Waymo, the autonomous-vehicle ride-sharing company headquartered in the Bay Area, is testing and mapping Minneapolis streets with plans to expand. The company brings a broader industry-led push to open Minnesota’s roads and streets to autonomous vehicle fleets, despite limited public input, weak local oversight, and no guarantee that communities will benefit.
Our Streets opposes the deployment of commercial autonomous vehicles (CAVs) on Minnesota’s public roads and streets. Decision-makers and legislators must carefully consider the impacts of this technology on labor, safety, transit, active transportation, and our communities at large.
This position is not because we fear the technology, but because CAVs worsen our car-centric transportation system while presented as a solution. Our Streets envisions a transportation system that connects our communities, improves our quality of life, makes it safer and more affordable to get around, and reduces environmental and community health impacts. CAVs only threaten that vision rather than helping achieve it.
We advocate for deliberate, rigorous, and broad public and stakeholder conversations to chart a path forward on state-level policy governing connected and automated vehicles, to understand the tradeoffs of this technology, and to examine our shared values and consider why connected and automated vehicles are not the best way to address our collective transportation needs.
Current State of CAVs in Minnesota
In 2019, an executive order from Governor Walz established the Governor’s Advisory Council on Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs) tasked stakeholders with making key recommendations on the future of these vehicles in the state. This work culminated in the 2025 policy recommendations that formed the basis for priorities for the Governor and the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT), which were brought forward to the legislature for the 2026 session. The recommendations provide a regulatory framework to allow commercial connected and automated vehicles to operate.
A coalition of labor and transportation advocates pushed back on the governor’s recommendations, successfully stopping Governor Walz from advancing them. MnDOT and other legislators are still working to advance these policies.
There is also a bill led by Waymo and its corporate lawyers that devises a regulatory framework in the company’s image and interests. This would grant Waymo broad operating authority, isolation from local regulations or fees, and other advantages designed to maximize shareholder profits.
There are other, stricter regulatory frameworks emerging from state legislators who are taking a cautious, more skeptical approach to CAVs.
Additionally, several bills support and protect workers affected by this transition. This includes the short-term risks for rideshare drivers and longer-term risks for transit operators and truck drivers. Our Streets supports these protections.
What’s the rush?
From worker protection to privacy issues to private company leverage to undercutting transit to safety to ingraining the need for car-oriented infrastructures (phew!), there is a lot to consider regarding CAVs. You may be wondering: what’s the rush to let Waymos on our streets?
The answer is, there isn’t a rush for anyone other than Waymo. The stakes for the Alphabet, Inc. subsidiary are high. There are financial incentives to get up and running in Minnesota, and costs for failing to do so.
Waymo raised $16 billion in capital investment to scale its growth based on a $125 billion valuation. The autonomous rideshare company, only operating in a handful of cities, is valued this high for rapid growth at all costs. Waymo will expand into more cities and markets to profit, while local impacts are ignored. After all, the people making these decisions do not live in the communities that will experience the impacts.
Car dependency is the problem. CAVs are not a solution.
Waymo and other CAVs are flashy and novel, but the technology offers little more. These systems, arriving decades after we stopped adequately funding the public transit systems that actually efficiently move people, will entrench the need for car-oriented infrastructure that has failed to serve all Minnesotans, created unsustainable land use through sprawl, and harmed our communities and local tax bases.
Automobiles were also flashy and new. Where has that gotten us?
Waymo is new technology packaged as reinvention. People-centered transportation solutions have been overlooked and underfunded for decades, despite being proven, affordable, and climate-friendly; we’re talking about public transit, walkable and rollable sidewalks, safe bike infrastructure, traffic calming, highway removal, micromobility networks, and reclaimed public spaces. They build community. They create jobs. They connect people. They build thriving local economies.
This is bigger than Waymo. The implementation of CAVs will not happen in a vacuum. Minnesotans deserve a broader public conversation about the impacts on the transportation system as a whole.
Labor, Safety, Privacy, Public Transportation Issues: Concerns about CAVS are Numerous
There is a laundry list of concerns about Waymo and CAVs more broadly.
In-depth analysis can be found from Pittsburghers for Public Transit, a national leader in understanding the nuances of CAVs and their impacts on building a transportation future that works for everyone. Their analysis informed our policy positions we share today.
Transportation is intersectional. It impacts our public health, economy, housing, and climate.
Loss of Jobs
Our transportation system is a tool for economic opportunity—for the people it connects, the workers it employs, and the communities where better investments like rightsizing roads, transit, and active transportation can build shared prosperity. Autonomous vehicles pose an immediate threat to rideshare drivers and transit operators, with longer-term risks for truck drivers. If public policy enables private automation that reduces local employment while extracting value for out-of-state corporations, it contradicts our commitment to jobs and community wealth building.
If public roads are subsidizing business models that reduce employment and export value, that is not innovation. It is economic displacement.
Companies like Waymo and agencies like MnDOT have loosely claimed that autonomous and connected vehicles will lead to economic and workforce development. Others have claimed that new job opportunities can successfully mitigate the impact of driver displacement.
However, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce, in 2019, about 10 million jobs that include driving as a significant component of the work will be affected across the U.S, including between 3.8 and 4.5 million jobs where driving is the principal task (e.g., freight delivery driver, taxi, public transit operator).
These jobs are threatened here in Minnesota and would have a large impact on the workers and the local economy. According to Pittsburghers for Public Transit, there are few, if any, examples in the U.S. where policy intentionally approached automation in a way that successfully and justly transitioned workers into new careers or job opportunities. This will likely be the case with connected and automated vehicles as well, as some proponents cite transitional roles for workers while at the same time touting cost savings for those cutting jobs.
We support good-paying union jobs and careers in the transportation sector as we transition to building and operating a transportation system for the future. This goal is not at odds with our goals to advance highway rightsizing and removal projects, transit capital projects and operations, active transportation and safety investments, climate change and environmental justice action, and pursuing a maintenance-first approach to transportation investments.
However, autonomous vehicles eliminate Minnesotan jobs, threatening rideshare drivers and transit operators today, and potentially truck drivers tomorrow.
Undercutting Transit
Connected and autonomous vehicles undercut Minnesota’s progress toward building a world-class transit system with fast, frequent, safe, and affordable service. Waymo and similar services are not affordable for many transit-dependent riders and do not replace fixed-route transit, which generates jobs, supports dense walkable development, and provides affordable and accessible transportation for the one in three Minnesotans who cannot or choose not to drive.
When private, app-based autonomous services compete with transit, they reinforce a two-tiered system: premium, individualized mobility for those who can afford it, and underfunded buses and trains for everyone else. Public policy should strengthen collective systems, not undermine them. Minnesota has adopted statutory climate pollution reduction targets and vehicle miles traveled reduction goals. Strengthening transit and reducing car dependence are essential to meeting those goals. Policies that increase private vehicle fleets while undercutting transit push us in the opposite direction.
Some proponents of connected and autonomous vehicles have argued that the vehicles would help bridge the gap between first and last mile connectivity, supporting transit riders who would otherwise walk, bike, or roll between transit stops to their destinations.
The potential benefit is purely speculative given the lack of widespread examples of such services. However, micromobility services are often more expensive and less efficient to operate compared to fixed-route transit. Instead of embracing connected and automated vehicles as a supplement to transit service, lessons from other contexts like Canada have proven that running more transit service is the best way to increase ridership, revenue, effectiveness, and competitiveness of transit as a transportation choice.
Any policy on the operation of commercial autonomous vehicles should include ride-based fees to support transit capital and operations, similar to the fees the City of Seattle imposed when rideshare first arrived, to support transportation projects and affordable housing.
Lack of Safety
There are many outstanding questions on the safety of automated vehicles from a variety of potential operators. Some are safer than others, and the technology is new and uncertain, as evidenced by Tesla’s automated driving features under development, which, in some studies, have been shown to perform significantly worse than human drivers in certain scenarios.
Beyond unanswered safety questions, companies like Waymo present the removal of a driver as an obvious solution to safety, but realizing those theoretical gains would require near-total market penetration and does nothing to address the fundamental problem: too many cars (regardless of who drives them), moving too fast, on streets and roads designed for speed over safety.
In our view, prioritizing safety means investing in smart solutions that have already proven successful: safe street design, reducing the need to drive, and providing safe infrastructure for biking, walking, rolling, and public transit. While automated safety features may eventually be incorporated into conventional vehicles to support, not replace drivers, allowing fully automated vehicles onto Minnesota roads without adequate safeguards or conclusive data is premature.
Any effort to bring connected and automated vehicles to our streets must require clear performance standards tied to pedestrian safety, transit interactions, or protections for vulnerable road users beyond existing laws for conventional vehicles.
Allowing fully automated vehicles onto Minnesota roads is premature—especially when we haven’t yet built a system safe enough to protect people like a nine-year-old boy, killed while biking near his school in Moorhead last summer, or design flaws that hurt or kill people along Olson Highway every year.
Passenger vehicle automation is also a gateway to further automation, including trucking and freight. While we want fewer heavy trucks polluting communities, qualified human drivers remain essential for community safety.
Mobility Challenges
Members of the disability community, older and young Minnesotans, are among the one in three Minnesotans who can’t or choose not to drive. Members of these communities have shared stories on the isolation from opportunity and daily life that our car-oriented system causes. We share the concern for mobility for those who can’t or choose not to drive, or have to be chauffeured by others.
This problem was created by diving headfirst into a new technology in the twentieth century—the automobile—which reshaped our cities and cemented the problems of a car-dominant system. We did so without considering the trade-offs of a system like this, and those who don’t drive or can’t afford the ever-increasing costs of car ownership are left behind.
To solve this problem, we are strong supporters of fast, frequent, reliable transit and active transportation that is accessible, and smart land use across our state. Car dependence is the problem, and autonomous vehicles don’t solve it.
Additionally, regarding existing services such as metro mobility and transit, operators play a critical role in passenger safety and comfort. They ensure that people with disabilities can safely move around the community. Waymo also does not solve mobility challenges for those requiering wheel chairs or other mobility devices, making accessible services an essential lifeline for Minnesotans.
Public Roads, Private Profits
Our streets are public infrastructure—built and maintained with taxpayer money. They belong to the people who live here. Waymo and other similar services would use those streets to operate a premium ride service that extracts profit while providing no benefit to the local economy.
These rides aren’t affordable for the Minnesotans who most need transportation. They don’t replace bus routes. They don’t generate local jobs; they eliminate them. This isn’t innovation. It’s economic displacement.
Increased VMT, Air Pollution
Minnesota has adopted climate pollution-reduction targets, including our 20% reduction in Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) and policies. Meeting them requires strengthening transit and reducing car dependence — not flooding streets with new vehicles that, according to UC Berkeley researcher Matthew Raifman (PHD, MPP), spend 40% of their miles driving empty, called deadheading. Waymo competes directly with public transit, threatening the ridership and revenue that keep bus and rail systems functioning, and helps us make progress towards climate goals.
We cannot allow Waymo or other CAVs free rein of our roads and operate without knowing the impact on increased vehicle miles traveled (VMT). More VMT means more traffic fatalities, and even with the increase in electric vehicles, it does not mitigate tire and brake wear particles, which have a significant impact on air quality.
Further, the climate, health, and environmental impacts of doubling down on car-oriented infrastructure will lead to more sprawl, locking us into inefficient land use and infrastructure decisions that accelerate climate change. This also includes extractive industries needed to support the material-intensive nature of a system based on connected and automated vehicles, which has additional harmful impacts in communities beyond Minnesota.
Private Company Data Collection, Surveillance without Consent
Waymo vehicles continuously record everything around them. Every person on the sidewalk, every kid biking to school, every neighbor on their porch—captured without consent on a corporate server.
We have fought to democratize how our streets are designed and used. We should not quietly hand control of our streetscape data and mobility patterns to a company headquartered 1,800 miles away. This data could be compromised, monetized, or otherwise leveraged in ways we don’t yet understand.
Loss of Public Space, Local Control
Across Minnesota, people are fighting to reclaim public space from car dominance by removing highways, converting lanes, installing bus-only corridors, building protected bikeways, or opening streets for block parties, cultural events, and safe routes to schools.
Autonomous fleets push in the opposite direction. Waymo requires curb space, staging areas, and pickup zones, and it normalizes constant vehicle circulation. They increase pressure to preserve or expand roadway capacity rather than to reimagine complete streets for people. Technology companies should not get to reshape our public spaces on their terms, without our consent.
Every time we widen access for private car fleets—autonomous or not—we narrow the imagination of what our streets can become.
Liability
Any policy governing autonomous vehicles must keep decision-making power with the communities most affected, as well as local agencies and governments. Local governments must retain the authority to decide whether these vehicles operate on their streets, to charge fees for the commercial use of public infrastructure, and to enforce meaningful safety and labor standards.
When an autonomous vehicle blows through a stop sign or blocks a bus lane, there is no driver to take responsibility. Without strong public governance, there is essentially no framework for accountability.
What Minnesotans Actually Want (instead of Waymo)
Policy decisions regarding the testing and deployment of connected and autonomous vehicle technology must be made in consultation with stakeholders to ensure they result in genuine positive outcomes for Minnesotans.
People across this state have been clear about their priorities: more transportation choices, not fewer. People want affordability, climate action, good jobs, and democratic accountability over the systems that shape their daily lives.
Commercial autonomous vehicles deliver none of that.
Transit riders should not be forced to compete with other sustainable modes for space or investment. A people-first transportation system prioritizes collective mobility (transit, walking, biking, and rolling) over individualized vehicle travel.
We can do better. We should invest in 24/7 bus lanes, fully protected bike networks, stable transit funding, highway removal and rightsizing projects, and streets designed for the people who live on them, not for the for-profit algorithms of Silicon Valley.
Mobility is a public right. The future of transportation is fewer vehicles and more life on our streets, not fleets of driverless cars.