to the Lower Haight was perhaps the happiest thing I felt all weekend.

Unfortunately, not every ride in San Francisco is as breezy as the descent back to the Lower Haight. Of all the places I’ve ridden – including New York City – San Francisco is the most challenging. Sure, it deserves awards for Most Bike-Friendly City, the iconic Wiggle route looks like a spandex fashion show at the weekend, and the city boasts stats like 1.8 million bikeshare rides in 2019. We also probably have the highest per capita ratio of electric unicycles is a whole other topic. But even the most data-driven study can’t account for the fact that some bike lanes are blocked by a vehicle every minute or how many of my elbows have been broken from wheels skidding on cobweb-covered Muni tracks (one).

So even for a lifelong urban biker, driving in San Francisco can be stressful. Before the pandemic, commuting on the SOMA bike lanes was a gauntlet of pedestrians and potholes (although it accounted for 4.2% of San Francisco commuters in 2018). On leisurely drives to North Beach to eat pizza in the midst of the pandemic, I’ve been berated by Stockton Street drivers who wouldn’t give me the seat of a pool noodle. But now that it’s safe (for me) to dive back into the city’s nightlife, I’ve been able to resume the most relaxing type of bike ride there is: the midnight ride home.

Shortly before the official launch of the “Wiggle,” the city-wide mural is behind the Safeway at Church and Market.

Blair Heagerty / SFGate

San Francisco transforms into a different city after dark. In bars and dance clubs, inhibitions melt away as people explore the possibilities that indulgence can bring. But outside the city looks really naked. Stripped of traffic and pedestrians, the sepia-toned streetlight mutes the Painted Ladies, turning even the brightest of San Francisco streets into a dark noir set. And when you ride a bike, everything is yours.

Sure, I’m a curmudgeon who doesn’t want to pay for Ubers, and I’m happy to put in an extra half hour of cardio, but this sense of ownership is the real reason I love biking home at night. Walking down quiet neighborhood streets makes you feel like you’re the only person left awake in San Francisco. Instead of riding centimeters from a curb through littered bike paths, I swing out in wide arcs like a downhill skier. It’s not a time to be carefree, but it’s the most carefree you’ll feel on two wheels (as long as you remember your light, which you should definitely remove when parking).

For those who associate cycling with exercise and see exercise as something they definitely don’t want to do after a long night out, this all might seem a little counterintuitive. I’m not a particularly fit cyclist and my bike doesn’t cost as much as a used Prius (more like a 1995 Volvo with a dead engine). You won’t see me driving up the hills in Marin on Saturday morning. But once you get used to urban cycling, a 20-minute ride home is like a refreshing after-dinner drink. The slow drip of endorphins reactivates your body and warms your soul (a nice pair of gloves is recommended).

The main purpose of a night drive is to reflect on the city and your place in it. For all of San Francisco’s image problems, it’s objectively one of the most beautiful places in the world. That often gets lost when you consider how competitive it is to thrive here and how easily the city’s pace can make someone feel insignificant, like their personal history is the least interesting thing in the room. But at the end of a night of drinking while pedaling through empty city blocks, your story is the only one in sight.

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SAN FRANCISCO (BCN) – New Years Eve celebrations can get a free ride on SF Muni on Friday evenings, and BART and other transport companies offer an expanded service for the holidays.

The free New Year’s Eve service on Muni runs from 8 p.m. Friday through 5 a.m. Saturday, officials from the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency said.

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At midnight on New Year’s Eve, there will be city-sponsored fireworks from a barge in front of the Embarcadero, south of the ferry terminal. From around 10:00 p.m. Muni will redirect the area and resume normal service once the roads are clear.

BART will offer the standard service on Friday at the full tariff, but with an extended closing time to accommodate the drivers enjoying fireworks and other festivities. The last train towards East Bay that goes through downtown San Francisco will be around 1:30 a.m. and the last train going south towards Millbrae will go through downtown San Francisco at 2:10

Further information on the BART service on New Year’s Eve can be found at https://www.bart.gov/news/articles/2021/news20211116-1.

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Ride Muni Free New Year’s Eve includes all Muni lines and routes. Clipper Card customers should not tap their cards to ensure they will not be billed for a fare. Muni Mobile passes are not required. That night, the subway ticket offices will be open. Further information on the extra service on Muni on New Year’s Eve can be found at https://www.sfmta.com/travel-updates/new-years-eve-free-muni-and-extra-service.

The Caltrain service is free on New Year’s Eve from 8:00 p.m. until the last special train leaves San Francisco after the event. Trains run after midnight until 1:30 a.m. or until full.

SamTrans offers free rides on all buses from Friday 8 p.m. to Saturday 5 a.m. Further information on the SamTrans holiday plan can be found at https://www.samtrans.com/schedulesandmaps/holidayservice.html.

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After months under California’s most restrictive COVID-19 guidelines, San Francisco entered what is known as the red tier this week, which means some businesses and services can reopen to the public for the first time since 2020.

A county’s ranking in the Tier system known as California’s “Blueprint for a Safer Economy” is based on the seven-day average of its total COVID-19 cases and the positivity rate. Districts below the red step are allowed to reopen some non-essential businesses – such as bookstores, museums, and fitness centers – with limited capacity.

Since the announcement, aquariums and museums have slowly opened their doors. The Asian Art Museum reopened Thursday, and the de Young Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art plan to reopen this weekend.

A “Welcome Back” sign at Pier 39 in San Francisco on March 4, 2021 with new security measures due to COVID-19. (Beth LaBerge / KQED)

Here are some of the other companies that can reopen under red level restrictions:

• Clothing and shoe stores with a capacity of 50%
• Dance studios with 10% capacity
• Hair salons and barber shops can be opened with changes inside
• Libraries with a capacity of 50%
• Cinemas with 25% capacity or 100 people, whichever is lower
• Restaurants can open food indoors with a capacity of 25% or 100 people, whichever is lower

Check out the full list of what’s open and what’s not here.

Only a few days after the transition from the more restrictive purple to the red level, residents are using stores that have already reopened.

Guests will eat in a tent at La Mar Cebicheria Peruana restaurant in San Francisco on March 3, 2021. (Beth LaBerge / KQED)
Jorge Arreola disinfects a table at Pier Market after the restaurant reopened for indoor dining on March 4, 2021. (Beth LaBerge / KQED)
The Espinosa family at the Aquarium of the Bay at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco on March 4, 2021. (Beth LaBerge / KQED)
A sea otter swims at the Aquarium of the Bay in San Francisco on March 4, 2021. (Beth LaBerge / KQED)
Helen Yool on March 4, 2021 at the Aquarium of the Bay in San Francisco. (Beth LaBerge / KQED)
Ariel Mestayer-Orallo is taking a passenger’s temperature at the SkyStar Observation Wheel in Golden Gate Park on March 4, 2021 on the first day of reopening as San Francisco steps into the red row. (Beth LaBerge / KQED)
A passenger rides a gondola on the SkyStar observation wheel in Golden Gate Park on March 4, 2021, the first day of its reopening when San Francisco enters the red row. (Beth LaBerge / KQED)
View from the SkyStar observation wheel in Golden Gate Park on March 4, 2021. (Beth LaBerge / KQED)

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