It’s 6 PM. You busted out of work early, fought your way through the Belt Parkway, and you’ve made it to the pickup lanes of J.F.K Airport to pick up your friend who just flew in from Tampa. Only problem is, you don’t spot them, and you have to loop around. Your head is pounding from fighting the traffic and you’re having an awful time. If only I lived in Phoenix, you lament, Google-owned driverless car company Waymo could be handling this for me.
Yes, Waymo is expanding its service in Phoenix, Arizona, and it’s preparing to take on one of the more challenging driving situations for a computer to handle. The self-driving company isn’t resting on its laurels with quiet and simple pickups from a shuttle stop near Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport. It’s now preparing to duke it out with the riff-raff we call the general public, as its driverless cars are sent to pluck eager riders directly from the curbside in a new trial.
Airport curbside pickups can be a hectic situation to navigate. You generally have two or more lanes, with cars and people driving and darting every which way. You’ve got cars coming in to stop to do a pickup, others trying to pull out with a load of passengers, while others try and blast past for a better spot or because they’re just rolling through. It’s hard enough for some humans to navigate without ending up in a fender bender, but Waymo thinks its driverless cars may be up to the job.
Initially, the company will be taking baby steps, with limited hours of operation at first for its fully autonomous pickups. Waymo will run the service from 10 p.m. to 6 AM initially, and it will only run these pickups at Terminals 3 and 4. Nor will all Waymo riders have access to the curbside pickups, at least initially. Selected Waymo riders from the Phoenix user base will be given the option to use the service at first.
It’s a wise move. Any hold-up to peak hour drop-offs and pickups would quickly generate intensely bad press for Waymo’s operations. One stuck car could derail the plans of hundreds, if not thousands of flyers should it become stuck at an inopportune place for an extended time. No safety drivers will be behind the wheel of the fully autonomous cars, but that’s not to say the company isn’t keeping a watchful eye. One would also expect that Waymo will have staff closely monitoring the operations to ensure any clogs it may cause in the pickup lanes are cleaned up swiftly and efficiently.
It builds upon Waymo’s successful work in the airport pickup realm. The company claims to have completed airport rides in the “tens of thousands.” It’s taking on a pretty big step up in complexity, versus the regular setup of picking up passengers from the 44th Street PHX Sky Train Station. However, it’s clear that there’s plenty of benefit to a curbside terminal pickup that doesn’t require passengers to take a shuttle train after disembarking from their aircraft.
If Waymo can master this frantic environment, even at night, it ought to bode well for the future of its self-driving efforts. Meanwhile, its rivals are suffering public recalls and internal debacles. If you’re rolling through Phoenix any time soon, see if you can spot a wayward Waymo at the terminals, or if they’re making their way around with a minimum of fuss. Inquiring minds want to know.
Image credits: Waymo via YouTube screenshots
Yeah, hard pass on this one and I’m glad as hell they’re not trying this in Austin. Sounds like a hot mess waiting to happen, especially when these don’t know how to respond to a person trying to signal for a stuck Waymo to move on: https://bsky.app/profile/bakoon.bsky.social/post/3kgi6dlgvsb2e
I acknowledge that a car website isn’t exactly the perfect place for this, but autonomous robo-taxis are not the solution. We already have the technology for those who don’t want to / can’t drive to the airport: public transit. (Transit availability is a whole different issue: my point is that we should focus on transit instead of self-driving cars). Autonomous vehicles will never be as efficient or cost-effective as a bus or train, and if we want to actually make our roads better and safer, the best way is to simply have less cars on the road.
I’m pretty sure Uber is the standard for airport pick ups now right, not friends anymore, haha.
Yeah, Uber/taxi/shuttle. Why do you need a driverless car?
Ruining a good chunk of a friend’s afternoon/evening to save yourself $20/40 is not a very friendly thing to do.
And I don’t think that’s good enough to be deployed among the general public who have absolutely no say in whether they are put at risk by these cars. We are in desperate need of regulation for self-driving cars. Letting an industry self-regulate has never worked in the history of capitalism.
That said, doing it only from 10 PM to 6 AM will likely mitigate most of the danger because airports are ghost towns that time of night. They’re not going to have to deal with the craziness of bumper to bumper traffic through three lanes like you would at 3 in the afternoon. The odds of them running someone down drop precipitously when there’s no one around to hit.
Our airport terminal is constantly under renovations so now the pickup/dropoff area is about 1km from the terminal and has about 20 spots to wait, they want you to wait in another lot and then come when you get a call/text, but people will notify when they land and everybody circles around waiting
And how are they going to deal with situations like Aunt Gertie waiting near the departures doors instead of the arrival doors because she got confused about which ones to use (“Well Dear, I’m departing the airport, aren’t I?”)? If you were picking her up, you’d call her phone and find out she’s in the wrong place and tell her to hang on while you circle around to pick her up. How’s that gonna work with a driverless car? (question based on actual experience)
actually this is my secret to get pick up quick and easy. I go to Departures level and wait outside with almost nobody around. Dropping somebody doesn’t take more than 3 minutes, while the pick up you have to coordinate what time they land, if there is a delay for their bag to show up, too many flights arriving at the same time, etc. You have to pay short term parking if you want to avoid the stress of traffic.
Shhh, don’t tell people 🙂 Picking people up on the departures level has been our go to for years.
Her phone reports her location and the location of the car.
I would never ask a friend to pick me up at an airport at rush hour. I would pick up an aging parent or friend, someone with special-needs, or someone who I want to spend more time with. Everyone else gets the Uber.
I’m sure this is in Phoenix because of the usually clear weather, but it’s probably the least-needed at this airport. It has great free tram service to several parking lots and to the car rental depot.
Clear weather, fairly simple flat grid layout, and wide streets. Plus few potholes, because it doesn’t freeze and rarely rains.
They didn’t solve the “most annoying part of friendship.” That is probably watching someone make poor choices despite all their friends’ advice and then consoling them when they experience the consequences of those poor choices (often dating choices). Get back to me when these cars can do that. Or go to social engagements where you only know the friend, but they need the support (and then they need to make the rounds and say hi to everyone they know, and you end up stuck in a conversation with the person who wants to make new friends with anyone, regardless of shared interests).
Also a candidate: if Waymo can delineate friends and acquaintances. Trying to figure out when you’re actually friends could be a possible “most annoying part.”
More realistically: a Waymo household moving service.
Wouldn’t that just be a regular moving service?
Sure, but then Waymo wouldn’t be solving an annoying part of friendship. Also, it would be much worse than a regular moving service, since I don’t think robotic movers would work well. Either you have to load it yourself and it’s just a self-driving U-Haul or robots wreck your stuff.
As I recall the time Beacon Moving Services dropped my car while unloading it from the truck I might just try those robots.
“They didn’t solve the “most annoying part of friendship.” That is probably watching someone make poor choices despite all their friends’ advice and then consoling them when they experience the consequences of those poor choices (often dating choices)”
That kind of friend a was called a”dishrag”. Someone not attractive enough to be seen with but useful to cry into and for cleaning up the mess.
Nah, I’m not talking about that, really. I’m talking about actual friends who hang out and everything, but just make terrible choices, despite everyone else seeing the outcome from miles away. It doesn’t have to be dating. It could be that friend who runs for public office, spending a lot of time and money on a hopeless campaign. Then you tell them they ran a good campaign, but it just wasn’t in the cards this time.
Or, more relevant to this site, the friend who buys a car you know is going to give them a lot more trouble than it’s worth. And then they come to you to complain about all the money they sunk into it before selling it for a loss.
And Waymo would drive them to pick up their nominally-repaired Hornet from the Dodge dealer it was towed to… again.
Nothing wrong with a steady customer. That’s just good business.
“It doesn’t have to be dating”
Oh that analogy works for more than dating:
“Or, more relevant to this site, the friend who buys a car you know is going to give them a lot more trouble than it’s worth. And then they come to you to complain about all the money they sunk into it before selling it for a loss.”
“Shop rag”! Especially if you get roped into helping them fix that hopeless POS before they finally give up or it does.
What about friends making poor car purchase decisions?
Look, a new rallycross beater would fix me.
“…only run to terminals 3 and 4”
Those are the only two terminals at PHX. Terminals 1 and 2 are long gone but they’ve never re-numbered them.