Here’s how to sign up

Photo: Courtesy Thomas Smith

CRuise, a department of General Motors, today officially opened its San Francisco driverless car service to the public. Registrations began this morning for a public waitlist for those seeking to use the company’s driverless car service in the city.

If you live, work, or move through San Francisco, you’ve almost certainly seen Cruise’s cars in action. They’re little white vehicles emblazoned with a big orange Cruise logo on the side, and bristling with sensors and scanners. The equipment attached to each vehicle includes cameras and LIDAR sensors that let the cars “see” the road around them as they navigate the city. Although the cars have been capable of self-driving in San Francisco for some time, most were shuttling around safety drivers or members of the Cruise team.

Until now. This morning, a Cruise spokesperson told me in an email that “As of today we are now offering the opportunity for members of the public to take free fully driverless rides in Cruise vehicles.” A few members of the public have already participated; according to the spokesperson, team members “have been nominating public riders over the past few days, and a few non-employees already have participated in this opportunity.”

Cruise’s new move allows the company to open up its driverless rides more broadly. It’s unclear exactly when this will happen, but the program is dubbed the “Cruise Rider Community program” and anyone in San Francisco can sign up at https://www.getcruise.com/. You need to enter a bit about your location and driving habits (where you live and work in the city, for example) and provide an email address to sign up for the list. The spokesperson told me that “people who are nominated by employees or sign up on the waitlist will be incorporated into the pipeline to be among our first public riders.” So unless you have a friend at Cruise, jump on the list now if you want to try out a driverless ride.

Initially, rides are likely to be free for some time. The spokesperson told me that “we are the only AV company in California to receive a permit (via the CA DMV) that allows for driverless vehicles to carry members of the public.” The spokesperson told me that Cruise has applied for an additional permit to charge for driverless rides, but has not yet received that permit. Down the road, Cruise likely envisions this becoming a replacement for services like Uber and Lyft, with paying customers moving around cities in their driverless cars.

What’s a Cruise driverless ride like? I have no idea, since Cruise hasn’t let me ride yet, despite lots of pleading and cajoling. For a sense of the experience, you can check out a blog post from Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt. In the post, Vogt also shares that Cruise has raised $1.35 billion in investment to continue building their driverless car service.

San Francisco is likely to be a major testing group for Cruise for a while. In an earlier conversation with Cruise, I learned that the company chose to test its cars in San Francisco in part because of the city’s challenging geography (think nearly vertical hills and, well, Lombard Street). As of June of last year, the cars have racked up over 2 million miles of driving in the city. That means Cruise probably knows San Francisco better than any other place in the world. For better or worse, we’re likely to be one of the first places these kinds of driverless cars roll out.

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Cruise might be the first off the gate, but they have plenty of competition. Google spinoff Waymo has been testing its own driverless cars in the city for some time, too. They’re made by Jaguar, and are a good deal fancier looking than Cruises’ vehicles. It’s likely that they’ll begin testing out public driverless rides soon, too.

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SAN FRANCISCO — A cruise ship that docked in San Francisco on Thursday is under observation by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after a dozen vaccinated passengers tested positive for coronavirus.

The results followed a random testing of 25% of the passengers aboard the 10-day cruise to Mexico and the affected individuals are either asymptomatic or experiencing mild symptoms, the Port of San Francisco said in a statement.

The news came as the omicron variant drives extremely high infection levels in the cruise industry, prompting the CDC to investigate and place nearly 100 vessels under observation. Cruise ships are required to notify the CDC of suspected or confirmed positive cases on board, and any vessel with 0.10% of passenger cases meet the criteria for investigation.

Cruise ships returned to San Francisco in October after a 19-month hiatus. The pause was sparked in March 2020 when the Grand Princess carried people infected with the coronavirus, sending thousands of passengers to quarantine in their cabins as the ship idled off the California coast. The ill-fated cruise captured the world’s attention and made the coronavirus real to millions in the United States.

When business resumed, most cruise lines required adult passengers to show proof of vaccination against COVID-19.

To date 22 cruises that have docked in San Francisco have reported COVID-19 positive passengers or crew. All have complied with CDC and San Francisco Department of Public Health rules and protocols. No reported cases have required hospitalization or medical care.

Due to the surge, San Francisco is also asking cruise ships to test passengers who have not received their second doses or booster shots before letting them come ashore.

“This requirement is stricter than federal and state guidelines and is intended to protect the people of San Francisco,” port officials said.

A spokeswoman for Princess Cruises said the vaccination rate among guests and crews aboard the ships was “approaching 100%.” The passengers who tested positive will either go home or be taken to hotels for quarantine, Negin Kamali said.

Another Ruby Princess cruise ship is set to depart from San Francisco Thursday afternoon for another 10-day cruise to Mexico, she said.

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On Apr. 10, a video went viral after it was posted online because it showed a driverless GM Cruise car getting pulled over in San Francisco, California, by police who found the car did not have any driver behind the wheel.

Driverless Cruise Car Got Pulled Over by Cops

The video was originally posted on Apr. 1, but it did not go viral until nine days after. It showed a GM Cruise car getting pulled over to the side of the road and stopped as a cop approached the driver’s side before accelerating to cross an intersection and pull off further down the road.

A bystander can be heard yelling their disbelief when no driver was seen inside the car even though it was moving.

GM Cruise posted on its corporate Twitter account and said that the Cruise behaved as expected. GM Cruise said that their AV yielded to the police vehicle, then pulled over to the nearest safe location, as intended.

An officer contacted a GM Cruise personnel, and there was no citation issued.

Also Read: Cruise lets you convert your jalopy into Google-type self-driving car for just $10,000

GM Cruise told CNBC that the San Francisco Police Department has a dedicated phone number available at all times for officers and authorities to call when the automaker’s driverless vehicles get pulled over.

The San Francisco Police Department did not immediately return requests for more information about the situation.

The episode showed some of the situations that can happen as driverless cars become more common on the streets of San Francisco.

GM Cruise is a GM subsidiary, and it began to offer nighttime rides to the public in early 2022 in San Francisco in driverless cars, even though it is not yet charging and riders need to apply for a waitlist first.

Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet, is planning to offer free driverless rides in its cars in San Francisco to members of a testing program and has completed thousands of rides without a driver in Arizona.

Nuro has a deployment permit to operate driverless cars in San Francisco as well, but the startup is mainly focused on delivery and not taxi service.

GM Gets Approval for Driverless Vehicles

According to Arstechnica, on Feb. 22, GM Cruise was able to successfully get permission from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration or NHTSA to put the driverless vehicles into commercial service.

Cruise stated that the vehicle is a zero-emission, shared, electric vehicle that has been designed from the ground up to operate without a human driver. This means that it does not rely on certain human-centered features, like a steering wheel, to operate.

Cruise said that its petition in Feb. demonstrates how the Origin objectives of existing standards safely and helps enable future autonomous vehicle regulations.

The AV cars will be manufactured at GM’s Factory Zero in Michigan. According to Reuters, the production is expected to increase in 2022 and will go nationwide in 2023.

The GM Cruise driverless vehicles can be used as robotaxis that can pick up deliveries and people. The vehicle can work on busy streets, highways, and intersections.

Related Article: General Motors, Cruise Unveil Modified Chevrolet Bolt EVs As First Self-Driving Car For Mass Production

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Written by Sophie Webster

ⓒ 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.

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The cruise ship will be sailing out of the port of san francisco to various sought after destinations including Mexico, Hawaiithe California Coast, Alaska and the Panama Canal on five- to 15-day cruises available for booking through 2023.

“Princess is proud to have our sixth MedallionClass ship back to provide sought-after cruise vacations,” said John Padgett, Princess Cruises president. “It’s inspiring to see guests enjoying real vacations again, and to watch our teammates deliver such meaningful and memorable Princess vacations.”

Ruby Princess offers nearly 900 balconies from which to view the world, an array of entertainment options including Movies Under the Stars and original musical productions, sumptuous dining options from Crown Grill to Sabatini’s Italian Trattoria and exciting new top-deck dining venues including Slice Pizzeria and Coffee & Cones. Guests can also relax and renew with rejuvenating spa treatments, the tranquility of The Sanctuary, a top-deck retreat reserved just for adults and a state-of-the-art fitness center.

Earlier this month another Princess cruise ship, Majestic Princess, arrived in san francisco for an overnight port call, marking the first cruise to bring guests to san francisco since the industry break. Long-time partners from the Port of san francisco welcomed the cruise line back, recognizing the financial impact to local businesses. Now, with Ruby Princess’ arrival as the city’s hometown cruise ship, small and family-owned waterfront establishments will continue to benefit.

“The Port of san francisco is proud to be the home port of Ruby Princess,” said Elaine ForbesExecutive Director of the Port of san francisco. “For over fifty years Princess Cruises has sailed from the Port of san francisco connecting our local merchants, Fisherman’s Wharf, PIER 39 and our iconic City to communities all-around the world.”

Princess MedallionClass vacations deliver the ultimate in effortless, personalized cruising. It begins with the Medallion, a quarter-sized, wearable device that enables everything from touch-free boarding to locating loved ones anywhere on the ship, as well as enhanced service like having whatever guests need, delivered directly to them, wherever they are on the ship.

In addition, guests can share their favorite cruise moments using MedallionNet, the best WiFi at sea, and also stay connected with friends and family back home, work remotely anywhere on the ship, quickly post content and stream favorite movies and shows.

Princess Cruises sailings onboard Ruby Princess are available for guests who have received their final dose of an approved COVID-19 vaccine at least 14 days prior to the beginning of the cruise and have proof of vaccination. All fully vaccinated guests must also produce a negative, medically observed COVID-19 test (PCR or antigen) taken within two days of their embarkation on all Princess sailings.

For the latest Princess COVID-19 health protocols, please visit https://www.princess.com/plan/cruise-with-confidence/cruise-health/covid-19-guest-protocols/.

Additional information about Princess Cruises is available through a professional travel advisor, by calling 1-800-PRINCESS (1-800-774-6237), or by visiting the company’s website at http://www.princess.com/.

Editors’ note:
High-resolution photos of Ruby Princess in san francisco can be downloaded here.

About Princess Cruises:
One of the best-known names in cruising, Princess Cruises is the world’s leading international premium cruise line and tour company operating a fleet of 14 modern cruise ships, carrying two million guests each year to 380 destinations around the globe, including the Caribbean, AlaskaPanama Canal, Mexican Riviera, Europe, South America, Australia/New Zealandthe South Pacific, Hawaii, Asia, Canada/New England, Antarctica, and World Cruises. A team of professional destination experts have curated 170 itineraries, ranging in length from three to 111 days and Princess Cruises is continuously recognized as “Best Cruise Line for Itineraries.” In 2017 Princess Cruises, with parent company Carnival Corporation, introduced MedallionClass Vacations enabled by the Medallion device, the vacation industry’s most advanced wearable device, provided free to each guest sailing on a MedallionClass ship. The award-winning innovation offers the fastest way to an effortless personalized vacation guests giving more time to do the things they love most. The company is part of Carnival Corporation & plc (NYSE/LSE:CCL; NYSE:CUK).

In line with the latest advice from health officials about COVID-19, Princess Cruises is currently enhancing health and safety protocols with input from medical experts and government bodies and assessing how they may impact future itineraries. Actual offerings may vary from what is displayed in marketing materials. Click on the following links to stay updated on current Cruise Updates and Health & Safety protocols.

SOURCE Princess Cruises

related links

www.princess.com

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AutoX, a Chinese autonomous vehicle company that has made plays in both the US and its home country, is now making a move into San Francisco, an area where its biggest competitors are creeping towards commercialization.

The company, which has been testing its vehicles in the greater San Jose area since 2016, shared plans to launch robotaxi operations and build an operations center in the Golden City. The center will be responsible for vehicle housing, maintenance and charging, as well as processing data collected by the cars locally and calibrating their sensors. AutoX is hiring to build out its local San Francisco team, according to AutoX’s CEO Dr. Jianxiong Xiao, who also goes by Professor X.

AutoX plans to initially start testing its hybrid Fiat Chrysler Pacificas, equipped with the company’s latest fifth-generation AV platform and a redundant drive-by-wire system, with human safety operators behind the wheel. The AV company has already acquired both a drivered testing permit, which allows testing with a human safety operator behind the wheel; and a driverless testing permit, which allows testing without a human safety operator, from the California Department of Motor Vehicles. However, AutoX’s driverless testing permit is for its third-generation vehicle and is strictly limited to San Jose, so AutoX will have to request that the DMV expand that permit to include driverless testing using its newest system in San Francisco.

The Dongfeng Motor-backed company did not say when it plans to pull the driver out for testing in San Francisco, but it did say that it would continue driverless testing in San Jose.

AutoX is moving into San Francisco at a time when others like Cruise and Waymo are actually spinning up commercial operations. Both companies have permits from the DMV to deploy their vehicles, which means they can start earning revenue for autonomous deliveries. Cruise still needs a final permit from the California Public Utilities Commission before it can charge for its robotaxi service, but the General Motors-owned company just nabbed an additional $1.35 billion from investor Softbank as it opened up its driverless ride-hailing service to the public .

The DMV’s annual disengagement reports, which were released on Wednesday, showed that Waymo drove 2.3 million autonomous miles on California’s public roads in 2021, which was far more than any competitor. Cruise followed second with around 900,000 miles driven, both with and without a human safety driver.

The same data shows that AutoX, which only drove around 50,000 miles with a safety operator, did not report any driverless testing of its vehicles. That said, AV developers aren’t required to report testing done on private tracks or closed courses.

In California, AutoX’s fleet size is 44 vehicles, according to the company. The DMV’s data shows that only six of AutoX’s total fleet were actively used for autonomous testing last year. AutoX attributes this to COVID leading the company to scale down testing, but it plans to ramp it back up this year.

AutoX is also claiming to be scaling massively in China with a robotaxi fleet of 1,000 vehicles, which the company says are distributed throughout the cities of Guangzhou, Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen, where AutoX deploys a driverless fleet. The company would not share the number of rides it has accrued via said fleet.

AutoX frequently touts its in-house full stack hardware capability, which includes a compute platform and various kinds of sensors. The kind of tech to back this up, combined with the move to increase operations in San Francisco and the expansion of a robotaxi fleet back in China, would require seriously large amounts of capital to fund.

The company last publicly announced a Series A raise in 2019, an investment that put AutoX at $160 million in total funding. For comparison, nearly all of AutoX’s Chinese competitors received funding in 2021. Momenta and Pony.ai raised $1.2 billion and $1.1 billion, respectively, WeRide raised over $600 million within a span of five months last year, and Deeproute.ai, a relatively newer company, has raised $350 million as of September 2021.

To the question of how AutoX is able to do so much scaling with less funds, Professor X told TechCrunch that while the company is indeed looking to raise a round in the coming months, it leans on the support from previous investors as well as the massive market in China for robotaxi services.

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Employees of Cruise, the self-driving subsidiary of General Motors, will be the first to jump inside one of the company’s autonomous vehicles that operate in San Francisco without a human driver in the front seat. Certain members of the public will also be able to ride, but they won’t be charged a fare.

Cruise co-founder, CTO and president Kyle Vogt was reportedly the first to ride the driverless AV, and he gushed about it all over Twitter.

1) Monday night was a night I’ll never forget. I’m still speechless. I got to take the first ride, by anyone, ever, in a *driverless* robotaxi on the streets of San Francisco.

This was officially ride #1 for @Cruise. Full story and vids below.https://t.co/GDjVcvMrvK

— Kyle Vogt (@kvogt) November 3, 2021

“Around 11pm Monday night we launched an AV without anyone inside for the first time,” tweeted Vogt. “Until now we’ve been testing with humans in the driver’s or passenger’s seat, so this was a first. It began to roam around the city, waiting for a ride request. At 11:20pm I used the Cruise app and summoned my first ride. After a few minutes, one of the Cruise AVs (named Sourdough) drove up to me and pulled over. Nobody was inside the car. I pressed the ‘start ride’ button and the AV smoothly pulled back into traffic.”

Vogt also said he requested five more rides that night. The rides had to be at night because according to the stipulations of Cruise’s “driverless deployment permit” from the California Department of Motor Vehicles, the company can only operate driverless between the hours of 10 pm and 6 am and at a max speed of 30 miles per hour Cruise received the permit in early October, which allows the company to deploy its vehicles without a human onboard, as well as charge fees for delivery services, but crucially not ride-hailing services.

Cruise’s first human-less deployment comes about a week after GM CEO Mary Barra said the company is confident that Cruise will begin commercial driverless ride-hailing and delivery operations by next year. Cruise has yet to apply for the final permit it needs, which would be from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), to be able to charge for robotaxi services. Until such time, only Cruise employees and non-paying members of the public will be riding around in Sourdough and other human-less AVs.

Cruise told TechCrunch it doesn’t break out numbers for how many driverless AVs are permitted, nor does it have any updates on when it expects to apply for its final permit from CPUC.

Correction: A previous version of this article stated that employees of Cruise would be able to ride in the driverless AVs. Cruise has just confirmed that certain members of the public will also be allowed to ride, but didn’t specify who would qualify to ride. Cruise has not opened its driverless service to members of the general public yet.

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A self-driving cruise car owned by General Motors Corp is seen in front of the company’s San Francisco headquarters, where it conducts most of its testing, in California, U.S., September 26, 2018. Picture taken September 26, 2018. REUTERS / Heather Somerville

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Dec 1 (Reuters) – San Francisco’s public transit operator has challenged Cruise’s request for fees for robotaxi rides, saying that on Wednesday promotional videos from the General Motors Co (GM.N) unit showed Cruise passengers illegally entering and exiting vehicles in the middle of the street rather than at the curb.

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) said in a 24-page letter that Cruise’s recent videos show the self-driving tech company allowing unlawful behavior that also endangers nearby people and slows down buses, agency director Jeff Tumlin said. The agency also blasted Cruise’s application for failing to plan for services in low-income and minority neighborhoods or to accommodate wheelchairs.

“Together, the cruise videos document 14 stops to pick up or drop off passengers; they provide evidence that not one of these stops meets the requirements of the Vehicle Code and the Transport Code,” the agency wrote.

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Cruise said it will address the concerns in a letter to the CPUC next Monday.

GM’s Cruise, Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo (GOOGL.O), and others see San Francisco as a good proving ground for robotaxi services. With the federal government reluctant to enact regulations for autonomous vehicles, states have stepped in to regulate them. But local authorities in San Francisco and elsewhere have been scrambling to get a bigger say in the emerging technologies, which include Tesla Inc.’s (TSLA.O) Autopilot. Continue reading

The SFMTA letter responds to a cruise filing last month with the California Public Utilities Commission, which has the final say on whether companies can charge for rides.

SFMTA’s letter calls for Cruise’s request to be denied unless it can demonstrate that its automated systems can detect lawful on-street parking, parallel parking, and back-to-back parking.

The agency also criticized Cruise’s original deployment plan because it would ignore almost all of the city’s low-income and disadvantaged communities and serve only 19% of San Francisco’s Hispanic population and 24% of the black population. The company has also yet to test wheelchair-accessible travel, the agency wrote.

Additionally, Cruise said it would avoid streets with light rail lines but failed to recognize a long train route in its planned service area, SFMTA wrote.

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Reporting by Paresh Dave; Additional reporting by Hyunjoo Jin; Editing by David Gregorio

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cruise and Waymo are in a race to see who can win the market for autonomous driving – and have recruited lobbyists here in San Francisco to iron out the high-tech rules of the street. Waymo is Google’s own startup with a valuation of $ 31 billion. (Yeah, I just spat coffee on my screen too). Waymo lobbyists have reported or expected to pay $ 96,000 to San Francisco City Hall this year, city records show. GM-owned Cruise, also valued at over $ 30 billion, is headquartered at the South Beach baseball stadium. Cruise lobbyists have reported or expected to pay SF City Hall $ 136,000 this year.

If that seems like a lot Foreclosure just said, “Hold my beer.” The namesake of the tallest office building west of Chicago cannot be beat. Salesforce lobbyists have reported a staggering $ 1.1 million (coffee, screen) to SF City Hall in fees received or expected over the past 10 years. (If you wonder about the clumsy phrase “received or expected”, sometimes the bill is not paid when reports are due.) …

When a database company has its name in the practice hall, you might as well follow your strokes in practice, and the warrior do this with fancy new technology from, you guessed it, oracle. The Warriors Player Dashboard, powered by Oracle, aggregates and compares game and practice metrics of player shots with the league average. The Oracle Performance Center is the 25,000 square foot section of the Chase Center where the Warriors train and hang out. If you’re wondering what you’re doing with exercise metrics, you can look at where gunshots come and go and say, “Hey Steph, scooch over 5 feet and those threesomes get even cuter. ”It’s hard to do better than curry did it against the Clippers a few weeks ago when he went eight for 13 from downtown on the way to 45 points …

If you’re curious about what’s next Relaxed (I am, but I am a nerd), you will find out this next Thursday at an ask-me-anything online event Nolan Caudill, Senior Director for the in-house tools team in the team messaging application. Go to slackcommunity.com. Here are two things you might not know: 1. Slack is an acronym for Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge. 2. In the Salesforce Tower you could look across the park to Slack HQ, where friendly messages used to be posted in the windows (before Foreclosure acquired)…

A contemplative musical “MindTravel” event is planned for November 14th at 7:00 am in Land’s End. (Kevin N. Hume / The Examiner)

This is trippy: you can “MindTravel” by strolling through Land’s End, the park on the northwest corner of The City overlooking the coast and the Golden Gate, while a lot of people listen to “evocative, improvisational” piano music on headphones . The composer of music, Murray HidaryShe swears a “contemplative and powerful creative journey”. It happens on Thursday, November 14th at 7am. Bet you would be Zen at work all day? Go to mindtravel.com/upcoming-schedule…

I still don’t fully understand NFTs. Non-fungible tokens sound like a dessert that you can’t eat to me, and it is. You buy unique things that are only available online. But if that doesn’t seem real, it brings in real money from a well-funded VC. Andreessen Horowitz, the investor in Menlo Park in Facebook (Forgiveness, Meta), Airbnb, Elevator, Pinterest and many more, has participated in more than a third of all largest NFT finance deals, according to PitchBook data …

Finally, if you want to surprise your spouse, you can put a colored light in the toilet a night before bed. the Glow bowl adds some color to your life where you never expected it, and has a dimmer and “carousel mode” that alternates between colors. Go to Glowbowl.com. Don’t blame me, people send me these things …

Send articles to jelder@sfexaminer.com

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Dedicated charging area for Uber and Lyft in Mountain View, CA

Brad Templeton

Dealing with the “curb” has become a major challenge for both self-driving vehicles and human-operated taxis and delivery vehicles. Driving on the road has its challenges, but every trip also requires picking up and dropping off goods or passengers, which can be a completely different problem in the city. It’s one thing the robot taxi company Cruise has not yet resolved, which recently resulted in the San Francisco MTA it operates in denying its application for a permit to provide robot taxi services.

When I recently reported on Cruise’s first Robotaxi ride, I pointed out that it was strange that the vehicle never stopped for pick-up and drop-off, even when the driver was waiting in front of a temple that had a large and empty loading area. Instead, it blocked the lane and the driver got on and off. I suggested that this is simply because Cruise is doing things “one thing at a time” and resolving all of “Picov Andropov’s” (the famous Russian chauffeur from NPR’s “Car Talk”) on the first day. While it’s illegal, it’s very common for human taxi drivers to do the same too, especially when the streets aren’t crowded just because it’s easier.

The SF Muni does not seem willing to have it worked out later. That’s not unreasonable, but they should also be balanced out – if Cruise isn’t supposed to do PuDo (pickup / drop-off) on the street, then crackdown on Uber, Lyft and taxis should also be tough. We want all providers, including Cruise, to be safe, but we don’t want to slow down the autonomous developers any more than others.

In some places the curb is often empty and this is an easy problem to solve. If there is a light loading zone or a wide piece of curb, it isn’t too difficult for a generalized algorithm to identify and use. To do it really well, you’ll likely want to map every PuDo spot in the city, including official loading zones, parking lots, and other approved zones. Likewise, you want to identify no-parking / no-standing zones, bus stops and other places where it is not allowed and their opening times. You’ll also want to know more about official PuDo zones (which some cities have) and even special alleys that are often found in hotels and office towers. These zones can have additional rules for their use.

If you have such a map and you arrive at a location, it is not difficult to see which of the mapped PuDo zones near the destination can be used for free. Parking spaces can even be parallel parking. Robots will get very good at this, although there is an argument that it is often faster and less disruptive to traffic to stop in the lane and release a passenger than to park and drive in parallel.

For pick-up, a waiting passenger could be shown the map with the spots in his vicinity and he can click on a free one. If there is only one, they could even “claim” the space by partially standing in it and waving away cars trying to park there – but they shouldn’t wave away other cars trying to do a quick PuDo. Otherwise, they should update the app when they are given away. You should also consider walking until you find a space.

Some of the best stops are just outside residential driveways. This is a little annoying for the homeowner when it becomes a regular event – more on this below. Another interesting and common opening is in front of fire hydrants. It is legal to stand by a fire hydrant place in some cities, but the law requires a driver to stay in the car while standing in the fire trail. This law may need to be changed to cover robot drivers who would, of course, start driving immediately if they spot a fire engine, just as humans have to.

Pick-up of food

It looks different with delivery drivers. You usually have to walk to a restaurant or go to the door of a house to transport the food. This makes them less likely to block the lane. For delivery, most robot delivery services now signal the customer on the phone that the delivery is about to arrive and the customer has to go to the curb. In this case, a quick turnaround can make sense if it would also make sense for the passengers.

A managed curb

In this scene from a video, the Cruise car stopped in the middle of the lane to drop the company off … [+] Founder Kyle Vogt, despite two open curbs that he could use. This angered the SF MTA.

cruise

The future holds the potential for something bigger, namely a fully city-managed curb, including parking lots and PuDo spaces. Many, including respected parking expert Donald Shoup, argue that the idea of ​​free parking was a huge mistake, and that thought could even be extended to include short-term curb use. Today all commercial users of curbs are computerized – with an app or soon because they are robots. It is not impossible to have a system where the use of the curb can be managed, calculated and reserved, if only for 30 seconds.

This could also be done without better parking management, although it would certainly be very helpful if it were done as well. Perhaps one day all parking options will be handled by just one app that will select, reserve, manage and pay for parking spaces (street and private parking spaces) in your city. In this case, vehicles that need to do PuDo in busy areas could reserve a single minute in parking lots as well as PuDo spots to facilitate arrival. But they could still do that for the no parking spaces that allow PuDo. In particular, the rooms that some cities have assigned as “TNC only”.

A vehicle that is on its way to a PuDo (and that includes a human-controlled TNC with an app) has an estimate of its time of arrival that improves over time. His headquarters could ask the city to reserve a place through a time slot. This would prevent any other such vehicle from using that space at the reserved time. If it’s just a TNC spot, private drivers are not allowed to use it, although they might be found surprisingly in other areas there, so this needs to be handled – including passenger handling. As the vehicle got closer, the timing of the reservation was refined until it was completely precise and of course adjusted so that it didn’t overlap with others who were also so close to arrival.

Reservations would even apply to the gaps in front of residential driveways if they are large enough. I noted above that the constant use of these houses would annoy the residents of these houses, so the reservation system could limit the number of PuDos in such places. In addition, if the residents of these houses happened to be on the move with a smart app or a car, they could block reservations for free prior to their entry if they could block the resident. While residents don’t own the curb in front of their driveway, we don’t want to upset them too much. Using these spaces means a lot more PuDo capacity and less traffic jams on your street, so it’s a win-win situation. (A single driveway is often not wide enough for PuDo, but many driveways are paired or combined with an unusable curb.)

Clogged bulk pickup

Special efforts will be required to handle locations with extreme pick-ups such as airports, office buildings at closing time, and the largest stadiums of them all. While it would be nice to develop a distributed system to have this done, these places will only have a limited amount of PuDo space and it won’t be practical for all the cars to show up at the same time. There is a possibility that such establishments could contract to have someone run a system to manage their PuDo room. Robocar companies would talk to the server managing a building to handle congested times and let vehicles know when to get a reservation to approach the building and drive to their seat – probably only if their passenger is is immediately ready to board.

This is already partially the case with TNCs at some airports, but each of them has its own area and some of them manage it themselves. Taxi PuDo areas like Singapore Airport, where taxis park perpendicular to the street, are probably the best design compared to the often slow-moving taxi lines found in some locations. The busiest places (especially the stadiums and convention centers) can do well to put passengers on buses that go to the satellite PuDo places in the direction each passenger wants to go. In some cases, these vehicles (be it cars, vans, shuttles, or buses) can even travel a long distance as no one will avoid them.

These systems are likely to be related or identical to the systems used to handle larger and heavily trafficked parking lots. If vehicles do not approach parking lots or loading areas until they are ready for a quick transfer, there should be no congestion in those areas. Old parking lots that were no longer needed in the Robotaxi era are excellent candidates for staging areas. At an airport, one can imagine taking the old short-term car park and assigning most of the spaces to the PuDo, which can handle all but the busiest times. Of course, if they are building a Robocar airport, this could also happen on the unused parts of the airport perimeter, where airside vehicles take people without checked baggage directly from their aircraft to a gate in the fence and the PuDo area for ground transportation transfers.

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SAN FRANCISCO (KPIX) – For the first time since the pandemic began, a towering Majestic Princess cruise ship moored in San Francisco harbor. It was a hopeful sight and could signal a comeback for the competitive cruise industry.

In March 2020, a cruise ship with sick passengers and crew members landed in the bay. It was San Francisco’s first contact with the coronavirus and many people feared it. But on Monday another cruise ship docked and brought not illness, but optimism for the future.

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For city commuters, it was a place for sore eyes. The Majestic Princess docked there on Monday morning at 6:30 a.m. as the first cruise ship since the beginning of the pandemic.

“Oh, I’m so excited. It’s like the world is opening up for us again. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel, ”said Sandy Lipkowitz, owner of a local travel agency called We Make Travel Easy.

Lipkowitz said it was unfortunate that another ship, the Grand Princess, became an early global symbol of the pandemic. They were stuck in Oakland with sick passengers and crew members and sat on a cargo berth and could not come ashore for fear of the new virus.

“You know, the princess had a hard time in the beginning,” said Lipkowitz. “It was really unfair, they were caught at sea when nobody knew what was going on.”

Now the precautionary measures are closely monitored. Without a proof of vaccination and a negative COVID test, nobody can get on the ship. Guests wear masks when moving around the boat, except in the dining areas. The protocols are so strict that what was once considered a super-spreader environment is now considered by many travel professionals to be the safest form of travel in the world.

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“It’s as safe as anything else,” said cruise fan Tom Barton. “You can go to a soccer field with 40,000 people and in my opinion it’s not as safe as coming here on a cruise ship.”

The city is also happy about the return of the ships. In the year before the pandemic, cruise lines brought 280,000 tourists to San Francisco and contributed $ 27 million to economic benefits for local businesses.

“So you can imagine that this cruise break definitely slowed economic activity,” said Andre Coleman, deputy director of SF Port Maritime. “But we look forward to the safe resumption of the cruise and look forward to a record year in 2022.”

Because 127 cruise stops are already planned in San Francisco for next year, more than ever before. These include 28 from a new ship that will make The City its home port, the Carnival Miracle.

But on Monday morning the Majestic Princess performed a little miracle, both on and off the boat.

“I think you are seeing the return of life,” said Richard Bullen as he photographed the huge ship from the dock. “The flow starts to happen in a way that it didn’t have before. That hadn’t happened before. “

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And now that the first cruise ship has arrived, there are many more to come. Assuming everything goes well, 21 stops are planned for the remaining three months of 2021.

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