Denver residents and visitors will be able to virtually hail Waymo‘s driverless vehicles starting Tuesday, company official said ahead of the launch.
Although the fleet has been spotted on the city’s streets for months, the company has used the cars only for training so far. Waymo employees and a few members of the media — including a Denver Post reporter — have been among the early testers of the self-driving service.
Company officials said the fleet will initially operate only in a 60-square-mile zone concentrated in Denver, including downtown. They describe the borders as generally stretching from the Cory-Merrill neighborhood in the south to Villa Park to the west and City Park to the east, with the northern boundary extending a bit past the city limits along the Interstate 25 corridor, into Adams County.
Though the vehicles will travel as far east as the Central Park neighborhood, the zone excludes Denver International Airport and neighboring cities like Aurora and Lakewood.
People who wish to hail one of the driverless vehicles can do so on Waymo’s app. The company will offer prices that are comparable to other ride-hailing services, like Uber and Lyft, and are dependent on demand, officials said.
A recent poll from the Colorado Polling Institute showed that only about a third of Denver voters who hadn’t already ridden in a Waymo vehicle would do so. Nearly 60% of the respondents said they hadn’t ridden in one and were unlikely to do so in the future. About 10% said they had already used one, .
In a response to the poll, Waymo spokesman Dan Mahoney said studies show that skepticism to the technology is “natural and temporary.”
“We’ve seen firsthand that people’s views of fully autonomous driving technology totally change as soon as they can access our service,” he said.
A Waymo vehicle was involved in a crash in Denver last week when the driver of another car said the vehicle, which didn’t have a passenger or a driver, stopped abruptly in the middle of a street where there was no intersection, according to . When the driver of a van behind the Waymo stopped, a third vehicle failed to stop in time and hit the van, causing the van to hit the Waymo.
A company spokesperson later said the Waymo vehicle had come to a gradual stop to allow a pedestrian to cross the street.
Waymo’s operations in Denver will include the company’s newest vehicles, called the “Ojai,” which include larger screens, more legroom and “enhanced sensing cleaning mechanisms” for extra snowy conditions compared to the rest of the fleet, according to a news release.
The company operates more than 4,000 vehicles across 14 cities, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Miami. Waymo also expected to begin public operations Tuesday in San Diego and Tampa, Florida.
