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by seanmcdirmid 298 days ago
I'm not sure why you think waymo would fight against that. People getting rid of their own cars for daily use will increase how often a service like waymo is used for occasional usage. In the long run it would be a win for waymo. Not many people are taking taxis on a daily basis in New York for normal driving, they buy a car if they need to do that because even with the parking bill they will still come out ahead. And once they have their own car they feel like they need to get some use out of it.
2 comments

> not sure why you think waymo would fight against that

If you were to pedestrianize 10% of Manhattan (or for example all of Broadway, which is being considered), then that’s less area for Waymo to operate and make money. To be clear, this is likely more of a long term issue.

They will probably gain way more by the removal of parking lots that comes with it than by losing rides to pedestrian traffic or bikes.
> will probably gain way more by the removal of parking lots

Or remove street-side parking.

NYC doesn’t have a lot of surface parking lots.
It had a lot of on street parking, at least mid town did, when I lived there in 2000 (which admittedly was 25 years ago). It was good enough that my gf at the time was driving from a Columbia dorm to IBM hawthorn.
Waymo would not fight against "people getting rid of their cars", many people in NY who use the incredible public transit system would like to see more car-free streets, which they absolutely would fight against.